<<< POLL >>> How much would YOU buy Matrox Parhelia for?

[VBboy]

I'm sure you've heard all about the new Matrox Parhelia. I'm sure you read the reviews and saw benchmarks. Tripple head, tripple disappointment?

So how much would YOU buy the Parhelia for?

P.S. Post a comment if you wish!

To avoid getting sued by Matrox, I should mention that the Parhelia is NOTHING like Voodoo3. It's in fact much more like Voodoo4!

 

[Actaeon]

$150 Max.

Why? I bought a GF3Ti200 for $69 shipped. Overclocked it to 240/544 speeds (faster than Ti500), and it the Ti500 runs faster than the Parhelia in all but 1, in the UT2k3 Benchmark.

Why should I pay 80 Bucks more for a card thats slower? Sure it has exceptional 2d Quality, and Antialiasing, and thats about the only thing going for it. I can't afford 3 monitors, nor do I have enough deskspace, or even a use for all of them.

 

[VBboy]

I wonder if the Parhelia could produce better results, if it was overclocked. I didn't see any reviews overclocking the card.. Perhaps after slapping some heatsinks on the RAM it could be taken to new heights?..

 

[CubicZirconia]

I'd consider it at $150 - $175 (that is if I didnt have a ti4400 right now). Triple head gaming is pretty much worthless for me, I don't see myself (or anyone I know) using it in the near future. The whole 16xaa thing (or whatever its called) seemed to bomb too. In my eyes, I'm left with a moderately fast 3d card with semi-useful features.

 

[microAmp]

$150-175 myself, becuase I could get a Ti4200 for that price, or an AIW Radeon 8500 that has some things on there I wouldn't having around.

 

[kami]

$99 US, and even then I'd rather spend an extra $50-$60 on a Ti4200...so maybe $99 isn't low enough.

 

[Rand]

Roughly $300 US, maybe a bit less.


Personally I mainly want it for PhotoShop work and other 2D graphics editing/creation, all reports I've heard have stated that Matrox's 'GigaColor' has an immediately evident impact.
Icrontic had a nice write-up on the impact of it.
That paired with Matrox's typically stellar 2D image quality make for a very pleasant time.

I'll be interested to see how much GigaColor impacts DVD's, and older games that don't need more then 2bits of alpha.

And finally I can get Matrox 2D, along with solid 3D.
It has the best 3D feature set available, along with an excellent FSAA implementation that looks to provide a minimal performance hit while retaining fantastic visual quality. I've heard some pretty pleasent things about the flexibility of the TV-Out implementation also.

Granted, it doesnt hold up to the R8500/GF4 Ti42000 regularly, but it gets decently when FSAA is applied.... and none of the games I typically play are truly dependent upon the graphics card anyway.


Triple-head has it's benefits... but I'm expecting the only gamers that would really see a huge benfit from it will be those interested in flight sims. I could probably benefit decently from it when multi-taking while doing heavy 2D graphics editing, but I'm not sure that the cost of a third monitor would make equate to the flexibility I'd gain.
I couldnt care less about gaming on even two monitors, so triple-head gaming is useless for me.

I'd strongly prefer if they allowed higher degrees of anisotrophy though, and FAA has a few areas wherein it misses jaggies that could be worked upon.


I just can't justify $400 though, and even $300 is pushing it... but since I'm only barely satisfied with my current Gainward boards 2D, and the the Parhelia seems a match made in heaven for the multitude of 2D graphics editing apps I could probably pull $300 for it.

 

[Mem]

I couldnt care less about gaming on even two monitors, so triple-head gaming is useless for me.

I agree ,I only use and need one nice big monitor for all my hardcore gaming needs,I wouldn`t pay more then $120 max for the Matrox Parhelia,the features it has I don`t really need.

 

[wfbberzerker]

Originally posted by: VBboy
I wonder if the Parhelia could produce better results, if it was overclocked. I didn't see any reviews overclocking the card.. Perhaps after slapping some heatsinks on the RAM it could be taken to new heights?..

its so expensive people probably dont want to risk breaking it.

 

[Booster]

$50. I don't play a lot of games, and almost any 50 dollar card with DDR RAM suits me. Of course, Parhelia may have some super duper features, but I will never use them of need them. Why pay for them then?

 

[skriefal]

I have no interest whatsoever in gaming (unless Minesweeper counts!), so my only interest in the card would be for its excellent 2D quality. However, my old Matrox G400 is still a very good 2D card and so that limits my interest in the Parhelia. I'd still perhaps be interest in one, but couldn't really justify more than $100 or so.

 

[Pariah]

Most of the people here are saying the card doesn't fit their needs or don't need the feature set so they wouldn't pay more than $100-$150 for it. My question is why on earth would you spend that much on anything that doesn't fit your needs? I've used GF4 Ti4600's and for various reasons they did not fit my needs at all. As such I wouldn't waste $10 on it. That doesn't mean I think the card is worth $10, quite the contrary, it's the fastest gaming card on the planet and for that should carry the premium price it does. The same goes for the Parhelia, it may not fit your needs or has features you don't need which should make it completely worthless to you. But looking at what the card does offer in no way should put it in the $100-150 price range. It has features that no other consumer card at any price point has and for that allows it to command a price premium. Maybe not $400 worth, but certainly more than $50.

Nice objective choices VBboy. Improved Voodoo3? Give me a break...

