Written By:
Date Posted: October 2 , 2002

Conclusion

    We've looked at the card itself, the drivers behind the card, the features that are new on the card compared to other cards, the 2D/TV-out  quality of the card, the 3D quality of the card, and lastly the 3D performance.  So what can we conclude about this latest card from Matrox, can it compete with the likes of Nvidia or ATi?

    The card comes with all the things that you need to use all three monitors correctly, in a DVI-VGA adapter, DVI-Dual VGA adapter, and a VGA-TV adapter, you do have all you need to use any function of DualHead or TripleHead.  The fact that even though this was a OEM model it had all these additional pieces there to make sure you could use all your monitors without paying extra.  The only difference between the OEM and the Retail model (apart from the box) is the speed, as the OEM is 20MHz/25MHz slower (Core/Memory).  The installation was very good, in fact the board is shorter than the Kyro II and most newer video cards, which is a boon for most motherboards as it doesn't block the installation of RAM in my motherboard.

    TripleHead is a useful progression of Matrox's DualHead technology.   It can be used for multiple programs, or stretching a program over all three screens, or even be able to play a game over all three monitors.  These features, in addition to the regular DualHead technology show that this is something that Matrox has put allot of effort into this feature of the card.  What I'd like to see is an option for DVD-MAX when you have two monitors enabled (i.e. independent DualHead + a TV/Monitor with DVD-MAX).

    The drivers are very good, but sadly there are no Win 98SE/ME drivers planned.  There are however Linux drivers out and in fact Matrox has released 2D drivers only a couple months after the release of the card itself.  The Powerdesk software uses the .NET framework which seems to take up a fair amount of system RAM.   All in all the drivers are very nice and well laid out, with most options being just a click or two away.

    The 3D features of this card are similar to what happened when the G400 was released with EMBM.  Displacement mapping is also part of the DirectX spec and already the Radeon 9700 supports it which can help speed up the acceptance of this very good feature.  FAA is one of the most elegant anti-aliasing techniques I have seen, although it does have some areas that it doesn't work on (i.e. anything not on the polygons' edge).

    The 2D Quality of this card keeps up and raises the bar for Matrox, as our tester found it to be the best of our small group, and from use it is a better than most other cards for color quality.  TV-Out is very nice, as it displays text in a DVD very crisply, and the movie itself is bright but not overly so.

    The quality of ansiotropic filtering as well as FAA give this card very nice, and gives a quality boost even when the software doesn't support all the fancy new DirectX 8+ features.  There is a problem with the amount of samples that ansiotropic filtering on the Parhelia uses, as it is only 2X or 16-tap where other cards can use 64-tap (8X) ansiotropic filtering.  If Matrox can give the option for higher levels of ansiotropic filtering it would be a very nice.

    Now on to the benchmarks.  While we had no GeForce 4 or Radeon 8500/9700 to test this card against, we can see in all but two benchmarks the Parhelia performs much better than the Kyro II.  This is a good thing considering that the Kyro II cost only $150 (Canadian) when I bought it.  These two benchmarks the Kyro II performs better in are, Villagemark (1024 High settings) and Serious Sam SE (1024 High settings).  This can be attributed to the Kyro II's better memory bandwidth technology (Villagemark), and Serious Sam can possibly be attributed to the the inability to detect the Parhelia correctly.  When we turn AA and ansiotropic filtering on however the Parhelia shows its worth, being 'playable' in all the games I tried at 1024*768 with these options enabled, save UT2003 and possibly the NOLF2 demo.  The Parhelia is about 6X or more faster than the Kyro II when the CPU is taken out of the equation, at least mostly.   The Parhelia though is still very CPU limited on my 1.25GHz Athlon.  It is nice to see that perhaps with a faster CPU, the currently 'unplayable' games would be very playable with the Parhelia at 1024*768 with AA and ansiotropic filtering enabled.

    The price is a sore point however, as the video card is fairly high priced, though this is not unusual for a Matrox card as you are paying for the quality that Matrox delivers.  The option for three monitors, with hardware OpenGL in TripleHead mode will definitely appeal to Professional users, with Matrox even releasing a driver for some professional programs, such as AutoCAD as well as others.  Most people aren't willing to spend these large amounts of money for a video card every six months, and for those that need many 2D features and decent to very good 3D speed this is the almost perfect card.  Even so the price in my opinion is still slightly too high for the average user with a price of over $550 (Canadian), unless you like these features (which I happen too) and plan on using them, either as a professional user, or as a long term purchase of your video card. 

    I would really like to thank for providing the Parhelia for testing.  They helped me to purchase the Parhelia that I reviewed here, so go there now and if you mention that you came from Viperlair they might give you a discount.  I would also like to thank Peter for his help in testing the 2D quality of the Parhelia.

Good Points

• Matrox Quality 2D and TV-Out
• Good Quality 3D images (FAA)
• Good Performance in 3D (Playable in most games at 1024*768 MAX)
• TripleHead
• Linux Drivers

Bad Points

• Price
• Not as 'fast' as other cards
• Could use some Bandwidth saving technology
• No Win 98/ME drivers planned
• No DVD Max on third monitor/TV

Bottom Line

    I would like to see the price go down to about $200-275 (US) in which case this card would definitely be a Viperlair recommended card.  Otherwise this is a very good card with many great 2D and 3D features, and some very good performance in most games I tried.  A very good card but the price holds it back.

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