It seems every 6 months or so someone comes out and says that either PC's or Consoles are losing the battle. Battle of what I'm not sure. I have both consoles and a good gaming PC and I find that the games are different for each system (FPS and Strat games on the computer and fighting and racing games on the consoles (and party type games)). Wish they would give it a break already.
Take a look at Tribes/2/Torque (engine) for how an in game editor can work. The Torque in game editing is really good right now and allows tons of control without wasting your time by starting and stopping the game for every little change.
But they do have downtime so who knows if they play games or not. On a side note, most of the equipment is shipped by the military and the power is generated all the time no matter what (it provides heat) so they could use it as they see fit.
Can you just imagine what your ping time would be while playing Quake? Sheeesh. At least my Athlon wouldnt need the super fan I have on it now, just stick it outside to run. Although I suspect it would melt a hole in the ice!;)
I think you have the right idea. Help them learn by their mistakes. Only problem with pair programming (or anything) is that some people tend to be very nervous and its almost a hinderance. The worst thing to do while pair programming is to take the keyboard away from a "lesser" coder, as this just makes things worse for them. You dont learn by watching (err ya).
hmmm point taken... but (heh, yes a but) did Carmack not say that a GF4TI4600 would play D3? I'm getting in the range of 30-40 fps in RTCW now so any improvement would be nice:)
I wish Mr. Carmack would comment on the R300. I guess he will when he gets his hands on one. ATI give Mr.C a card!!
Its the waiting game as usual. Do I buy a GF4TI 4600 or the new R300 when it comes out... or do I wait for the new NVidia card that is sure to come out in the next 6 months. My current card is being pushed to its limits (gf2mx32mb) with the new games that are coming out and I'm willing to spend the big bucks this time round to get a high end card. What to do!?
Seems rather KGB'ish doesn't it? Small tip about a neighbour you don't like and...
"I'm so glad I live in Canada. Until the tanks roll across the border....:("
as to that, I'm not sure it will be tanks as such but more along the lines of a slow amalgamation with the states I think. Although that may have been slowed by the recent extra security at the border which has the effect of segregating us from them.
I think one of the reasons they wont shut it down (for a few years) is that there is a lot of research that they can gain from it that they wont have to look into thanks to these other companies. It just helps MS in the end. Could the IP that MS now owns be worked around? Could it be swapped out for Open Source work?
made illegal that would mean that book marking such a site would be illegal. How would they enforce that? Guess if its made a law its one of those many little laws that I ignore on a regular basis. Bleh!
Is this theater private property? Yes, thought so. Guess what, they can block your cell phone all they want seeing as its there property and your just a guest.
"Equipped with Longhorn, your PC will keep track of how you work, whom you talk to, what sites you look at, how you make documents and whom you share them with, which data on the network are yours--making all those things easier.'"
Guarantees that I will never purchase or use this operating system on my computer and I will use every bit of my strength to ensure that none of my friends and relatives use it. This is a major invasion of privacy at the home level, first rooting of system and bam!
AllTheWeb doesnt do a very good job of filtering pron type material from an image search... try the following (but dont do this at work!):
Go to Googles image search and type "fist" (no quotes) as your search item, you see a nice list of images that have a fist in them. Now try the same on AllTheWeb, you get a nice little surprise on the first page of image results. Note that each has filtering on as default.
Just as wiredog said: Take a bunch of strands and wrap them together.
Some of the earliest suspension bridge cables were made from twisted grass. In the early nineteenth century, suspension bridges used iron chains for cables. Today, the cables are made of thousands of individual steel wires bound tightly together. Steel, which is very strong under tension, is an ideal material for cables; a single steel wire, only 0.1 inch thick, can support over half a ton without breaking.
...but it was the switch from a mouse to a trackball (finger, not thumb model) that helped my arm/hand pain. Although, I do prefer an ergonomic keyboard as I find it easier to type on.
