Talk About Special Graphics Cards: Parhelia HR256

[Nappe1]

Matrox Launches new derivative from Parhelia core: Parhelia HR256.
http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_center/press_rel/2003/parhelia_hr256_launch.cfm

and yes, this is almost week old news, but decided still post it.
and yes, if I'd have afford have extra computer just for modeling stuff, I definately would like to have one of those 23" TFT's and this card driving it.

 

[Ante P]

well, at least it's cheap:
US $2,495

 

[MuFu]

Yeah, HR stands for "house remortgage".

Was that ATi quad-output ES (based on M9) using DVI? I can't remember... surely they can offer the same functionality at a far lower price point with something along those lines. It's not as if there'd be costly, "professional-grade" RAMDAC/analogue filtering stages to hike the cost.

MuFu.

 

[keegdsb]

Yeah, HR stands for "house remortgage".

Was that ATi quad-output ES (based on M9) using DVI? I can't remember... surely they can offer the same functionality at a far lower price point with something along those lines. It's not as if there'd be costly, "professional-grade" RAMDAC/analogue filtering stages to hike the cost.

MuFu.

They do, there are G200MMS and G450MMS lines, with considerably lower prices.

 

[MuFu]

No I mean ATi can offer something similar at a lower price (4xM10 would be DX9 compatible too).

MuFu.

 

[Nappe1]

MuFu: ATi could offer, but does not offer right now. G450 MMS -series are still pretty popular in quad monitor enviroments.

and Parhelia HR256 is first single card solution able to control those big high definition TFT's.

so, this is not about who could do something, but whose got already product out. Sure any of bigger company could do cards like HR256, but it seems that even Radeon 9x00 series cards or FX -series cards with only dual DVIs is hard to find...

and as long as Matrox really doesn't have competition on multihead card class, they can price the products as high as they dare.

and besides, Matrox is still light years ahead (even nVidia seems to be) on driver features what comes to controlling multiple monitors. (I have 9700 non-pro driving 21" CRT and 15" TFT right now, so I know what I am talking about.)

 

[MuFu]

and as long as Matrox really doesn't have competition on multihead card class, they can price the products as high as they dare.

That's the key thing - as long as they don't have competition - and my thinking behind the ATi speculation. Matrox have had to actively pursue a more diverse and specialised userbase, since they haven't made any ground in the desktop/mainstream gaming market. They've always been strong in such areas, I just think it's important to realise that ATi (and possibly nVidia) could probably give them a really hard time should they decide to allocate more resources to developing this kind of product.

MuFu.

 

[mczak]

and Parhelia HR256 is first single card solution able to control those big high definition TFT's.

I believe the quadro fx 2000/3000 work quite well for that too. They don't have quad single-links, but one dual-link and one single-link dvi connector (which might not be quite enough to drive those monsters at 60Hz, but since those tfts aren't particularly fast (pixel response time 50ms) I doubt it matters).
Sadly, still no ati card with more than one single (consumer cards) or two single (workstation cards) tmds links. ATI even killed the only dvi connector on the latest aiw...

mczak

 

[Dave Baumann]

MuFu: ATi could offer, but does not offer right now.

Colorgraphic make multi-display solutions based on ATI parts already.

 

[rubank]

..as seen here
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11660

 

[keegdsb]

and as long as Matrox really doesn't have competition on multihead card class, they can price the products as high as they dare.

That's the key thing - as long as they don't have competition - and my thinking behind the ATi speculation. Matrox have had to actively pursue a more diverse and specialised userbase, since they haven't made any ground in the desktop/mainstream gaming market. They've always been strong in such areas, I just think it's important to realise that ATi (and possibly nVidia) could probably give them a really hard time should they decide to allocate more resources to developing this kind of product.

MuFu.

Hopefully if the other companies begin to compete in Matrox's core market, it might cause Lorne and Branco to wake up. Either that, or Matrox fades away.