Parhelia for Simulation gamers.

[Rand]

SIMHQ Parhelia Review

SimHQ has a fairly short, and basic review of the Parhelia up. Not something I'd generally link to, but it's oriented specifically towards fans of Simulations games ala flight sims, racing sims etc.
I've always felt SimHQ as a site was fairly representative of what the average hard core simulation gamer would like, so their review might be worth reading for those that are heavily into sims.

Basic conclusion stated the performance was unimpressive and somewhat disappointing, and that triple head gaming was the gratest innovation to sims since the V1 began the 3D revolution, and the V5 brought along excellent quality FSAA.
Half the review was esentially listing the glorious impressions of triple-head gaming.
FAA made quite the impression also.


Pretty much as one would expect... performance is widely regarded as disappointing, so the opinion renders was on par with that of many people. Simulations would tend to be a best case scenario for the impact of FSAA on the image so it's unsurprising FAA made a positive showing. Indeed, many sim fans have stuck with the old V5 sheerly for it's FSAA image quality.

Simulators would also likely be one of the areas in which multi-monitor would benefit the most and given that most sims typically suffice at frame rates of 20FPS on average, the performance hit taken with triple-head probably wouldnt matter too much for sims.

Might be worth reading just to see how the Parhelia copes with a scenario that would likely be an ideal match with it's feature set.

 

[Emultra]

My impression is that the Parhelia is best suited for 2D/3D artists. Am I right?

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: Emultra
My impression is that the Parhelia is best suited for 2D/3D artists. Am I right?

IMHO the absolute best position for the Parhelia is professional 2D graphis design and creation

The most fully featured multi-monitor implementation available, paired with the ability to drive three monitors from one card.
For 2D/3D design multiple monitors is extremely beneficial.
Productivity, and ease of use are DRAMATICALY improved when going from 1 to 2 monitors in most pro 2D/3D apps.
You get 10bit RGB for the best color representation possible, and unlike other vendors Matrox is seeing an admirable level of industry support for GigaColor.
Plug-in's for Matrox's GigaColor are already available from Adobe, Corel, Macromedia, and Xara... more are promised.
Plus you get Matrox's typically stellar 2D visual quality, the G400/450/550 are already extremely highly regarded for their 2D and the Parhelia looks to have been a rather decent improvement beyond them even.... and considering pro-2D design is often done at resolutions of 2048x1536 2D quality becomes awfully important, indeed in the Pro-2D realm 1600x1200 is generally considered to be rather lowly.
Glyph AA isnt a big factor, but it's a nice addition give that it's entirely hardware accelerated- true type font design would benefit the most from it.

Plus for the professional market, the cost suddenly seems rather decent compared to competing boards from Appian/Matrox MMS/ mid-range 3DLabs.

I do believe there are other markets in which it's a solid entrant, but pro-2D design is the best match for it's capabilities.
It has it's benefits for the Pro-3D market, but until it gets application specific driver optimizations, and more importantly ISV certification and certification from individual application developers.
Until that happens it will not recieve wide spread support.
Matrox has yet to officially release the Parhelia's Professional centric drivers, though that's supposed to come soon.