Par... Par... Parhelia! ;) (So just a card, not Life. ;) )
- Thread starter Nappe1
- Start date
Its a big boys toy and home working graphics pro card. This card will sell to people who know nothing about the 3D industry just so they can show off 3 projectors and F1 in surround gaming.
Plus its a cheap 'high-end' quality card isnt it rather than a dear kids/gamers card.
Plus its a cheap 'high-end' quality card isnt it rather than a dear kids/gamers card.
There is a "16x FAA ON vs. FAA OFF" comparison shot over at MURC: http://forums.matroxusers.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33763&perpage=15&pagenumber=3
Looks pretty good IMHO! If you look close though, you might see that there are still jaggies in the background bars surrounding the gun..
Do slap me if this is old news!
Looks pretty good IMHO! If you look close though, you might see that there are still jaggies in the background bars surrounding the gun..
Do slap me if this is old news!
Dave B(TotalVR)
Regular
worm[MadOnion.com said:]There is a "16x FAA ON vs. FAA OFF" comparison shot over at MURC: http://forums.matroxusers.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33763&perpage=15&pagenumber=3
Looks pretty good IMHO! If you look close though, you might see that there are still jaggies in the background bars surrounding the gun..
Do slap me if this is old news!
Lookslike those bars may be alpha textures though, which would presumably be why. Excellent jaggie removal where it does work though..
Nobody has wondered whether they have added Diplacement Mapping to HeadCasting (or turned it into TorsoCasting as well). Would save the sleazy flick industry silicone costs
Seriously though... Doomtrooper, of course they have concentrated on IQ. 10-bit DACs, fifth order low pass filters (um, clearer signal to CRTs, I gather), the Glyph AA -- certainly sounds like they have done their best again. Sounds good!
Can't wait to see some review with IQ comparisons to other products, but for once using different kinds (shadow mask, aperture grille, newer, older) of big tubes (19 to 21 in) to really investigate the benefits (if and when any) of their efforts to users of different kinds of CRT monitors -- hint hint, nudge nudge, B3D.
IQ (3D, 2D image, 2D text) boost for my aging 21" tube is my main reason for looking forward to Parhelia...
Seriously though... Doomtrooper, of course they have concentrated on IQ. 10-bit DACs, fifth order low pass filters (um, clearer signal to CRTs, I gather), the Glyph AA -- certainly sounds like they have done their best again. Sounds good!
Can't wait to see some review with IQ comparisons to other products, but for once using different kinds (shadow mask, aperture grille, newer, older) of big tubes (19 to 21 in) to really investigate the benefits (if and when any) of their efforts to users of different kinds of CRT monitors -- hint hint, nudge nudge, B3D.
IQ (3D, 2D image, 2D text) boost for my aging 21" tube is my main reason for looking forward to Parhelia...
Doomtrooper
Veteran
Wow the Ut 2003 shots look nice..Very cool
Doomtrooper said:Wow the Ut 2003 shots look nice..Very cool
Except for a few edges that appear to be completely lacking anti-aliasing.
Ouch. That just gets more abrasive with all those excellently rendered, 16x-sampled edges in the rest of the image to provide direct contrast.
Pity we don't see more people providing robust support for multiple forms of anti-aliasing... doing edge-area coverage techinques on a per-sub-sample basis with multisampling and/or supersampling could drastically reduce the significance of any sorting errors.
A little overkill at times, certainly, but when you have excess fillrate to burn anyways...Can someone explain to me the logic behind running in resolutions which are much wider than they are tall?
For example 3048*1024 is a ratio of 3:1, where as standard resolutions (800*600, 1024*768, 1600*1200 etc) are 4:3 and 1280*1024 is 5:4. There must be some reason for these "strange" resolutions, so if anyone could explain it I'd be greatly appreciate it (is it just for running across 3 monitors?). Also (somewhat unrelated) why is the aspect ratio of 1280*1024 different than all the other resolutions...wouldn't it make more sense to run in 1280*960?
For example 3048*1024 is a ratio of 3:1, where as standard resolutions (800*600, 1024*768, 1600*1200 etc) are 4:3 and 1280*1024 is 5:4. There must be some reason for these "strange" resolutions, so if anyone could explain it I'd be greatly appreciate it (is it just for running across 3 monitors?). Also (somewhat unrelated) why is the aspect ratio of 1280*1024 different than all the other resolutions...wouldn't it make more sense to run in 1280*960?
