for a mediocre gaming card.
And be assured - that's what it is: a mediocre gaming card. It's good
general 3D performer, it won't disappoint utterly, but when it was released
it was a close third to the then recent ATI and nVidia cards - and that was
two or three years ago. It did focus much of it's energy on some pretty
advanced visual techniques (bump mapping, 16x Anti-aliasing, etc) so when it
worked well it was sweet. but as the newer games have come out it's just not
kept up.
That's the bad.
On the other hand the card is a dual DVI card pumping out Matrox's legendary
2D picture. I'm running two 1280x1024 LCDs and the picture is absolutely
crystal clear. The card is completely adjustable, but by default has warm,
rich colors that you would swear could be spread on fresh toast with a dull
knife (that's a good thing).
The card supports a ton of features aimed specifically at Windows desktop
performance: glyph anti-aliasing (although I much prefer Cleartype it does
come with a performance hit) can make your on-screen text much easier to
read. DualHead zoom can, in hardware, show a zoomed in version of the
primary monitor on the secondary (useful for graphics folks). Even after
four years Matrox still has the best, most logical Dual-head implementation.
The card does basic DVD acceleration (nothing special, but not less than
what others do) and with DVD MAX works excellently (if you decide to do it)
as a source for a TV (I don't do this, but have tried it). Using triple
head you can also have two monitors and one TV configured at the same time:
that's a trick nobody has done yet.
The card has two complete RAMDacs (not one shared) so it's the only card
that I know of that will support overlay on both connected monitors. This
is really only important if you'll be using a TV card (but with two screens
why not?). With most dual cards you can only view the TV on the primary
monitor; with the Parhelia you can use either.
I've never used Triple head, but it is tempted (remember that to do so must
give up a DVI port to a two analog port splitter). But once you do you've
got three monitors of softly glowing goodness.
Basically Matrox's 2D image and multi-head options are still the best in the
business. but the 3D performance is lacking. Since I paid $400 for the card
the 3D performance is annoying, but heck: I've got three console systems.
I'd rather have the best possible Windows performance I can get since I
spend over 90% of my PC time in front of the Windows desktop.
But see if you can snag an OEM or refurb card for a cheaper price
(www.gamepc.com <http://www.gamepc.com/> sometimes offers them).
Jim Davis
From: Won Lee [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 8:35 AM
To: CF-Community
Subject: RE: What's coming on Aug 3? or Doom3 gone gold!
At 20:24 7/15/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>If somebody comes out with a decent dual DVI card I might just consider
>abandoning my Parhelia for better Doom3/Halflife 2 performance.
How is the Matrox card. I'm targeting that card when I buy 2 (maybe 3)
LCDs.
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