Parhelia official benchmark scores: doesn't look pretty

[Guest]

The following is a quote from HardOCP concerning the Parhilia review that was on Tom's Hardware Europe (in German) for about 15 seconds this afternoon - one day early. I got a chance to read the review before it disappeared and I must say: it wasn't a pretty sight. Ouch.From :"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."Their opinion of the results are on their [link:www.hardocp.com|site].Pretty dismal results unfortunately. Lets hope it was a massive mistake by Tom's Hardware (yeah right): tomorrow's onslaught of reviews will tell.Take care, http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gif[link:flightontario.cjb.net]http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[ckukmale 27]

Well dont forget that if you want to use it specifically for image quality and also for 3 monitor Fs2002 fun, which we know is all CPU power more than anything else, then its not the end of the world yet. It kind of reminds me of the G400max which had rave reviews and everyone was wanting one, then the geforce card came out and blew it away.What with the new cards coming out in the summer though it looks like this card wont appeal to the hardcore gamer but will still be ideal for people who do business presentations and wanna play dvds on one screen etc and have nice image quality and also still play games at a reasonable rate, I mean 7000 3dmarks isnt bad is it...Craig

[Guest]

Hi Craig,Problem is: this isn't anywhere near the price of the G400Max - even when it was fist released. All of the configurations of the Parhelia are extremely high end and run $399+ US. For GeForce4 MX 440 performance and tri-monitor support, I'll pick up a GeForce4 MX 440 with built-in dual-monitor nView along with a second PCI GeForce4 MX 420 for the third monitor. Total price will be far, far less than the Parhelia for better performance.Another problem is: since these reviews weren't allowed until tomorrow to coincide with actual retail availability of these cards, this is the performance you'll get out of the box (if Tom's testing was sound - they usually are). No waiting for driver improvements here before the cards are available: its too late for that.Take care, http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[ckukmale 27]

NO NO please Elrond...dont buy those geforce 4mx's ....People here have been having problems with them in Fs2002, I know you are speaking metaphorically but you know what I mean.Yeh it is very very high...but then again some people will be ignorant of the facts and will buy it because its the most expensive card out there. Id rather stay with my vanilla geforce 3 for a while as that gives me 7300+ 3dmarks and Im happy with it, have been for over a year.But yeh I know where you are coming from and I am too abit disappointed about what I read in your post as I was thinking that this card might be one to go for in 6months time but doesnt look to be..will be the lastest geforce5 I guess which I believe might have some of 3dfx's Anti Aliasing technology thrown in....Craig

[Guest Max Cowgill]

>NO NO please Elrond...dont buy those geforce 4mx's .... hehe hehe hehe :-lol gotta love newbies, eh Elrond? ;) BTW, I have a bit of a grievance about the benchmark scores for the Parhelia... The Parhelia wasn't designed to run 5000 fps @ low detail, it was designed to provide acceptable/good fps @ extremely high detail settings and, as such, should be benchmarked so. What's the point of running benchmarks at 1024x768 w/medium detail settings on a card that was designed to run benchmarks/games @ high resolutions w/AA & AF enabled? I think it would be more beneficial for people to see the results of the Parhelia running benchmarks @ 1600x1200 w/max. detail and AA & AF enabled, compared to the GF4 and Radeon xxxx.Max Cowgill

[Sonar5 3]

