Simviation Forum - graphics card question

Oct 18^th, 2004 at 10:21am

mog Offline
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currently my system is a as follows:

windows xp pro, intel pentium 4 xeon 3Ghz, 2gig ddr ram, 150gb hd, 19" monitor

graphics card ati radeon 9200 128mb

i have the chance to fit a Matrox Parhelia 128mb graphics card at mimimal cost

question: is it worth it, is the matrox any better than the radeon...?

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Reply #1 - Oct 18^th, 2004 at 10:46am

Iroquois Offline
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That's a tough one. Most people use nVidia or ATI cards. Has a 512-bit GPU and 256-bit memory which is always good. It is better than the 9200.

Unfortunately I couldn't get detailed specs on this card such as GPU and RAM speeds. I did read something saying that the card runs very hot.

With your system I think you'd be better going for a nVidia Geforce 6800 Ultra or an ATI X800XT. I've never known anyone to use the Matrox cards before. Give it a shot but check the return policy.

In the mean time, I'll see if I can get some more information for you.

I only pretend to know what I'm talking about. Heck, that's what lawyers, car mechanics, and IT professionals do everyday. Wink

&&The Rig: &&AMD Athlon XP2000+ Palomino, ECS K7S5A 3.1, 1GB PC2700 DDR, Geforce FX5200 128mb, SB Live Platinum, 16xDVD, 16x10x40x CDRW, 40/60gb 7200rpm HDD, 325w Power, Windows XP Home SP1, Directx 9.0c with 66.81 Beta gfx drivers

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Reply #2 - Oct 18^th, 2004 at 10:51am

mog Offline
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this is a link to the parhelia details if it would help...

im not looking to buy anything else, its a choice between the parhelia or radeon...

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/home.cfm

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Reply #3 - Oct 18^th, 2004 at 1:28pm

Iroquois Offline
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I found some more info on this card. Needless to say it lags behind the Geforce 4 TI4600 and the Radeon 8500. It's outdated.

It does have all kinds of fancy features like 16x AA but how well does it handle it. It only has SM1.3 while the new nVidias have SM3.0. It's slow and runs hot but has high bandwiths. Then again so do the 6800s and X800s and they're selling for the same prices.

Keep you 9200 or wait for the nVidia 6600GT AGP and the ATI X700 which will retail for $200US. They're a whole lot better.

Here's the article on it.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20020625/index.html

I only pretend to know what I'm talking about. Heck, that's what lawyers, car mechanics, and IT professionals do everyday. Wink

&&The Rig: &&AMD Athlon XP2000+ Palomino, ECS K7S5A 3.1, 1GB PC2700 DDR, Geforce FX5200 128mb, SB Live Platinum, 16xDVD, 16x10x40x CDRW, 40/60gb 7200rpm HDD, 325w Power, Windows XP Home SP1, Directx 9.0c with 66.81 Beta gfx drivers

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Reply #4 - Oct 18^th, 2004 at 1:35pm

congo Offline
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That site doesn't publish the card's output specification, which is the key to potential performance..... why?

Probably because it could then be compared to other video cards, and the comparison would be unfavourable to the product.

Maybe you could have a look at the VGA chart in my post here in this forum and rethink your purchase options according to a price/performance benefit.

Iroquois, just a reminder that you are advising video cards that are not yet released, are crippled versions of current decent products, require a new mainboard/chipset/platform/PCIe slot, unproven, unsupported.......... Saying that, they will no doubt get their share of the market, and be suitable to some.

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Reply #5 - Oct 18^th, 2004 at 1:47pm

Iroquois Offline
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I know they aren't out yet. The AGPs will be out next month and I thought the X700 AGPs were out already.

I only pretend to know what I'm talking about. Heck, that's what lawyers, car mechanics, and IT professionals do everyday. Wink

&&The Rig: &&AMD Athlon XP2000+ Palomino, ECS K7S5A 3.1, 1GB PC2700 DDR, Geforce FX5200 128mb, SB Live Platinum, 16xDVD, 16x10x40x CDRW, 40/60gb 7200rpm HDD, 325w Power, Windows XP Home SP1, Directx 9.0c with 66.81 Beta gfx drivers

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Reply #6 - Oct 18^th, 2004 at 1:51pm

congo Offline
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oh sorry, I didn't know they had an AGP release.

Mainboard: Asus P5K-Premium, CPU=Intel E6850 @ x8x450fsb 3.6ghz, RAM: 4gb PC8500 Team Dark, Video: NV8800GT, HDD: 2x1Tb Samsung F3 RAID-0 + 1Tb F3, PSU: Antec 550 Basiq, OS: Win7x64, Display: 24" WS LCD

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Reply #7 - Oct 18^th, 2004 at 5:46pm

Iroquois Offline
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Quote:

oh sorry, I didn't know they had an AGP release.

Nope, I was wrong. I checked their website. There's a lot of conflicting info out there. They're supposed to be comming out soon. I could even suggest a 6800 to Mog. It's about the same price as the Matrox on NewEgg.

I only pretend to know what I'm talking about. Heck, that's what lawyers, car mechanics, and IT professionals do everyday. Wink

&&The Rig: &&AMD Athlon XP2000+ Palomino, ECS K7S5A 3.1, 1GB PC2700 DDR, Geforce FX5200 128mb, SB Live Platinum, 16xDVD, 16x10x40x CDRW, 40/60gb 7200rpm HDD, 325w Power, Windows XP Home SP1, Directx 9.0c with 66.81 Beta gfx drivers

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Reply #8 - Oct 18^th, 2004 at 6:21pm

mog Offline
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I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

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ok, thanks for the advice so far, im gonna try the parhelia anyway tomorrow after the flights i did tonight.... ???

anyone got any thoughts on the post i put in the scenery discussion...?

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Reply #9 - Oct 19^th, 2004 at 12:40pm

congo Offline
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mog,

You need to forget about the parhelia, it's junk, move on. 8)

Mainboard: Asus P5K-Premium, CPU=Intel E6850 @ x8x450fsb 3.6ghz, RAM: 4gb PC8500 Team Dark, Video: NV8800GT, HDD: 2x1Tb Samsung F3 RAID-0 + 1Tb F3, PSU: Antec 550 Basiq, OS: Win7x64, Display: 24" WS LCD

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Reply #10 - Oct 20^th, 2004 at 10:02pm

Hawkeye313 Offline
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Until recently, my thing was FPS games. I saw some side by side shots back when I was playing Doom 3 of several cards. All did well in their class, but the Matrox Parahelia stands out in my mind. It's processing of the game was very poor in some areas comparatively. I'd stay away from it if I were you.

Antec Dragon, Asus P4C800 Deluxe, P4 3.2E,Swiftech Water Cooling, 1Gig Mushkin Lv 2 V. 2 PC3200 + 512mb Corsair TwinX LL PC3200, 2 WD Raptors on RAID 0, 1 Maxtor 120GB 7200rpm, Audigy 2, eVGA 6800 GT, Logitech Z-680 speakers, Tracker IR3 Pro, 19

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