We know you've been waiting for this, haven't you? Of course you have. Since the launch of the Matrox G450, we don't know of any hard core PC Hardware Enthusiast that hasn't been waiting for Matrox to step back up to the plate, with a new high end 3D Gaming Graphics card. It was then that Matrox Graphics made a conscious decision to step back from the ridiculously competitive 3D Graphics scene and watch as giants fell. Perhaps their next generation 3D Gaming chip was not ready for prime time or perhaps they just didn't want to duke it out in the down and dirty retail space. Either way, Matrox was content, at that point in time, with various OEM design wins for their mainstream "Dual Head" capable "Business Class" chip, where only casual gamers need apply. There was no AA support for the G450 at the time and frame rates versus NVIDIA's current powerhouse, were none too exciting for the avid gamer. Regardless, Matrox survived a severe industry down turn and weathered the storm, sustaining on their Business and Professional Graphics offerings.
On the other hand, at the time of the G400 and G400MAX, Matrox was fairly successful at evangelizing hardware assist for Environment Mapped Bump Mapping, an effect that is now a check list item for most all modern 3D Graphics cards. It was this kind of innovation in image quality that Matrox garnered a strong following of loyal end users and enthusiasts. There was always one simple constant with Matrox product back then, top notch 2D and 3D image quality. Matrox always produced a sharp, stable display with vivid accurate color, no matter what the application.
Well then, certainly it seems not much has changed for Matrox in their mission statement for this long awaited product launch. However this time, the all new Matrox Parhelia 512 is targeted toward the high end 3D Graphics Enthusiast or Professional and as always, delivered in Matrox "High Fidelity".
Let's take a look!
Specifications and Features of Matrox Parhelia 512 Graphics Processor A 512 bit GPU - Fat Pipes and a boat load of bandwidth
World's first 512-bit GPU - 80 million transistors in 0.15 process - 256-bit DDR memory interface - Up to 20 GB/s memory bandwidth - Up to 256MB DDR unified frame buffer - 10-bit Gigacolor Technology - 10-bit per channel RGB rendering and output - Over one billion simultaneously displayed colors - 10-bit precision for 2D, 3D, DVD and video - 10-bit frame buffer mode for ARGB (2:10:10:10) - 10-bit RAMDACs with full gamma correction - AGP host interface designed for up to AGP 8X bandwidths - AGP Fast Writes support - 8-way parallel DMA streaming engine - OpenGL 1.3 and DirectX 8.1 compliant 3D engine
High Fidelity Display Engine - DualHead - HF Display Technology - Fourth-generation DualHead - Dual integrated 400MHz 10-bit RAMDACs - Dual independent RGB outputs - Up to 2048 x 1536 @ 32bpp on each RGB output - Support for two digital TMDS transmitters - Dual independent DVI outputs - Up to 1920 x 1200 on each output ** - Single dual-link DVI output - Up to 2560 x 2048 - Integrated 10-bit high-fidelity TV/video encoder - NTSC/PAL output - Direct encoding of native interlaced YUV - Perfect full-screen DVD playback via DVDMax - TripleHead Desktop - Support for 3rd RGB output - Three display desktop at up to 3840 x 1024 @ 32bpp - 10-bit gamma correction - Per-layer gamma and color correction at full speed - Dual independent, gamma correctable hardware overlays - Hardware accelerated multi-screen OpenGL support - Support for true multi-display under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP
UltraSharp Display Output Technology - Highest-quality analog, digital and TV output - Ultra-crisp display quality at high frequencies - Highest-quality design, electronics and filters - 5th-order output filters - Highest-fidelity frequency and transient response for optimal signal quality - High signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with super-low PLL Jitter
