Matrox Parhelia disapoints in "professional" benchmark @ aces sneak peak

[grant2]

Things don't look good for parhelia at Aces Parhelia preview ... if a 2nd tier geforce ti4400 can regularly whip Matrox's flagship, there goes all the zealots' "but it's not for gamers, it's for PROFESSIONALS" arguments...

 

[human2k]

woah that sucks...........guess all your getting is tripple monitor support @ $400.

 

[Daemon_UK]

Being brutally honest, they should have waited until the card was totally ready.

Why bring out a beta board, and market it, is beyond me and totally unprofessional.

I really do hope Matrox make a serious loss here, because I hope when they make another revision of the card, i.e the .13 m verison of the card, perphaps summer next year. The drivers are better, all the features are present, occullsion culling is there, blah blah. It can at-least compare with its sibblings, because at the moment, the card is a joke!

 

[gsaldivar]

"...I really do hope Matrox make a serious loss here, because I hope when they make another revision of the card..."

If they make a "serious loss", there probably won't be another revision of the card.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: grant2
Things don't look good for parhelia at Aces Parhelia preview ... if a 2nd tier geforce ti4400 can regularly whip Matrox's flagship, there goes all the zealots' "but it's not for gamers, it's for PROFESSIONALS" arguments...

ummm... wouldn't a quadro 4 be the professional version of that chip? i remember something about quadro drivers being much better for CAD/CAM work than geforce drivers...

 

[snow patrol]

Very disappointed with this card, I have to say

edit: is anyone going to buy one then?

 

[NFS4]

DAMN!! Gets beat on its own "home" turf; the "professional" arena. Sad, very sad

 

[FishTankX]

Ah, you guys, the Parhelia wasn't meant for obscene performance in these benchies. That's what Nvidia excels at. Did you see those benchmarks of a Quadro DCC beating some of 3d labs 800$ cards?

The purpose of the Parhelia is to provide OpenGL acceleration across 3 monitors, provide acurate rendering, super high image quality, and stability, and acceptable speed. I'd say that so far it's done OK, not exceptional but it's doing what people want it to do.

For photoshop or CAD it offers gigacolor, which nothing can really beat...

 

[Rand]

edit: is anyone going to buy one then?

I would if I could get one around $300... and given that I've never in my life bothered to pay more then $175 peak for a graphics card that's quite a jump.

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 en excellent FSAA implementation that looks to provide a minimal performance hit while retaining fantastic visual quality.

Granted, it doesnt hold up to the R8500/GF4 Ti42000 regularly, but it gets close when FSAA is applied.
Of course I could always take a stab at 1600x1200 + FSAA, at that point it seems to over-take the GF4 Ti4600, but I find 1024x768 preferable for 3D.

Still, as much as I'd love to have Matrox calibar 2D and decent gaming, and GigaColor looks to be an extremely pleasant feature... I just can't justify $400.
I wish they would pull out a 64MB board for $300... at that price I'd proably go for it.

 

[Mingon]

For photoshop or CAD it offers gigacolor, which nothing can really beat...

except perhaps the 3dlabs card

 

[BFG10K]

I'm not at all surprised by the results and I doubt anyone else here will be either. Those drivers need a lot of work.

I would if I could get one around $300... and given that I've never in my life bothered to pay more then $175 peak for a graphics card that's quite a jump.

I wouldn't. At the level of performance it's currently at I wouldn't pay more than $75 for it.

 

[Sunner]

Seems like it's at about the same performance level as my GF3 Ti200@250/250, and I definately wouldn't pay more than ~150 for it.

The image quality argument only goes so far, and asking for $400 for a card that can't beat cards that are over a year older is definately taking that argument way too far.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: Mingon

For photoshop or CAD it offers gigacolor, which nothing can really beat...

except perhaps the 3dlabs card

Pass on 3DLabs, I'd take ATi over 3DLabs, or even the older G400/450/G550 any day.
I have a lot of respect for 3DLabs, but their are much better PhotoShop board then anything they have.

I wouldn't. At the level of performance it's currently at I wouldn't pay more than $75 for it.

Of course, but if I was only interested in the performance I obviously wouldnt be interested in it. It seems it offers a lot beyond performance that no other boards can offer.

 

[Athlon4all]

I'll probably get it one day when its preice is much, much lower cause it would be faster than what I have currently (Radeon 7500) but for now, forget it.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: Athlon4all
I'll probably get it one day when its preice is much, much lower cause it would be faster than what I have currently (Radeon 7500) but for now, forget it.

By the time it drops low enough in price to be worth it for most gamers, there will be cards available that will handily beat even the GF4... which is itself a a fair bit faster then the R7500.

 

[BFG10K]

It seems it offers a lot beyond performance that no other boards can offer.

Such as?

2D image quality? Well, mine's great on my Ti4600.
Triple head? I don't care - heck I don't even care about dual displays.
FAA? I don't care about any form of FSAA.

Besides, those three things won't take the card from $75 to $400.

 

[Rand]

2D image quality? Well, mine's great on my Ti4600.

Lucky you, too bad it's barely acceptable for me. My Gainward is typically thought of to have among the best 2D quality nVidia can offer. The best I've ever seen from nVidia was a LeadTek Ti500, and a VisionTek Ti4600... neither of those were significantly better then my present board. And neither even match up to the R8500's I've seen, and the R8500 in turn is inferior to the G450/G550. And from everything I've heard from the reviews the Parhelia's 2D is decently improved even beyond that.

You may be happy with your 2D, I'm not.

Triple head? I don't care - heck I don't even care about dual displays.

Again, that's you... not me.
Lots of people do like dual-display. I love it.
PhotoShop is sooo much easier to use, being able to multi-task and view each application individually on each monitor significantly speeds up my work.

FAA? I don't care about any form of FSAA.

And I couldnt live without it.
I'm a fan of RPG's. Almost any RPG can benefit tremendously from FSAA, and given that few RPG's are terribly graphics intensive FSAA can be applied while still maintaining excellent performance.
Take a look at an older game like Might & Magic 6: The Mandate of Heaven.... FSAA revolutionizes it, a totally different game with FSAA applied.
Without it it's one of the most jaggy and heavily pixelated games I've seen, walk up to a tree and it's laughable how poor it looks. FSAA clears all of them up.

Resolution is nice, but it has it's negative side effects... smaller text sizes, many RPG's don't support terribly high resolutions, those that do usually end up with skewed menus and the like.

Thank you, but I'll stick with my FSAA. It's a godsend for me.

[/quote]
Besides, those three things won't take the card from $75 to $400. [/quote]

GigaColor?
An unmatched 3D feature set?

One always pays a premium to get the best available... and the Parhelia is the best in a couple ways.

The Ti4600 doesnt offer much more beyond sheer 3D performance over it's competitors, and it's not even significantly faster then the far cheaper Ti4200.
You pay a premium for the best available in the Ti4600, just like you would with the Parheila.

GigaColor on it's own would be worth an extra $100 IMHO.

Everybody has different needs in a graphics card.
I can well understand why the Parhelia wouldnt appeal to many.

It's almost always slower then the $100 R8500, 2D image quality benefits most won't need, an improved 3D feature set that will go unutilized for awhile, and triple head that's useless for many.
The R8500 gains you better TV-Out, DVD, faster 3D, etc etc... all at a much cheaper price.

And that's only the R8500, the GF4's offer advantages over the Parhelia also.

Few cards have no redeeming features at all, the Parhelia definitely does have it's benefits however. And for some those benefits will be well worth it.
For the Professional 2D artist, the Parhelia may well be a bargain at $400, and it's got other potential customers besides that.

It all comes down to what you want, and what you need.
And everyone has different requirements.

Look at the quad display G200's... those offer virtually nothing beyond quad display capability. And they still sell extremely well in some markets... and they go for exorbitant prices that make the Parheila seem relatively cheap.
They still sell though, because no one else can match Matrox's quad display implementation.
That same quad display implementation is slowly but surely stealing away marketshare from the once dominant Appian.

 

[TheWart]

imho, the parhelia scandal has reached the level of the infamous Daikatana (with regards to expectations>performance).

 

[BFG10K]

You may be happy with your 2D, I'm not.

I'm not the only one happy with it, nor am I the only one who doesn't think Matrox is always the best. The G200s I've seen at 1600 x 1200 didn't particularly impress me at all. And if you need 2D image quality and you insist on a Matrox, it's far better to just pick up a G400 or something.

Again, that's you... not me. Lots of people do like dual-display. I love it.

Again two G550s with four outputs total would be cheaper than one Parhelia with three outputs total. Next.

And I couldnt live without it.

That's fine but I hope that you realise that FAA doesn't touch the textures at all?
And that it produces artifacts in certain cases?

GigaColor?

Currently worthless in 3D games and in most 2D applications, plus can also cause stability problems.

An unmatched 3D feature set?

A feature set that is (a) not used and (b) likely produces slideshows when enabled.

The Ti4600 doesnt offer much more beyond sheer 3D performance over it's competitors,

World's highest quality consumer anisotropic filtering?
World's best consumer drivers?
Excellent professional app performance and support without breaking the bank?

 

[Rand]

I'm not the only one happy with it, nor am I the only one who doesn't think Matrox is always the best. The G200s I've seen at 1600 x 1200 didn't particularly impress me at all. And if you need 2D image quality and you insist on a Matrox, it's far better to just pick up a G400 or something.

And I'm not the only one that does think Matrox offers the best 2D image quality. You've seen as well as I the numerous complaints about 2D on nVidia boards on this forum alone.
If it's like that for average enthusiasts, then how do you think graphcis professionals will feel about it?

I could pick up a G400... but then I lose FSAA, I lose respectable 3D performance, I lose decent DVD playback.... need I continue?
If ALL I needed was 2D and dual display then the G400 might be viable, alas I need much that it cannot offer.
And from what I've seen the Parhelia has been shown to offer 2D even better then the G400.
Plus I lose the single biggest reason for my interest in the Parhelia... GigaColor.

Again two G550s with four outputs total would be cheaper than one Parhelia with three outputs total. Next.

Find me a PCI G550. I'd be stuck with merely one G550, since so far as I'm aware there are no PCI G550's. Plus, when used as a backup card the G550 can only drive one display, not two.

That's fine but I hope that you realise that FAA doesn't touch the textures at all?
And that it produces artifacts in certain cases?

Yep, but it's a hell of a lot more pleasing then the competition blurring the textues all to hell unless anisotropic filtering is used. And I've been distinctly less then impressed with nVidia's MSAA in the manner it deals... or rather doesnt deal with alpha textures.
FAA isnt perfect, but it's the closest thing we've got.
It works perfectly on the majority of games at least.

Currently worthless in 3D games and in most 2D applications, plus can also cause stability problems.

Useful in many older games that don't use more then 2bits of alpha. From the reviews I've read it's visible, though not a huge gain just sitting on the desktop.... and gives singificant benefit in 2D graphcis rendering apps.
I've heard no complains of instability caused by GigaColor.

A feature set that is (a) not used and (b) likely produces slideshows when enabled.

A feature set that isnt used now, but will be in the future.
In some cases it may slow down, but I sincerely doubt every game that takes advantage of those features will suddenly turn into a slide-show with them enabled.
Considering even a mere GF2 MX400 is still offers adequate performance for the types of games I play it seems awfully unlikely the Parhelia with those features taken advantage of it future apps won't be capable of running games satisfactorily for me.

World's highest quality consumer anisotropic filtering?

At a huge performance hit.
Granted it's still playable however.
Personally I prefer average anisotropc and excellent FSAA though.

World's best consumer drivers?

The worlds best consumer drivers is debateable, but you could make a valid case for it. Those some drivers have caused me an awful lot of stability issues though. I've been tinkering with this board almost since the day I got it to ensure stability.
Every time I update te drivers I end up having to do yet more tinkering to ensure that it's stable again.
The 'greatest' still have definite flaws.

Their good, but their not as good as they once were, and they've definitely caused me more stability issues then the unsupported 3dfx did under WinXP.

Excellent professional app performance and support without breaking the bank?

The GF4 Ti4600 isnt significantly cheaper then the Parhelia, the Ti4400/4200 is more reasonably priced however.
I only do basic pro 3D tasks though, so most of that benefit goes to waste on me.

For my uses the GF4 would provide a few definite disadvantages, and precious few benefits besides sheer 3D performance.
The Parhelia offers numerous benefits for me.

Your needs are evidently quite different then mine, and so the GF4 is a much better deal for you. But I purchase based on my own needs, not what others need.

 

[Alex]

tahts cuz the parhelia sucks

 

[apoppin]

So . . . Does anybody know how Matrox's sales are going?

Perhaps they should have named it the Paraphernalia.

 

[BFG10K]

And I'm not the only one that does think Matrox offers the best 2D image quality.

And I'm not the only one who thinks that isn't always the case. I've seen many people prefering their Voodoos, Radeons and even GeForces over Matrox in 2D image quality.

I could pick up a G400... but then I lose FSAA, I lose respectable 3D performance, I lose decent DVD playback.... need I continue?

That's a valid point but why not pick up something cheaper? Heck, if you don't like nVidia why not a Radeon LE for 99 bucks? It's much faster than a Parhelia and offers FSAA, DVD and 2D image quality that rivals Matrox (and even beats them in some cases).

Find me a PCI G550. I'd be stuck with merely one G550, since so far as I'm aware there are no PCI G550's. Plus, when used as a backup card the G550 can only drive one display, not two.

OK, how about a G550 and a G400? Three monitors at a fraction of the price.

FAA isnt perfect, but it's the closest thing we've got.

No it isn't. It might be the best FSAA in terms keeping sharpness and addressing edge aliasing but it does absolutely nothing to address pixel popping and texture shimmering, two other big reasons that people use FSAA.

Granted high resolution is better than any form of FSAA and if you need sharpness that's what you should be using, but it's obvious that the Parhelia does not do well at high reoslutions.

Useful in many older games that don't use more then 2bits of alpha.

Old games will automatically run in 32 bit mode and use 8 bits for alpha calculations if you set your desktop to 32 bit colour. Even if the textures don't have any alpha channels at all the pixel alpha blending (fog, lighting etc) will take advantage of it, not to mention the internal accuracy inside the rendering pipeline. I don't see why you'd ever want to go down to just using 2 bits.

I've heard no complains of instability caused by GigaColor.

Read some reviews, including our very own one here at Anandtech.

A feature set that isnt used now, but will be in the future.

I wonder how many people bought a Radeon on account of that third texture unit being used...

At a huge performance hit.

Huge compared to the approximated versions. Also the Parehelia doesn't exactly offer free anisotropic either and the image quality is inferior to the GeForce4.

Those some drivers have caused me an awful lot of stability issues though. I've been tinkering with this board almost since the day I got it to ensure stability.

I've probably tried over 50 detonator drivers and I've only ever seen one that was responsible for causing crashes. All other cases have been attributed to something else in my system.

Every time I update te drivers I end up having to do yet more tinkering to ensure that it's stable again.

It's sounds like a problem with your motherboard - flaky vendors often have problems like this. Or it could be something else in your system.

and they've definitely caused me more stability issues then the unsupported 3dfx did under WinXP.

Drivers that support true AGP will often expose limitations of a motherboard that drivers not supporting true AGP won't.

Your needs are evidently quite different then mine, and so the GF4 is a much better deal for you.

I don't need pro 3D, I was just refuting your statement that "other that speed the GF4 doesn't offer anything better than anyone else".

 

[Leon]

And I've been distinctly less then impressed with nVidia's MSAA in the manner it deals... or rather doesnt deal with alpha textures.

Then how can you like the way Matrox implement FSAA? Their technique doesn't deal with alpha either, not the mention other parts, where their fragment algorithm fails. You always criticized Nvidia method because it only does edges, and now, when Matrox have it, it's the best thing since sliced bread.
Hmmm....I can smell hypocracy here.

FYI-> Nvidia 4xS FSAA deals with alpha textures just fine, and with excellent texture quality.

 

[mrbios]

World's best consumer drivers?

Um, no.... well, at least in some cases. Can you say 'Infinate Loop'? Mind you, there have been a few instances of this happening on other cards, but 99% of the Infinate Loop problems I've heard about are from Nvidia cards, and it only started with the updating of drivers. Best? Yeah, probably still... but ATI is starting to make some noise.

Russell "Mr.Bios" Sampson