Matrox Parhelia Official Press release
 

The official press release is here.

At introduction, Matrox Parhelia graphics boards will be available with 128MB of DDR memory in both retail and bulk packaging. The retail packaged version of the Matrox Parhelia 128MB board will have an estimated street price of US $399 and both versions are expected to begin shipment by June 30th, 2002. Additionally, Matrox plans to bring a 64MB and a 256MB version of the Parhelia to market later this summer.





Bulk: 128MB DDR, Chipclock: 200 MHz, Memoryclock 250 MHz (DDR), Pirce: about $349
Retail: 128MB DDR, Chipclock: 220 MHz, Memoryclock 275 MHz (DDR), Price: $399

DROOOL :love:

This is great... finally, another impressive competitor in the consumer 3d accelerator market. This card is going to bury the geforce 4, assuming it gets good drivers out of the box ;)

Posted by Kyle 2:55 PM (CDT)

Earlier today a well-known German website disclosed their Matrox Parhelia numbers. The pages seem to have been removed at this time. While we cannot legally give you the content, as it is copyright material, we can certainly discuss what we have seen.

Aquanox - Parhelia was beaten by ATI's 128MB 8500 and the Ti4600 nearly doubled the score.

Comanche 4 - Parhelia not breaking the 30FPS barrier at 1024x768 while the Ti4600 broke 40.

Jedi Knight 2 - At 1024x768 the Parhelia was about 30% behind both the 8500 and the Ti4600.

3DMark2002 SE v330 - Just breaking into the 7000s while their test system was breaking 10K with the Ti4600. The 8500 dusted it again as well.

Quake 3 Arena - Parhelia lagging way behind both cards and not even giving deathmatch playable frame rates at 1600x1200 in my opinion.

At this point I am really wondering what Matrox was thinking. I know full well that they have explained that their Parhelia will be the card for tomorrow, but while it is currently not keeping pace with the current generation's GPUs, across the board, you have to wonder. Triple head gaming is not going to save Matrox this time round if what we saw is correct. I can certainly understand their reasons with not wanting to give the [H] a card at this point.

http://www.chip.de/produkte_tests/un...s_8737747.html

http://www.hwzone.co.il/archive.php?...24962420,5658,

this was to be expected... this card will, in its current state, be a competitor for the mx460 and the xabre....
the fact that they did not want to give a card for review to the [H] says it all... it probably is hardlocked anyway...

The website was Tom's Hardware ... whoops

edit : nog stuff
http://www.warp2search.net/article.p...thread&order=0

Tom is back online
http://www.de.tomshardware.com/graph...625/index.html

ai

This is what I came up with:

Anandtech
Extremetech
Hot Hardware
Neoseeker
The Tech Report
Tom's

People please
a) this card is not meant to beat the Ti4600 in raw speed
b) these are previews with preliminary drivers
c) it's matrox, image quality is superior

They shouldn't have shouted of every roof that they were going to sell the top - graphic card, in 2D AND 3D ... preliminary drivers or not.
Marketing - horror.

?
some replies :
to 1 : well, that's sure what matrox said in the first pressreleases, they would BEAT the sh*t out of both ati and nvidia
to 2 : yeah... so were the ti4600's when they got released two months ago...and they were rocking...
to 3 : what does that mean, " image quality is superior"?
you certainly have all the time to look at that image quality.... at 20fps in 1600x1200...

1. You find me the phrase "our card will be faster than the fastest model ATi and Nvidia have to offer at the moment" or equivalent.

2. GF4 = GF3 + 2nd Vertex processor, hence the old technology with architecture very much alike. Have a look at the original drivers shipped with GF3

3. You clear as hell don't work with graph. apps, when you're purely a gamer, go nvidia, if you like to do workstationlike stuff, matrox is the way to go.

Something GamePC had to say about the cardd in their article.

Even after running the benchmarks and seeing the numbers, we still like the Parhelia-128. It's much more of a hybrid gamers / workstation card than we've seen from any other manufacturer, and no doubt holds a lot of appeal for gamers who want the absolute best quality from their display cards. Matrox may not have the fastest car on the drag strip, but their car certainly has the most style. Let's hope this is only the beginning from the Parhelia family, and that it just gets better from here on out.

2. Original drivers shipped with GF3? Stable, fully functional, and pretty good performance right off the bat. "yeah but they could have made some drivers that used it's full potential at the time" -> performance was already good enough for everybody to be convinced right at the start...

3. About image quality: check the part in the firingsquad review (http://firingsquad.gamers.com) where the talk about the 2D part... And be amazed...

About the fact that every matrox lover seems to scream that it wasn't supposed to run on even grounds with the Ti4600: it was clearly Matrox's meaning to compete with the top GF4 cards. That was my understanding of it. That being said, it should at least be able to compete with a Ti4200... But performance wise, it doesn't...
In other words, we get a 400$ card that doesn't compete (performancewise) with a 200€ Ti4200.

Now I'll have to see reviews that cater to other categories than gamers (e.g. people that work with graphical apps) before I can form my opinion about that.