High fidelity 3D Rendering Engine - Quad Vertex Shader Array - Four vertex shader units (DirectX 8.1 and beyond) - Highest sustained complex vertex shader performance - Parallel processing of up to 16 vertices - 512 instruction on-chip cache - 256 constant registers - Quad texturing per pixel, per clock cycle - 64 Super Sample Texture Filtering - Highest quality trilinear and anisotropic filtering - Sustained performance - Dynamic allocation of texture units - 8-sample anisotropic and trilinear filtering on 4 dual-textured pixels/clock - 16-sample anisotropic filtering on 4 single-textured pixels/clock - 36-Stage Shader Array - Most complex rendering engine ever built - 4 pixel pipes - 4 texturing units per pixel pipe - 5 pixel shader stages per pixel pipe - Support for up to 10 pixel stages per pass - 4 pixels/clock throughput with quad texturing and 5 pixel shader operations - Hardware Displacement Mapping - Compact encoding of high-resolution geometry data - Patent-pending Depth-Adaptive Tessellation for continuous level of detail (LOD) geometry - Vertex Texturing for dynamic generation of geometry using texture maps - Support for Bezier curves and N-patch (PN-triangle) evaluation Surround Gaming - Support for games rendered across three displays - Ultra-wide field of view (FOV) - Side displays for peripheral vision
GigaColor Gaming - 10-bit source texture support and precision - High-precision ARGB (2:10:10:10) frame buffer - 16x Fragment Antialiasing (FAA-16x) - 16x supersampling quality on edge pixels only - Avoids blurring of internal pixels - Low performance overhead - Support for Full Scene Antialiasing (FSAA)
Texturing Support - Support for all texture formats including: - 32-bit source textures - 10-bit per channel texture support - All DXTC formats - 2D, 3D (volume) and cubic textures - Non-square and non-power-of-2 textures - Planar and packed YUV textures - Up to 2K by 2K source textures - Support for projected textures - Support for texture swizzling - Render-to-texture support
Other 3D features include: - Depth acceleration unit for advanced Z processing - 32-matrix Matrix Palette Skinning (MPS) - Particle acceleration - Full sub-pixel and sub-texel precision - Environment Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM) and DOT Product-3 - Planar, cubic and spherical environment mapping - Fogging, alpha blending and specular highlighting - Flat and gouraud shading - Independent intensity, Z and texture depths - Antialiased 3D vector support
High fidelity 2D engine - Fastest and highest quality 2D display engine ever built - GigaColor Desktop - All drawing operations at extended 30-bit color (10:10:10) - 10-bit per channel frame buffer - High-quality dithering for lower bit depth output - Glyph Antialiasing - Hardware accelerated text antialiasing - Programmable gamma correction - Full acceleration of Windows XP GDI and DirectDraw functions - GDI+ v2.0 ready - Programmable, ultra-fast bliter at up to 16 pixels/clock - True-color full-screen overlay plane with 8-bit alpha - Alpha cursor support - 32-bit ultra-fast VGA core
High fidelity video engine - PC Theater DVD Playback - 10-bit DVD playback - 10-bit advanced filtering and scaling - 10-bit DVD output via TV encoder - Independent gamma and proc-amp controls - Full quality output using DVDMax - Programmable overlay processor - Video overlay with programmable proc-amp and independent gamma correction - Video mixing engine in overlay processor - High-quality horizontal and vertical scaling - Up to 4x4 filter kernel with programmable filtering coefficients - Full-speed bi-cubic filter - Fully VMR-compliant front-end scaling - Advanced de-interlacing with sub-pixel positioning - VIP2.0 compliant video input port Industry compliance
Operating Systems - Microsoft Windows - Linux
Platforms - X86, X86-64 and IA-64compatible - AMD 3Dnow! - Intel MMX, SSE & SSE2 optimized - AGP 8X, 4X, 2X and 1X Compliance - PCI 2.2, AGP 2.0 and AGP 3.0 - PCI Bus Power Management 1.1 - ACPI - DirectX 8.1, PS1.3, VS1.1, VS2.0 - OpenGL 1.3 - DirectX VA, VMR, WDM
Matrox Parhelia 512 Block Diagram Click image for full view
Processing power and the memory bandwidth to support it:
As you can see, this isn't your Dad's old G200, now is it kiddies? Talk about having a wrap sheet a mile long! There is more to know about this new graphics power plant from Matrox, than anyone ever imagined, when rumors started circulating a few weeks ago. We'll try and break things down for you piece by piece, in the following pages. However, remember two very important aspects of this new technology from Matrox. First, this is the world's first 512 Bit Graphics Processor. Second, this is also the worlds first implementation of a 256 bit DDR Memory Bus on a Graphics Processor. Drop in some high speed 650MHz DDR DRAM and you are looking at a staggering 20GB/sec of memory bandwidth.
