Matrox Parhelia Review Feedback

[Typedef Enum]

Let me know what you guys think. Were there any items not covered? Any particular things you didn't agree with? etc. ?

Regards...

[thcdru2k]

wow..i'm impressed with the parhelia performance..certainly very playable. too bad the price is too expensive..and monitors and all. nice review too.

[TheTaz]

For Price / Performance it's "teh suck!"

Seriously tho, If it were priced against the low end performers ($100)... it'd be a humm-dinger!

I mean, I disagree that dropping the price to the $250 range would be low enough.

~Matrox needs to rebuild it's reputation... $100 price would do it, and saturate the market "a little" with their product.
~NV30 is around the corner, which will bring the price down of better performers.
~R350 prolly not far behind, same issue, brings down price of better performers
~Surround gaming is a nice novelty... but I ain't got room for 3 bulky monitors, and I sure as hell am not gonna spend the money on 3 flat panels, when I won't even buy 1 (Still waiting for major glow-time reduction technology).

/shrug

Over-all, nice review, though.

Taz

[ReDeeMeR]

Meh, I'm wondering how they still survive and keep their R&D and stuff.... I havent seen a Parhelia used it any PC just on internet...

[John Reynolds]

Excellent, thorough review Scott. I'm very impressed with your commentary, your writing, the page layouts, and the exhaustive coverage of all details and aspects of the board and its drivers.

Originally posted by TheTaz
~Matrox needs to rebuild it's reputation... $100 price would do it, and saturate the market "a little" with their product.

except that they would lose a lot of money on each card at that price, no doubt.

i may be sounding like a moron, but where is this review located

[thcdru2k]

he took it down for some reason :/

[Typedef Enum]

Mike is in the process of conforming the layout to the new nvnews standard. I hope it won't take too long.

On the topic of 9700/NV30...Don't get me wrong at all, I think the 9700 is a fantastic board, and I have no doubt that NV30 is going to knock everybodys socks off...

However...when I decided to get the Parhelia, I asked myself one simple question...Which board is going to offer me something new? Something exciting? The 9700 would allow me to play pretty much any game...at any resolution, with pretty much any driver tweak enabled. That's kool and all, but I do not believe it really offers something dramatically new.

As I said, all of that will change once Doom III arrives. Clearly, a next-gen part will be a must. But until then, I really don't see any of these parts giving the end-user something "new."

Now, if NV30 were to support something like a Surround Gaming...Then, we're talking about a totally different ballgame. (I can only hope)

[Raptorman]

NV30 won't support Surround Gaming. nVIDIA already said they won't support that feature, yet.

[legion88]

Originally posted by Typedef Enum
Mike is in the process of conforming the layout to the new nvnews standard. I hope it won't take too long.

On the topic of 9700/NV30...Don't get me wrong at all, I think the 9700 is a fantastic board, and I have no doubt that NV30 is going to knock everybodys socks off...

However...when I decided to get the Parhelia, I asked myself one simple question...Which board is going to offer me something new? Something exciting? The 9700 would allow me to play pretty much any game...at any resolution, with pretty much any driver tweak enabled. That's kool and all, but I do not believe it really offers something dramatically new.

As I said, all of that will change once Doom III arrives. Clearly, a next-gen part will be a must. But until then, I really don't see any of these parts giving the end-user something "new."

Now, if NV30 were to support something like a Surround Gaming...Then, we're talking about a totally different ballgame. (I can only hope)

The consumer graphics industry as a whole has not offered anything "dramatically new" to the table since the GeForce2/Voodoo5/Radeon 256 generation (with the exception of Matrox). That's two years and running.

Matrox has been giving us something new to look at but most consumers will never have the opportunity to use them. How many of us are willing to spend the money on three monitors, in addition to the cost of the video card? How many even have room for three monitors?

People complain about the cost of video cards these days. But the true cost of "surround gaming" is considerably more than people think.

I haven't seen your review by the way.

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by legion88
People complain about the cost of video cards these days. But the true cost of "surround gaming" is considerably more than people think.

And considering this card's lackluster performance compared to what's out there now and what will be out in the near future, the Parhelia is essentially caught in the vortex that is ATI and NVIDIA.

If the Parhelia had been released at the time of the Radeon 8500, then Matrox would definitely have had something. But, like a lot of things in this industry, it's another case of too little, too late.

[1eppan]

Hey... come on...

yeah, Type Def, it's me... I have been here quite long but suprinsgly no one didn't read my user name as mirrored.

anyways...
Why on earth everyone is talking about BUYING THREE monitors?? Heck I have already two pretty okay 17 incher CRTs and 2nd hand 3rd one does not cost more than 100 Euros (that's a max.) Of Course I need a bigger table but I think my parents old Dinner table is okay for this.

I know that most of here are Extreme users and many of you have more than one computer. (few ones have on Linux boxes running on some corner) And there's always some old junk left over that will not be sold or will be sold very cheap. So, why not buying few 2nd hand 17 inchers for Surround Gaming? I mean, a year ago there was 2 computers on my parents place: one with 17" Jean Monitor and one slower with 2x15 inchers. after few hours getting used to two monitors, I didn't even think about movin back to that one with only one 17" monitor. (And even when I came back to my student flat, I almost started to hate having only one monitor, though it is 21" HP P1110.)

and yes, I am going go for parhelia on december. Lot's of fun coming up with SG on christmas holiday.