Nobody's running at 3048x1024. The closest is 3840x1024 = (3*1280)x1024, and yes that's for three monitors (isn't that quite obvious).
The 1280x1024 resolution is an old one that probably stems from someone wanting a res between 1600x1200 and 1024x768, where both horizontal and vertical size is divideable by a large power of two (256) to make it fit easy for hardcoded hardware.
And yes, the non-square pixels do mess up 2D images. Not a big deal for 3D though, since it's easily compensated.
The 1280x1024 resolution is an old one that probably stems from someone wanting a res between 1600x1200 and 1024x768, where both horizontal and vertical size is divideable by a large power of two (256) to make it fit easy for hardcoded hardware.
And yes, the non-square pixels do mess up 2D images. Not a big deal for 3D though, since it's easily compensated.
By the way, I'm sure this has already been covered before, but a while back there were some rumors going around the Internet that Matrox's next card would be based on a BitBoy's design. I'm sure this is probably false, but the reason I thought of it is on the BitBoy's site they have this image: http://www.bitboys.com/images/pipelinet2.gif
Basically it shows their supposed design to have some 20 GBs/sec bandwidth, which as I understand it is what the Parhelia is supposed to have (I could be totally wrong about that). Are Bitboys in any way involved with the Parhelia (probably not, but I had to ask).
If not, when the hell are they ever going to come out with an actual card?
Basically it shows their supposed design to have some 20 GBs/sec bandwidth, which as I understand it is what the Parhelia is supposed to have (I could be totally wrong about that). Are Bitboys in any way involved with the Parhelia (probably not, but I had to ask).
If not, when the hell are they ever going to come out with an actual card?
It seems now Parhelia dont support Win9X/Me...
Matrox PR:
"All Matrox Parhelia graphics boards will ship standard with full-featured drivers for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2000 including support for Microsoft DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL"
Neoseeker
"Driver Support: As you would expect, Matrox has decided to release WinXP/2000 drivers upon the release and will be working on preparing other OS support such as ME & 98 for a month's time."
Matrox Forum:
"Hi Jon,
no Win9x and No ME drivers will be in the box. "
------------------
Haig
Matrox Graphics
Technical Support Manager
Matrox PR:
"All Matrox Parhelia graphics boards will ship standard with full-featured drivers for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2000 including support for Microsoft DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL"
Neoseeker
"Driver Support: As you would expect, Matrox has decided to release WinXP/2000 drivers upon the release and will be working on preparing other OS support such as ME & 98 for a month's time."
Matrox Forum:
"Hi Jon,
no Win9x and No ME drivers will be in the box. "
------------------
Haig
Matrox Graphics
Technical Support Manager
Doomtrooper
Veteran
ATI is also slowing support for Windows 98, I can't blame Matrox or ATI for dropping support, the OS is almost 5 years old and support can't go on forever.
Rookie said:It seems now Parhelia dont support Win9X/Me...
I dont think that will be too much of an issue at all. Anyone seriously considering purchasing such a card is most lilkely running WinXP anyways. If not, its about time they upgrade to WinXP.
I consider myself an avid gamer and hardcore hardware-ist, and I switched over to Win2K the moment it was available. I waited around a couple months after WinXP was available before switching over to it (had to await some hardware driver updates). There hasn't been a single thing that XP wont run for me.
Perhaps WinXP isn't as fast as Win9x/Me is, but my gawd, the stability of the system more than enough makes up for it. If it weren't for the typical driver updates or hardware updates, my system would never reboot. My typical uptimes with XP on my main system is around 5 weeks. Lets see anyone on Win9x/Me approach that.
Quite frankly, lets face it, Win9x/Me is dead.
--|BRiT|
I'm not sure thats the case; I remember seeing comparison game benchmarks (it may have been from The Tech-Report) showing the new NT kernels faster in many games than 9x. Its certianly the case that 9x is fast going out of focus and more work will be paid to the performance of XP drivers - not least because most reviews now are carried out in XP (or more will gradually shift over).
I don't think companies should start dropping support for Win98 yet, but Matrox isn't dropping support just delaying it. At first I thought this was bad, but since the drivers will only be delayed about a month it's not a big deal. Supply of Parhelia will be limited at first because it takes time to produce the chips and boards so delaying Win98 drivers might actually help smooth out demand. Most people that will pay $400 for a video card probably already have a computer with 2000 or XP. When the first price drop comes I expect to see the Win98'ers start purchasing.
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