There are also a few more very unique attributes of the Parhelia 512, namely its integrated 10 Bit 400MHz RAMDACs and the fact that the GPU is AGP 8X compliant. AGP 8X is obviously the next generation AGP graphics interface, with 2.1GB/sec of bandwidth, more than double that of AGP 4X. What are more impressive perhaps, are the very high quality Color Palette DACs running at 400MHz, with full 10 bit resolution. Again, these are hardware firsts for graphics technology. Finally, we'll put the size of this chip into perspective for you. A Pentium 4 Northwood CPU has about 57 million transistors in its die. The Matrox Parhelia has 80 million transistors. So, you see now what we mean by "Big and Bad". Now we'll show you how "Pretty" Matrox is trying to get with the Parhelia 512.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems every 6 months or so someone comes out and says that either PC's or Consoles are losing the battle. Battle of what I'm not sure. I have both consoles and a good gaming PC and I find that the games are different for each system (FPS and Strat games on the computer and fighting and racing games on the consoles (and party type games)). Wish they would give it a break already.
Take a look at Tribes/2/Torque (engine) for how an in game editor can work. The Torque in game editing is really good right now and allows tons of control without wasting your time by starting and stopping the game for every little change.
Or, Ship it to me! I only charge $20 and although I prefer working parts I will take just about anything related to electronics of some sort.
I was joking :)
But they do have downtime so who knows if they play games or not. On a side note, most of the equipment is shipped by the military and the power is generated all the time no matter what (it provides heat) so they could use it as they see fit.
Can you just imagine what your ping time would be while playing Quake? Sheeesh. At least my Athlon wouldnt need the super fan I have on it now, just stick it outside to run. Although I suspect it would melt a hole in the ice! ;)
Ars Technica is stating that the P4 2.8 GHz will launch on Monday. Its looking a little pricy though.
I thought CmdrTaco was going to say:
"Thats nothing- CowboyNeal can repel all known lifeforms just by standing there!
I think you have the right idea. Help them learn by their mistakes. Only problem with pair programming (or anything) is that some people tend to be very nervous and its almost a hinderance. The worst thing to do while pair programming is to take the keyboard away from a "lesser" coder, as this just makes things worse for them. You dont learn by watching (err ya).
Little Sam! Plug Grampa back in, your game of Quake can wait until we are home!
hmmm point taken... but (heh, yes a but) did Carmack not say that a GF4TI4600 would play D3? I'm getting in the range of 30-40 fps in RTCW now so any improvement would be nice :)
I wish Mr. Carmack would comment on the R300. I guess he will when he gets his hands on one. ATI give Mr.C a card!!
Its the waiting game as usual. Do I buy a GF4TI 4600 or the new R300 when it comes out... or do I wait for the new NVidia card that is sure to come out in the next 6 months. My current card is being pushed to its limits (gf2mx32mb) with the new games that are coming out and I'm willing to spend the big bucks this time round to get a high end card. What to do!?
Seems rather KGB'ish doesn't it? ...
:("
Small tip about a neighbour you don't like and
"I'm so glad I live in Canada. Until the tanks roll across the border....
as to that, I'm not sure it will be tanks as such but more along the lines of a slow amalgamation with the states I think. Although that may have been slowed by the recent extra security at the border which has the effect of segregating us from them.
