What would you like changed in Parhelia?

[Ali]

Still havent bought one, not sure if I can justify it (several reasons).

Anyway, if you had the chance to make some changes, additions to the Parhelia, what would they be?

Im thinking along the lines of:

True tripple head, not the half hearted attempt it has at the moment.

Better cable layout. By this I mean having the ability to have three screens, of any combination of DVI or CRT and also have the TV connected.

Complete VESA support. Im not sure it doesnt already, but Ive read a little about BIOS screen corruption etc, and a lot of the stuff I work on is still DOS based (Wont get into an argument about that here).

I can see the reason behind going to .NET for drivers, but I dont like it.

Also, Win9x support is critical. I might run XP on my Dev machine, but I have to compatibility test on Win98 everything I do before I roll it out to the workfloor. Dual boot is how I do that now, Im not going to have another PC on my desk just for that though.

Fixed FAA so it ALWAYS works.

Fixed texture filtering.

Lower price or higher performance. Pick one.

I also dont understand why the DVI controllers are external. Why not incorporate them into the core? Must lower costs.




Anythink Im forgetting?

Ali

[Marshmallowman]

price

[Wombat]

Speed.

Get rid of that crappy banding in 3D.

Linux drivers.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Get rid of that crappy banding in 3D.

That's a new one to me... what's that about?

[Ssin]

Don't think Triple Head is an issue here and never thought it would be something to fight for.. What I would change in my version of the P :
- Higher clock frequency memory AND core.
- This leads to Speed.
- Lower price even with speed increase
- 16 bits per color channel
- Video input
- Win 9x support
- True 8x agp
- ... and why not sell the chips to card integrators.. this would hemp bolster the sells... of course, price tag IS decisive here...

[az]

Speed that lives up to its theoretical potential (bandwidth, etc.) - better memory controller, some form of culling, and a little higher clock speed.

Price.

The ability to have a third head AND a TV connected at the same time, it's not necessary to be able to USE them both at the same time, just to have them connected, with a little app or hotkey that switches between third head VGA and TV. This wouldn't require big changes (if at all) in the hardware I think.

Matrox: if you want to incorporate this last idea, I don't want any intellectual property royalties (Though I wouldn't mind having a Parhelia or two shipped here )

AZ

[Zanna]

Honestly, I think Parhelia would be a great card for gamers, but with a lower price tag!!


*** Too much expensive for the masses ***

Now I think M can start to tho sell some "value" boards (for example, lower the price for P. without triplehead, not all customers can/want to buy three monitors!).

For some other peoples, like the Tech-entusiast (like me) the price will be OK if the card will be at least 30% faster !!!

How about a Parhelia MAX (at the same price tag, while lowering the price tag of the standard edition.... )

[Ribbit]

In this order:

- Open, functionally complete Linux drivers (don't care who develops them).
- More speed.
- Fixed aniso filtering.
- Win98 drivers.
- Fixed FAA.
- Price.

[RC Agent]

I'll go with:
- Lower Price
- Higher memory and core speeds
- 16 bits per color channel
- Win98 drivers
- Better software package add-on

[Yanee]

- Full Linux & FreeBSD driver package (OpenGL, overlay, dual/triplehead etc.)
- PS 2.0

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by RC Agent
I'll go with:
[...]- Better software package add-on

I'm curious, what would you want to be in that software package? When I buy a card, I already know what I want to run on it, so a software bundle seems pointless. Bundled software is almost always crippled in some way anyway.

[Wombat]

Matrox threw a lot of software/utilities in with Parhelia. I'm annoyed that they didn't have any DVD software though. That's just too cheap of them. My GF3 came with a full version of WinDVD. I'm lucky I have that or I'd have to go spend even more money to have a useful computer.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

My wishlist is:
- 0.13 micron
- 128-bit internal colour precision
- 128 samples texture filtering
- Full OGL 2.0
- Full DX 9 (P.S. 2, V.S. 2 etc etc)
- AGP 8X
- QuadHead
- Same price as the current retail version
- If they manage to do all these... 250/300MHz is fine for me
- Win 9x

If possible...
- 0.09 micron
- Dual 16-bit RAMDACs@450MHz
- SDK for Programming VS and PS
- AGP Pro, no external power
- 350MHz Core/400MHz Mem

BTW Video Division...

RT X.1... a low-end real time home capture card priced at around 250 CND, less real tiem effects, add support for VIA chipsets for us AMD folks

[WyWyWyWy]

I would like to see a MGA and Video Division 2-in-1 card.

And for Parhelia...
1. XFree86 driver and *useful* powerdesk.
2. LOWER PRICE!!!!!!
3. Windows driver not in .NET, it doesn't have to be in .NET in the first place anyway.
4. More Reef or equivalent.
5. Can't they bundle some games? Even demo games.
6. DVD software, even cheap ones.
7. -don't-flame-me-pls- HeadCasting Engine -don't-flame-me-pls-
8. Able to play non-dividable-by-32 videos on overlay. Currently videos with non-standard size, such as 320x240, will not be displayed on overlay. In short, official DivXG400 in driver.

[frankymail]

Here's some comments:

- 0.09µ: unfeasible in Matrox' case: Intel 0.09µ production won't start before H2 2003 (Intel is always the production pionneer in smaller lithography), and TSMC can't even provide a reliable 0.13µ output for nVIDIA, who orders MANY times the amount of chips Matrox does.

- 16bits/channel RAMDACs/output: why would you want that? 8 bits output is very good, and 10bits is more than sufficient; what you want is a more precise color calculation (read: pixelshaders). ATI's R9700 and nVIDIA's NV30 support 64/128bits floating point color precision, yet they still use a 8/8/8/8 output, which is ample enough (though i'd prefer Matrox' 10/10/10/2). Using higher output would just rip through you memory capacity and bandwidth... Just remember that at 1600x1200*32bits with triple buffering, you're already using 24 MB of memory, just for the output buffer. You still need memory for geometry and textures. Just remember that the human eye cannot see the difference between a picture in 8bits/channel and 16bits per channel. You need more precision during color calculations, not color output.

- More than TripleHead? Why would you want that? Gaming? Well, the idea of having my center view cut in half isn't very alluring. Work then? Buy a GXXX MMS.

- Fast and stable Win9x support? Isn't it mutually exclusive under Win9x?

- Full DX9.0+OGL2.0 support; nice in theory, but when games are going to be using all those features, you'll be driving flying cars and Matrox will have bought Microsoft out.


Here's what I'd want:

- Make the Vertex Shaders more efficient with simpler task and use a 8pixels/2texels engine instead of the 4pixels/4texels the current Parhelia is using (oh, and add occlucion-culling, the lack of which I think is Parhelia's Achilles' Heel). Maybe 64/128-bits calculations as a bonus.

- Independant displays in TripleHead. That's the only thing I'd change in 2D display.

- Anisotropic Filtering efficiency algorithms: 4x and 8x almost for free, and 16x for a lesser drop than 2x on competing (read: GeForce 4 Ti) hardware.

Anyway, these are my opinions at the moment; they will probably changes. But remember, these are just opninions, so don't flame me if my views differ from yours.

I'm a Matrox-style lover: Though I might not have the highest framerate, when my special techniques are used, i'm the output king