Hi Elrond,Very interesting stuff about the Parhelia. I guess I'll be hitting Tom's site tomorrow to read the reviews. Does not look very promising though.They also posted a site with Benchmarks from Israel. I can't read it, but the graphs are pretty clear. In the 1600 x1200, the Matrox gets smoked, bigtime. Looks like Nvidia has nothing to worry about here.All hype, and no performance from Matrox. Unless they have already produced a better driver to up these scores.Here are the facts:http://www.hwzone.co.il/archive.php?file=n...1024962420,5658,Regards,Joe :-wavePS - One more German site shows the Parhelia outperforming with AA turned on at higher speeds, but worse if AA is turned off. Interesting:http://www.chip.de/produkte_tests/untersei...ts_8737734.html.Oshkosh Pictures From 2001 (Part 1) 78 Pics in Frames with 1mb in ThumbnailsHigh speed connection Recommended:http://home.attbi.com/~flypics1/FrameSet.htm.Oshkosh Pictures From 2001 (Part 2) 106 Pics in Frames with 1.5mb in ThumbnailsHigh speed connection recommended:http://home.attbi.com/~flypics2/FrameSet.htm.Picture Gallery of My Flight in a 1945 SNJ-6 on June 1st, 2002Joliet, Illinoishttp://home.attbi.com/~jranos/FrameSet.htm.http://home.attbi.com/~jranos/mysig.jpg http://avsim.com/hangar/air/bfu/logo70.gif

[Guest PaulL01]

Hi Elrond,For those that want this card for its high image quality and Tri-display these numbers will be going up as the drivers mature and the faster models come out in august and september (the 256mb and 512mb are reported to have a faster clock) But as has already been pointed out don't look for a record performance out of these cards just nice 3D and 2D performance.Here are some official and not so official snipits that I have been collecting from Nvidia and ATI concerning the NV30/31 and RV250/300/350:NV30:full DX9.0 and 8x AGP bla bla bla..."film-like image image quality"-3D gaming :-roll120 million transistors - My "mighty" AMD XP as 37.5 million!900-1gigMhz memory clock!!! anyone for toast?200 million poly/secNV30 will be the first Chip that the old 3dfx team has worked on -can you say better AA? :)NV18 (OK, this is still the GF2/4mx but...):DX9 support as well as 8xAGPATI R300:350Mhz Clock speed 400Mhz Memory speed 0.15 micron 107 million transistors 150 million triangles/s 8 pipelines Dual RAMDAC DirectX 9 supportATI R250:Programmable Pixel & Vertex Shader up to 128 instructions 4 parallel rendering pipes 6 textures per pixels Full AGP 2/4X support 300Mhz core clock DirectX 8.1 & OpenGL support Adaptive De-interlacing & Temporal Filtering And for those that read all the way done here to the bottom a special treat:ClawHammer MB's are starting to show up here...and there..... :)Strange as the Hammer chips aren't to show up until 2003! :-rollScrew driver please!http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/banana.gif http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/banana.gif http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/banana.gif :-beerchug http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/banana.gif http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/banana.gif http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/banana.gif :-beerchug

[ckukmale 27]

Hiya.So Max....What do you mean by Newbie??? :-)Ive been around here for a while now ..Cheeky monkey..heheheheAll good humoured of course. I was teasing Elrond as I know he knows his stuff.All I mean about the Geforce 4 Mx is by what Ive been reading about on posts on here by users that have bought said card and are having problems with reflections and everything else with those cards or because of the fact that because it has Geforce4 in its name people think its going to be better than a Geforce 3. Those cards are great value though and are brilliant for playing other games with and also dual head support etc. I think back to when I had a voodoo 3 and then I got a geforce1 and then had that Fs2000 lights in the sky problem all the time but because games like Quake3 and Midtown madness were transformed it was a keeper for me. Craig

[Guest PaulL01]

Craig,Might you have meant to reply to MAX?Take Care,

[ckukmale 27]

Hiya Paul.Well....I hit reply under Max's post but for some reason it always puts me at the bottom of the pile after.Craig

[Guest JonP01]