I think one of the reasons they wont shut it down (for a few years) is that there is a lot of research that they can gain from it that they wont have to look into thanks to these other companies. It just helps MS in the end. Could the IP that MS now owns be worked around? Could it be swapped out for Open Source work?
Want to join such a project?
Its well underway and is progressing towards a binary release in the near future.
http://www.blueeyedos.com/
We will be using the Linux kernel with our "BEOS" on top. Its not a new UI like KDE or GNOME.
made illegal that would mean that book marking such a site would be illegal. How would they enforce that? Guess if its made a law its one of those many little laws that I ignore on a regular basis. Bleh!
Is this theater private property? Yes, thought so. Guess what, they can block your cell phone all they want seeing as its there property and your just a guest.
"Equipped with Longhorn, your PC will keep track of how you work, whom you talk to, what sites you look at, how you make documents and whom you share them with, which data on the network are yours--making all those things easier.'"
Guarantees that I will never purchase or use this operating system on my computer and I will use every bit of my strength to ensure that none of my friends and relatives use it. This is a major invasion of privacy at the home level, first rooting of system and bam!
But I can still buy Beta, right?
I thought they were leading up to something big and funny... guess I was wrong.
AllTheWeb doesnt do a very good job of filtering pron type material from an image search... try the following (but dont do this at work!):
Go to Googles image search and type "fist" (no quotes) as your search item, you see a nice list of images that have a fist in them. Now try the same on AllTheWeb, you get a nice little surprise on the first page of image results. Note that each has filtering on as default.
I don't use GNOME (at the moment, might change with 2) so... what is Garnome?
Just as wiredog said: Take a bunch of strands and wrap them together.
Some of the earliest suspension bridge cables were made from twisted grass. In the early nineteenth century, suspension bridges used iron chains for cables. Today, the cables are made of thousands of individual steel wires bound tightly together. Steel, which is very strong under tension, is an ideal material for cables; a single steel wire, only 0.1 inch thick, can support over half a ton without breaking.
Here is a picture of the cables before binding.
...but it was the switch from a mouse to a trackball (finger, not thumb model) that helped my arm/hand pain. Although, I do prefer an ergonomic keyboard as I find it easier to type on.
From the news reported over at Xbox-Scene.com it looks like the Gamecubes protection my have been cracked.
We know you've been waiting for this, haven't you? Of course you have. Since the launch of the Matrox G450, we don't know of any hard core PC Hardware Enthusiast that hasn't been waiting for Matrox to step back up to the plate, with a new high end 3D Gaming Graphics card. It was then that Matrox Graphics made a conscious decision to step back from the ridiculously competitive 3D Graphics scene and watch as giants fell. Perhaps their next generation 3D Gaming chip was not ready for prime time or perhaps they just didn't want to duke it out in the down and dirty retail space. Either way, Matrox was content, at that point in time, with various OEM design wins for their mainstream "Dual Head" capable "Business Class" chip, where only casual gamers need apply. There was no AA support for the G450 at the time and frame rates versus NVIDIA's current powerhouse, were none too exciting for the avid gamer. Regardless, Matrox survived a severe industry down turn and weathered the storm, sustaining on their Business and Professional Graphics offerings.
On the other hand, at the time of the G400 and G400MAX, Matrox was fairly successful at evangelizing hardware assist for Environment Mapped Bump Mapping, an effect that is now a check list item for most all modern 3D Graphics cards. It was this kind of innovation in image quality that Matrox garnered a strong following of loyal end users and enthusiasts. There was always one simple constant with Matrox product back then, top notch 2D and 3D image quality. Matrox always produced a sharp, stable display with vivid accurate color, no matter what the application.
Well then, certainly it seems not much has changed for Matrox in their mission statement for this long awaited product launch. However this time, the all new Matrox Parhelia 512 is targeted toward the high end 3D Graphics Enthusiast or Professional and as always, delivered in Matrox "High Fidelity".
Let's take a look!
