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Matrox Parhelia Benchmarks and Review

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-want-my-fast-3d dept.

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."

15 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Tom also has a review of it by BitchAss · · Score: 4, Informative

    It says about the same thing that the above review does. Here's the link

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  2. Re:uhh.. by -douggy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  3. More reviews by InnereNacht · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here:http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i =1645

    Here:http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/02 06 25/index.html

    And here:http://www.theinquirer.net/24060221.htm

  4. Re:what am I missing about vid cards? by GauteL · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Well a couple of points:
    1. The noted fps is average, not worst case. The actually interesting part for gaming is worst case. If a gaming card gives you 150 fps average, you are mostly pretty sure that worst case is good enough. If a gaming card gives you 40 fps average, you have a bigger chance of hitting unacceptable frame rates. I'd like to see reviewers report worst case though
    2. A 150 fps in todays games does not equal 150 fps in tomorrows games. This means that a a card generating very high frame rates are more future proof than a card that generates 90 fps, which shouldn't be noticably less than the above.
  5. Surround Gaming by jaaron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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  6. Not everybody is a gamer by silas_moeckel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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  7. Matrox cards always look good on paper by e40 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    However, there are always problems:

    1. The hardware never lives up.

    2. Three words: drivers, drivers, drivers. Or, should I have just said "software, software, software"? Putting out beta drivers and leaving them out there for over a year without a final release is par for the course at Matrox. OpenGL promises, you say? Yeah, been there, done that.

    I won't trust Matrox ever again. I was screwed by two generations of cards. Yeah, yeah, shame on me for trusting them a second time.

    1. Re:Matrox cards always look good on paper by TRACK-YOUR-POSITION · · Score: 4, Insightful
      2: Matrox has NEVER promoted their current cards as 3D cards, who told you to buy one for gaming? Give them shit, not matrox.

      There post-G200 cards were certainly promoted as 3d cards. They came with lots of 3d games in their boxes. I'm not saying they were bad cards, but they were certainly sold as 3d cards.

      3: From PERSONAL experience, Matrox has traditionally supplied the most stable drivers with the most features RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX!!! You can go pull an old G400 card off the shelf of some store room, plug it in, install the drivers and it'll be as stable as if you went and downloaded their latest (Obviously you'd have to to get support for the newer OS's but the point is valid)

      Speaking of ancient cards, it's worth noting that the nvidia detonator drivers are the very same for everything from TNT to Geforce 4, despite the very radical differences between them. No, the ones out of the box may not have been so great--but for likely all eternity you'll be able to download new, great ones, with lots of new features, which brings me to...

      4: THERE IS ABSULUTELY NOTHING DRIVERS CAN DO TO ADD FUNCTIONALITY THAT DOESN'T ALREADY EXIST IN THE HARDWARE ITSELF!!!

      Man, how could you have a "great big stack" of video cards and honestly say something so contrary to reality? There's a whole lot of software in between your game and your graphics card. Obviously, by upgrading this software, you can get improvements in frame rate, quality, and yes, features. Like the time I downloaded the new nvidia driver and, suddenly, I had anti-aliasing. Like every time you I download a new DirectX SDK and look at all the demos--they do stuff previous versions could not do. Software and hardware have to work together to give you a good user experience.

  8. Re:what am I missing about vid cards? by MeepMeep · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're right - there's not much point in having FPS exceed the refresh rate of your monitor. I think that quick spin-arounds may be slightly smoother, but it's pretty subjective - that's just the way it feels to me.

    However, those refresh rates are an average over many different sorts of scenes and can drop much lower during intensive scenes - e.g. if you just walked into a rocket arena with 30 guys throwing rockets at each other with particles nice lighting and everything, that's when you probably won't be getting 150 FPS anymore. That's when you really need those FPS.

    Also, most people want a bit of headroom for future games.

    As well, some people want more quality - better lighting, more polys, etc. If your card can do 150 FPS without anti-aliasing, maybe it can do 85 FPS with funky lighting and AA on (just an example).

    However, your original point is correct - excess frame rate beyond your monitor's refresh is not really visible, but the extra power comes in handy for other things.

    MeepMeep

  9. Anandtech looked at UT 2003 by pm · · Score: 5, Informative

    The review at Anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com) uses the latest demo from Unreal Tournament 2003 as one of the core benchmarks. It didn't make much of a difference. In the review, the Parhelia scored about as well as Radeon 8500LE.

    In the review Anand attributed it to three things. Quoting from Anand's review:

    1) Low GPU Clock (220MHz vs. 250 - 300MHz)
    2) Sub optimized drivers
    3) A lack of serious occlusion culling technology

    Whatever the reasons, the Parhelia didn't score well on one of more anticipated and graphically intensive games that will be released in the near future.

  10. This new card... by Steveftoth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  11. Unfair tests by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  12. It'll get better by T5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Parhelia is Matrox's first attempt at a competitive 3D card. As the process shrinks, the speeds will go up. And the drivers will mature over time.

    How much better it'll get is a valid speculative point. Did they hire any of the old 3Dfx crew?

  13. Neverwinter Nights benchmarks? by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It seems to me that NWN is currently the single biggest cause of "forced" graphics card updates. I've seen several reports that even with a GF4-4600 and a top-of-the-line processor, some situations cause unacceptable FPS slowdowns when the AA is enabled (though the game looks otherwise great).

    I seriously doubt that people are buying these cards to play Quake or Serious Sam, so why is it always these games that get benchmarked?

    Because various 3D engines use different technologies, and these are in turn supported differently by the card manufacturers, it's not possible to simply extrapolate from Quake results to NWN.

  14. Re:Short-sighted by ToLu+the+Happy+Furby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.