Matrox Parhelia Benchmarks and Review

Crankshaft writes "Matrox Parhelia boards are due to hit retail shelves by the end of the month. Cards have been sent out and the benchmarks are up, showing the card's strengths and weaknesses. You want great looking Anti-Aliasing? The Parhelia is for you. You want killer frame rates? You might have to look elsewhere."

Comments

Short-sighted

[ubergeek]

I for one am a little troubled by the attitude displayed in all the available "reviews." Their major concern seems to be frame rates in SS and Q3A, two games built on old technology. What I'm concerned about is high-resolution performance with AA enabled. I have no intention of ever again running a game below 1024x768 with AA enabled. Why would you, when the Parhelia can do it without breaking a sweat?

I wonder what The Carmack has to say about this card. I'd like to see some benchmarks of the Parhelia running DooM3 at 1024x768 w/ 16xAA. Now that the NDA's are lifted, I hope he'll wake these people up to the fact that there is life after Q3A.

Re:Short-sighted

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

Their major concern seems to be frame rates in SS and Q3A, two games built on old technology.

Exactly the point: if Parhelia dips as low as 35 fps running SS @ 1024x768 with nothing turned on, then you know for a fact that it will be near-unplayable on newer more demanding games.

But, since the reviews available test a whole lot more than just SS and Q3 engine games, we don't need to rely on that obvious deduction. Parhelia also gets its clock cleaned on newer games like Commanche4, and UT 2003, as well as the mini-games in 3DMark, which are supposed to simulate future game engines. The only difference is, with these games you actually need a GF4 to get decent performance.

What I'm concerned about is high-resolution performance with AA enabled. I have no intention of ever again running a game below 1024x768 with AA enabled. Why would you, when the Parhelia can do it without breaking a sweat?

Because the only games that Parhelia can run at 1024x768 with 16x FAA "without breaking a sweat" are the ones "built on old technology" that you denigrated a sentence ago. Check out the scores for UT 2003 with AA and anisotropic filtering. Parehlia is most definitely breaking a sweat @ 1024x768. (So, of course, is the GF4.) This is for a game that is going to be out in a month; and not only that, but a deathmatch-oriented game which is most definitely tweaked for high framerates. If you never want to run a game below 1024 with AA, then you better either get used to the games that are already out today, or prepare to upgrade video cards very very often.

I'd like to see some benchmarks of the Parhelia running DooM3 at 1024x768 w/ 16xAA.

Too bad: using current drivers, it won't run it. That's because Parhelia's 16x AA is fragment anti-aliasing, which only AA's the edges of polygons, and thus can't deal with a stencil buffer which is used in Doom3 (and many other games) to render cast shadows. Even assuming a driver fix will allow Parhelia to at least run games with a stencil buffer in FAA mode, the shadows themselves will still have jaggies unless you use the much much slower FSAA mode. Given how large a part shadows play in the Doom3 experience, it's doubtful FAA will be better than no AA at all.

If your goal is to never run below 1024x768 with AA, your best bet is probably to buy a GF4 MX 440 today, ride that as long as it will last, and then upgrade in 12-15 months (before you need a DX8 compatible card, which GF4 MX is not) to whatever the best $150 card then is (i.e. equivalent of today's GF4 Ti4200 or Radeon 8500). You'll get your Doom3 at 1024 with AA, and save $175 over buying the Parhelia today to boot.

I wonder what The Carmack has to say about this card.

Me too; in particular, he (or someone) should be able to inform us where the expected throughput benefit for highly multi-textured games has disappeared to. Unfortunately, given the shrug gamers are going to give this card after this morning, he may not even bother.

Re:uhh..

[-douggy]

To be brutally honest I think I would much rather have one of these in my pc and any of the new Nvidia GF4/5 cards. I play games at 800x600 or 1024x768 which is the max nice res on a 17inch monitor. I dont really care about much abouve 50-75FPS.

What I am interested is a card that can pull frame rates near a GF4 card speed but with 2D that is superior and clear to look at. Dual or triple head out put is also a very nice feature for the workstation market.

More reviews

[wpmegee]

Anandtech and Tom's Hardware have also posted reviews.

Anand says that it isn't worth $400, especially in terms of frames per second. And Geforce4 Ti 4600s are only $300 online and the Radeon 8500 is only about two benjamins, and both offer better performance.

Surround Gaming

[jaaron]

I've got a nice Matrox dual-head video card for my workstation at work and quite honestly I don't know how I did anything before having two nice 20 inch monitors taking up all the desk space in my cubicle. :)

Matrox is noted more for it's workstation class video cards than it's 3-D gaming abilities, but after seeing some of the info on "surround gaming," I don't know . . . I sure wouldn't mind playing the lastest game spanning 3 nice LCD monitors.

For more info, you should check out
http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/surrgame.cfm or check out these screen shots of Jedi Knight II:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/enhanced_gam es / knt2.cfm.

Not everybody is a gamer

[silas_moeckel]

Lets face it guys not everybody is a gamer people do still have real work to do and lets face it a lot of the nvida stuff out there is about average for clarity and high end connectivity. This card is set right for the low end DTp and the high end corprate people (for those corps that try not to give all there emploies headaches from looking at those blurry intergrated video on tiny monitors)

Personaly I have a rig for productivity a few rigs for games and the laptops for running around. Productivty machines get multiple monitors and nice cards with soso procs and should be nice and quiet. Gaming machines hey if it sounds like a 747 it's ok as long as you cant hear it over the rocket jumps.

This new card...

[Steveftoth]

The new Parhelia is a great new card. It won't appeal to everyone, as it doesn't have the frame rates that everyone seems to think are the only indication of performance in graphics today. Everyone seems to think that fillrate == king and that all the other features are secondary. Which is why nVidia sells most of it's cards with only enough features to get them out the door, most don't have tv out, multiple monitors, tv in, etc. ATI has done a great job of creating multiple products that do many different things.

Matrox's new card has one feature that no other card can match yet, and that's the three monitor support. There is no other single card that has the low price and three monitor support. And no AGP/PCI solution will let you play one game on three monitors.

I don't think that I'll be buying one, but that's just because I don't think that it should cost 50% of your systems total value for the video card.

Unfair tests

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the tests available have been unfair to the Parhelia.

Many were done at 640x480 which is not the card's strength.

Give the card games with huge textures and run it at 1280x1024 and above and you will see how it outshines even nVidia's best offer.

However, there are not many games (any at all?) which really can stress this card at that level. So, apparently Parhelia buyers must have to see the nVidia GeForce and ATI Radeon cards be better suited for today's games.

As usual it is a question of the hen and the egg. Which comes first? The game or the card.

Parhelia appears today a tad early to the market.