Specifications and Features of Matrox Parhelia 512 Graphics Processor
A 512 bit GPU - Fat Pipes and a boat load of bandwidth
World's first 512-bit GPU
- 80 million transistors in 0.15 process
- 256-bit DDR memory interface
- Up to 20 GB/s memory bandwidth
- Up to 256MB DDR unified frame buffer
- 10-bit Gigacolor Technology
- 10-bit per channel RGB rendering and output
- Over one billion simultaneously displayed colors
- 10-bit precision for 2D, 3D, DVD and video
- 10-bit frame buffer mode for ARGB (2:10:10:10)
- 10-bit RAMDACs with full gamma correction
- AGP host interface designed for up to AGP 8X bandwidths
- AGP Fast Writes support
- 8-way parallel DMA streaming engine
- OpenGL 1.3 and DirectX 8.1 compliant 3D engine
High Fidelity Display Engine
- DualHead
- HF Display Technology
- Fourth-generation DualHead
- Dual integrated 400MHz 10-bit RAMDACs
- Dual independent RGB outputs
- Up to 2048 x 1536 @ 32bpp on each RGB output
- Support for two digital TMDS transmitters
- Dual independent DVI outputs
- Up to 1920 x 1200 on each output **
- Single dual-link DVI output
- Up to 2560 x 2048
- Integrated 10-bit high-fidelity TV/video encoder
- NTSC/PAL output
- Direct encoding of native interlaced YUV
- Perfect full-screen DVD playback via DVDMax
- TripleHead Desktop
- Support for 3rd RGB output
- Three display desktop at up to 3840 x 1024 @ 32bpp
- 10-bit gamma correction
- Per-layer gamma and color correction at full speed
- Dual independent, gamma correctable hardware overlays
- Hardware accelerated multi-screen OpenGL support
- Support for true multi-display under Microsoft Windows
2000 and Windows XP
UltraSharp Display Output Technology
- Highest-quality analog, digital and TV output
- Ultra-crisp display quality at high frequencies
- Highest-quality design, electronics and filters
- 5th-order output filters
- Highest-fidelity frequency and transient response
for optimal signal quality
- High signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with super-low
PLL Jitter
High fidelity 3D Rendering Engine
- Quad Vertex Shader Array
- Four vertex shader units (DirectX 8.1 and beyond)
- Highest sustained complex vertex shader performance
- Parallel processing of up to 16 vertices
- 512 instruction on-chip cache
- 256 constant registers
- Quad texturing per pixel, per clock cycle
- 64 Super Sample Texture Filtering
- Highest quality trilinear and anisotropic filtering
- Sustained performance
- Dynamic allocation of texture units
- 8-sample anisotropic and trilinear filtering on
4 dual-textured pixels/clock
- 16-sample anisotropic filtering on 4 single-textured
pixels/clock
- 36-Stage Shader Array
- Most complex rendering engine ever built
- 4 pixel pipes
- 4 texturing units per pixel pipe
- 5 pixel shader stages per pixel pipe
- Support for up to 10 pixel stages per pass
- 4 pixels/clock throughput with quad texturing and 5 pixel
shader operations
- Hardware Displacement Mapping
- Compact encoding of high-resolution geometry data
- Patent-pending Depth-Adaptive Tessellation for continuous
level of detail (LOD) geometry
- Vertex Texturing for dynamic generation of geometry using
texture maps
- Support for Bezier curves and N-patch (PN-triangle) evaluation
Surround Gaming
- Support for games rendered across three displays
- Ultra-wide field of view (FOV)
- Side displays for peripheral vision
GigaColor Gaming
- 10-bit source texture support and precision
- High-precision ARGB (2:10:10:10) frame buffer
- 16x Fragment Antialiasing (FAA-16x)
- 16x supersampling quality on edge pixels only
- Avoids blurring of internal pixels
- Low performance overhead
- Support for Full Scene Antialiasing (FSAA)
Texturing Support
- Support for all texture formats including:
- 32-bit source textures
- 10-bit per channel texture support
- All DXTC formats
- 2D, 3D (volume) and cubic textures