One thing I have learned about FS and video cards is that benchmark testing is (almost) useless when it comes to determing how a card performs. You play around with registry settings with a number of cards that in turn result in huge reductions in benchmarking performance. But then you apply those same registry settings in FS2002 and there is not only no performance loss, but a big, big improvement in image quality. Personally I already have all the FS2002 speed performance I want with my Geforce 3. Infact I also had all the speed performance I wanted with my Voodoo 5500 and TNT Vanta card. Infact, I even get enough fps if I disable hardware acceleration altogether and just run the sim in software mode!To me it is all about image quality. I remember back to my Voodoo that had terrible benchmarks compared to Geforce cards, especially when you turned AA on. But then you run any MS FS, and the AA resulted in no performance drop at all. Then there is anisotropic filtering on my Geforce 3. Up to 32 tap, I don't notice any performance drop in FS2002, but there is a corresponding huge improvement in image quality. Run a 3D Mark test with aniso on, however, and the benchmarking score tumbles down a long way - a loss of something like 40%.Even when I upgraded from the Voodoo to the Geforce, there was a massive improvement in benchmarks, but no actual fps improvement in most games at all. But there was a substantial improvement in image quality because I could set all the texture sliders and a few other settings right to maximum.I really expect the Matrox to be all about image quality, as one would expect with a Matrox pedigree. Unfortunately image quality is quite subjective, so there probably won't be a definitive answer.

[Guest fly4beer]

Well I read the benchs/review from chip.de and it seems it's not so bad with matrox's new pixel acrobat.....Parblabla is the fastest card at higher res (from 1280x1024 upwards) with fsaa on. (some games/benchs even from 1024x768)To be honest I don't care if I get 300 or 200fps at 640x480.....Chip.de 's staff say image quality is superior compared to G4Ti's.I run FS at 1600x1200 so maybe this card could help here....Lucien

[Guest]

Hi Max,Well, I don't personally toss around "newbie" comments as I'm too much of a newbie in many, many, many areas that others are not (golf anyone?). :-)If you view the benchmarks as available widely today, you'll see that the Parhelia doesn't stand up on any account. In non-quality performance tests: it sucks. In quality performance tests: its adequate - but (and this is a huge but here) its quality is quite inferior. We as flight sim enthusiasts (well, all gamers not just flight simmers), want the best quality possible in both anisotropic and AA performance. While the FAA performance/quality of the Perhelia is quite excellent, it doesn't work in many games. Add in its vastly inferior aniso quality AND worse performance and the card takes a severe nose-dive.Personally, I don't see the Parhelia in a good light for anybody's situation. At "normal" quality it blows. At high quality it blows. For those who dearly love 2D quality and nothing more, it still blows. Why? Because you can get excellent 2D quality with the existing Matrox line - the G400 Max - for far, far less than the extremely overpriced Parhelia! At $399 (street!) for such a card, I find it so out of whack to its existing competition that its almost laughable. An ATI 8500 for $200 is a MUCH better deal. Even better, a Ti4200 with dual-display nView for that same $200 and less simply blows it away.The final nail in its coffin from my perspective: this is the "next-gen" part from Matrox. As Paul points out below, the R300 and the NV30/31 are just a few short months away and are the direct competitors to the Parhelia (well, even more: they are true DX9 parts - the Parhelia is a halfbreed DX8/DX9 part without support for AGP 8x to boot). Either of these ATI or Nvidia cards should provide vastly superior performance and visual quality at their highest settings than the Parhelia.In the end, I wouldn't recommend the Parhelia to anyone - specially flight simmers who desire the best visual display possible. My recommendation to those on the edge? Wait a few short months for the Parhelia's direct competitors - or get a Ti4200 today that won't kill your pocketbook and will provide you better performance to boot - and at least the OPTION to run 32 or 64 tap aniso!Take care,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest]

Thanks for the links Joe. I hadn't run across them yesterday so I appreciate it!Take care,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest]

Hey Paul,Where did those banana's come from? They're HILARIOUS! I've stolen them so I hope you don't mind. :-)As I replied to Max above, if 2D quality is the only criteria, the G400 is a much better solution as its price is much, much lower than the Parhelia. For tri-display, the same thing can be had using any combination of cards in Flight Sim, so I don't see that as a great point either. I simply think the Parhelia is a poor choice for anyone unfortunately - I really had high hopes for it and for Matrox (they ARE Canadian like ATI after all! :-)).Good information there on the next-gens from the competitors. I too can't wait to see what kind of influence those former 3DFX employees had on the already outstanding Nvidia technology. Should be an interesting fall for many reasons (ClawHammer's included - in December or January as you say).Take care,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif