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Matrox Parhelia 512 Preview
SpinnerBait writes "Finally, you don't have to sift through all the unreleased and unauthorized
bogus information around the net about Matrox's upcoming 3D Graphics chip,
called the Parhelia 512. Matrox has taken the wraps off their next
generation GPU and
this Preview over at HotHardware goes through its feature set with a fine
toothed comb.
They also give you a very rare glimpse inside Matrox's Montreal Headquarters,
as well as a look at some very impressive technology demos, rendered on their
new chip. Looks like impressive stuff for sure."
...to release decent drivers. Tested and stable would be nice...
I wonder if their new Parhelia can deliver on its promises? Have Matrox's openGL drivers improved significantly over the past few years? Poor openGL was what killed G200's promising future, and I would hate to see a repeat performance.
The human eye can distinguish about 10 million different colours. But it's more sensitive to some frequencies than others, so sometimes 24 bits (16 million colours) may not be enough.
For example, most people can distinguish between two very similar 24-bit medium greens but not between three or four similar 24-bit dark blues.
That said, no monitor can accurately represent 16 million colours, let alone several billions. Even if they could, the dynamic range of monitors is very limited compared to the range our eyes can see (ie, monitors have very limited brightness compared to the normal sunlit world), so most of those colours would be wasted.
Higher colour precision is good because it minimises round-off errors, but this applies mainly to internal calculations (some operations are done directly on the final framebuffer, but very few). For display, 24 bits (and a good monitor) are more than enough.
RMN
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This is the only picture I could find of Parhelia.
Look at the massive heatsink on that baby... Ooooh mama...
Rapid Nirvana