- Non-square and non-power-of-2 textures
- Planar and packed YUV textures
- Up to 2K by 2K source textures
- Support for projected textures
- Support for texture swizzling
- Render-to-texture support
Other 3D features include:
- Depth acceleration unit for advanced Z processing
- 32-matrix Matrix Palette Skinning (MPS)
- Particle acceleration
- Full sub-pixel and sub-texel precision
- Environment Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM) and DOT
Product-3
- Planar, cubic and spherical environment mapping
- Fogging, alpha blending and specular highlighting
- Flat and gouraud shading
- Independent intensity, Z and texture depths
- Antialiased 3D vector support
High fidelity 2D engine
- Fastest and highest quality 2D display engine ever built
- GigaColor Desktop
- All drawing operations at extended 30-bit color (10:10:10)
- 10-bit per channel frame buffer
- High-quality dithering for lower bit depth output
- Glyph Antialiasing
- Hardware accelerated text antialiasing
- Programmable gamma correction
- Full acceleration of Windows XP GDI and DirectDraw functions
- GDI+ v2.0 ready
- Programmable, ultra-fast bliter at up to 16 pixels/clock
- True-color full-screen overlay plane with 8-bit alpha
- Alpha cursor support
- 32-bit ultra-fast VGA core
High fidelity video engine
- PC Theater DVD Playback
- 10-bit DVD playback
- 10-bit advanced filtering and scaling
- 10-bit DVD output via TV encoder
- Independent gamma and proc-amp controls
- Full quality output using DVDMax
- Programmable overlay processor
- Video overlay with programmable proc-amp and independent
gamma correction
- Video mixing engine in overlay processor
- High-quality horizontal and vertical scaling
- Up to 4x4 filter kernel with programmable filtering coefficients
- Full-speed bi-cubic filter
- Fully VMR-compliant front-end scaling
- Advanced de-interlacing with sub-pixel positioning
- VIP2.0 compliant video input port
Industry compliance
Operating Systems
- Microsoft Windows
- Linux
Platforms
- X86, X86-64 and IA-64compatible
- AMD 3Dnow!
- Intel MMX, SSE & SSE2 optimized
- AGP 8X, 4X, 2X and 1X Compliance
- PCI 2.2, AGP 2.0 and AGP 3.0
- PCI Bus Power Management 1.1
- ACPI
- DirectX 8.1, PS1.3, VS1.1, VS2.0
- OpenGL 1.3
- DirectX VA, VMR, WDM
Matrox Parhelia 512 Block Diagram
Click image for full view
Processing power and the memory bandwidth to support it:
As you can see, this isn't your Dad's old G200, now is it kiddies? Talk about having a wrap sheet a mile long! There is more to know about this new graphics power plant from Matrox, than anyone ever imagined, when rumors started circulating a few weeks ago. We'll try and break things down for you piece by piece, in the following pages. However, remember two very important aspects of this new technology from Matrox. First, this is the world's first 512 Bit Graphics Processor. Second, this is also the worlds first implementation of a 256 bit DDR Memory Bus on a Graphics Processor. Drop in some high speed 650MHz DDR DRAM and you are looking at a staggering 20GB/sec of memory bandwidth.
There are also a few more very unique attributes of the Parhelia 512, namely its integrated 10 Bit 400MHz RAMDACs and the fact that the GPU is AGP 8X compliant. AGP 8X is obviously the next generation AGP graphics interface, with 2.1GB/sec of bandwidth, more than double that of AGP 4X. What are more impressive perhaps, are the very high quality Color Palette DACs running at 400MHz, with full 10 bit resolution. Again, these are hardware firsts for graphics technology. Finally, we'll put the size of this chip into perspective for you. A Pentium 4 Northwood CPU has about 57 million transistors in its die. The Matrox Parhelia has 80 million transistors. So, you see now what we mean by "Big and Bad". Now we'll show you how "Pretty" Matrox is trying to get with the Parhelia 512.