Parehelia and Maya or other 3D applications.

[chicobaud]

Hello Dear AnandTech Forum users.

Did you ever used (yours) Parhelia with any 3D professional application or Video Editing application ?
Specifically on Maya 4 Complete ?
(I have Maya Learning Edition now but maybe I will get Complete in the future, I also use 3dsmax 4.2n a Matrox G550 but I'm trying to avoid the price of a NVidia Quadro MXR).

How was the performance of Parhelia on a picture with some Maya Vertex Shader and Maya texturing ?
Thank you.

 

[Rand]

Wait until Matrox brings out ISV and Maya certified drivers. Right now compatibility is only average even among consumer cards, and performance is distinctly sub-par relative to other consumer/professional renderers at the same price.
Sub-pixel accuracy is quite good though, and it tends to perform very well when rendering in a viewport w/vertex shading.

It'll most definitely perform substantially better then your present G550, but unless you need triple monitor output I'd strongly suggest waiting until matrox has released their promised Pro3D app drivers, until then we won't see it's true potential under such applications.

 

[chicobaud]

Thank you Rand.
I really like this G550; I'm impressed with the overall image and good contour of this chip/card (compared with my NVidia).
Did you tried a Parhelia ?
Did you happen to have tried a Quadro 2 EX (32 sdram) ? Is this Quadro 2 EX good too ?
(This one has "dedicated" drivers for Maya and 3dsmax and isn't too expensive; but I really would like to see how the Matrox Parhelia gets its niche/recognition, I'm on a hard uncertainty about which card, ... damn).
Thanks.

 

[Rand]

I've not yet tried a Parhelia. Though I very much want to.
I've only even seen one Parhelia first hand, beyond that my knowledge of the Parhelia is limited to what I've learned from those that do have a Parhelia and published tests done on the board.

The Quadro 2 EX is little more then a classic GF2 MX with a few extra Pro 3D specific features enabled. Specifically those are hardware accelerated antialiased points/lines, hardware correction of subpixel rendering errors, shared back buffer, 3D Window Clipping, larger frame buffer etc.
There are certainly far better boards then the Quadro 2 EX in the same price point at this point in time.
It'll handle basic Pro 3D rendering fairly well, and it's a respectable entry level graphics card.
Naturally the Quadro has full Pro 3D optimized drivers for almost any Profession 3D rendering application.

If your interested in the Quadro 2 EX then it may be worth knowing the GeForce1/2 can be "hacked" into their Quadro dirivatives.
Naturally that is illegal, but it's a fairly easy procedure and if your not concerned with legality of it then it might be of interest to you. Via this method a cheapy GF2 Ti could be hacked into a fully fledged Quadro 2 Pro.

A Quadro won't give you the driver support the likes of FireGL and 3DLabs can boast, but their reasonably solid with respectable image quality/rendering precision.
With the recent demise of Elsa, nVidia has acquired many of Elsa's former driver devlopers which had a HEAVY hand in the design of the Quadro drivers. This bodes well for the future improvement of nVidia's Quadro line as nVidia's typical driver team is relatively inexperienced in the requirements of the Pro3D Market.


I really hesitate to recommend any specific graphics card, or go too in-depth as I've little idea of what type of design your looking at.
If you could perhaps give me a brief rundown of the system specifications, the intended applications you will be utilizing, and the type of scenes you will be rendering then I could give you a few suggestions of graphics cards that may be suitable to your needs.

 

[Sunner]

You could probabaly find some interesting info in these articles at Ace's:
Professional Grade
Professional Grade Revisited
Matrox Parhelia review

 

[chicobaud]

Yes, I'm aware of that hack but my GF2 MX is a no trade mark one and they don't use the NVidia reference design. About legallity, I don't care because my GF2MX is paid for and I can do what I want with it.
If only someone could tell me which resistor to do the soldering on a >>> A Open GF2 MX400 <<< I would be on the Moon that very minute, but as much as I look to the small resistors with a lens I can't find R121 & R123 (like on tnaw www doc) ... damn again.
The Elsa doesn´t sell anymore in my country and I knew they had good driver developpers.

I saw a HPackard made - Quadro 2 EX (not MXR) card for that price $160.
Do know if a FireGL has good drivers (count Linux drivers on that too, besides 3D Pro application drivers) and the price is identical to Quadro 2 EX ?
Thanks.

 

[chicobaud]

Ops.
Those links from user 'sunner' were very enlight*ing too.
Thanks. It's just that I'm on a low budget now (summer hollyday$ and so on...) but need a card to learn Maya, mostly.
I work, with the Matrox G550 or the GF2 MX (on a dual PIII 1000Mhz), sometimes with my 3dsmax 4 (and in the future with Combustion 2 for painting and effects, if I have the money for it) but Maya seems to be more demanding with refresh and rendering works that have (4/5) lights and vivid (bright) textures. That's the reason I need a (low-end) 3D Pro card, after seen prices and the links from our friend 'sunner' I'm looking now to a Fire Gl 8700 or a Quadro 2 EX (I would like the Parhelia but I will wait untill it gets the .13 micron gpu), besides my Matrox G550, which is the best I had for text/PDF's and 2D.
Thanks

 

[Rand]

You could always use the "soft quadro" hack to get most of the benefits of a full Quadro without modifying the hardware at all.
It's unfortunate the older FireGL 2 is hard to find now, the driver support is exceptional and it still performs surprisingly well, expecially when rendering mltiple light sources.

If you can swing the money, the FireGL 8700 is a hell of a deal at it's newly reduced price-point.
It'll give you solid performance, along with drivers that are fully optimized for Maya. It also makes very good use of of the PIII's SSE support, and FireGL very effectively manages available memory bandwidth which makes it a strong choice for a PIII based platform. The drivers arent as well optimized for multi-processor systems as those 3DLabs can boast of, but that's only a mild disadvantage under the circumstances.
It's a little weak in wire-frame performance, but it's Radeon lineage benefits it's texturing performance considerably. Sub-pixel rendering accuracy is a little weak compared to mid-range/high end pro rendering boards but certainly better then the Quadro 2 EX can manage.