 

[Actaeon]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Most of the people here are saying the card doesn't fit their needs or don't need the feature set so they wouldn't pay more than $100-$150 for it. My question is why on earth would you spend that much on anything that doesn't fit your needs? I've used GF4 Ti4600's and for various reasons they did not fit my needs at all. As such I wouldn't waste $10 on it. That doesn't mean I think the card is worth $10, quite the contrary, it's the fastest gaming card on the planet and for that should carry the premium price it does. The same goes for the Parhelia, it may not fit your needs or has features you don't need which should make it completely worthless to you. But looking at what the card does offer in no way should put it in the $100-150 price range. It has features that no other consumer card at any price point has and for that allows it to command a price premium. Maybe not $400 worth, but certainly more than $50.

Nice objective choices VBboy. Improved Voodoo3? Give me a break...

Read my post, 2nd from the top. Now, take away the 3 monitor gaming part.

 

[VBboy]

I wish the tripple-monitor support was optional, either as some form of daugher board (like the 2d part on older VoodooRush videocards), or just as a dedicated 3-monitor version. It would also be nice if it came clocked faster.. Perhaps Matrox is being a bit conservative?.. E.g. they could release a "Special Edition" that would come overclocked, like Gainward does...

As for the objectiveness and saying "It's just a Voodoo3", I was kidding, as indicated by a smiley. We all know that this is a new-generation 3d accelerator, so lighten up, Pariah

 

[apoppin]

Well, first of all, I am a gamer . . . the Matrox Paraphernalia is not really a gamer' card. And the Radeon 8500 is better for gaming . . . So, I picked LESS than $150 (way less).

 

[Pariah]

Well, the irony of your attempted humor VBboy is that the only card currently available that does improve on every aspect of the V3 (except glide support for obvious reasons) is the Parhelia. Neither top end card from ATi or Nvidia can make such a claim, though ATi is a whole lot closer.

Actaeon:

"Why should I pay 80 Bucks more for a card thats slower?"

If all you care about is frame rates, you shouldn't. If 60fps+ isn't good enough for your needs, there is no reason for you to spend a dime on the Parhelia.

 

[BFG10K]

I would not pay more than $75 for this card based on its' gaming performance. For $99 I can pick up a Radeon 8500 that comes out on top in most cases and for ~$150 I can pick up an even faster Ti4200/Ti4400.

I have good image quality from my nVidia card (in both 2D and 3D), FAA and gigacolour doesn't interest me and triple head is not feasible for 99% of the population (myself included) and if it is, it's still far too slow for 3D gaming.

So really this card has nothing that interests me.

 

[zippy]

Originally posted by: VBboy
I wonder if the Parhelia could produce better results, if it was overclocked. I didn't see any reviews overclocking the card.. Perhaps after slapping some heatsinks on the RAM it could be taken to new heights?..

If you actually knew anything about this card, you would realize that bandwidth is the least of it's problems.

You remember when nVidia was just tugging on the cuff of 3dfx? They implemented new features that were pretty nice in the day even though it wasn't as fast. As time went on, nVidia got faster and more mature for gaming. This is Matrox's first attempt at a gaming card since the G400 (which wasn't even really a gaming card...but it got the job done and was king for a few months till the GeForce256 came out) and they're pumping the features. In a refresh of the card with a 0.13um process and some occlusion culling, this sucker will fly...assuming this refresh comes around xmas. But it's certainly a great start I think.

Unfortunately, the reality of it all is that the card is too expensive for most...including me. I'd really like a 64MB, slower version of it for about $200 or so, that would be great. Nothing beats Matrox image quality in any setting (3d or 2d).

 

[Actaeon]

Originally posted by: Pariah

Actaeon:

"Why should I pay 80 Bucks more for a card thats slower?"

If all you care about is frame rates, you shouldn't. If 60fps+ isn't good enough for your needs, there is no reason for you to spend a dime on the Parhelia.

Personally, I think image quality is just fine on my GF3, but, thats not saying much, as I'm blind as a bat, I can't tell the difference in 2d quality between cards, 32bit vs 16bit color, or Aniscropic Filtering. Though, I can see a difference with AA. As that would be the only reason why I would consider a Parhelia. As long as it runs smooth, its good for me.

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Well, the irony of your attempted humor VBboy is that the only card currently available that does improve on every aspect of the V3 (except glide support for obvious reasons) is the Parhelia. Neither top end card from ATi or Nvidia can make such a claim, though ATi is a whole lot closer.

Hmm, hmm... Look at the list of supported OpenGL extensions (here) and notice that in fact GF4 supports a greater number of them (granted, some of them are actually those invented by nVidia, but hey ). Also, GF line of cards is the first one after Voodoo to feature FSAA in hardware. So you can say that Matrox just followed suit. Also, it was nVidia to be the first after Voodoo to stick a fan onto the videocard, NOT Matrox Anyway, I like Matrox, I was just hoping for better performance.

 

[MrGrim]

Ahahahaha I love this poll. I wonder who three people voted for $400.

 

[murphy55d]

Originally posted by: MrGrim
Ahahahaha I love this poll. I wonder who three people voted for $400.

Amish, Czar and a Matrox fanboy to be named later.

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: murphy55d

Originally posted by: MrGrim
Ahahahaha I love this poll. I wonder who three people voted for $400.

Amish, Czar and a Matrox fanboy to be named later.

not me, I voted for $250, thats what I belive a 64mb version of the card is worth running at the same or better speed as the 128mb version.
The 128mb version is perhaps worth $350 tops.

Good card but way overpriced

 

[RazorWind]

THe Parhelia is a good card but overpriced none the less. Everyone says it sucks because they had very high expectations for it, like beating the GF4 or ..., and they were disappointed.

 

[joohang]

I'd rather keep my G450 for everyday workstation use and if I do see a need to play 3D games, I'll just build a new Athlon XP machine with a GF4 Ti4200 or Radeon 8500.