What's the practical diff. between Parhelia 256 and Parhelia 128

[testjoe]

I notice that Matrox has the Parhelia 256 product page on their website since a bit now, and I apologize if this has been spoken of already, but do P128 users stand to gain anything by taking a hit selling their P128's on ebay when the P256 is available?

Joe T.

[thop]

128MB more RAM

[Tempest]

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

The Parhelia 128 has 128 megs of memory. The Parhelia 256 has 256 megs of it. Parhelia 256 is lower clocked than the Parhelia 128 Retail, it has the same clock speeds as the Parhelia 128 OEM. They also have a 200$ price difference.

[testjoe]

Ok..

Okay, yeah, I realized that the MEMORY was different, hence the request for a PRACTICAL (i.e. usefulness factor) difference was, I guess I should've been clear that the mere MEMORY difference was already obvious and went without saying

I guess what I was after was who stood to benefit - people that want higher framerates? People that want more overclocking headroom? People that want to waste money? Etc...

Thanks

[Tempest]

People that use heavy-duty CAD applications, and people who want to play some upcoming games with more than 128 megs of textures (another thing is if Parhelia will run those games at acceptable framerates). And people who want to spend money, of course.

People who want extreme overclocks or highest possible performance with existing games will generally prefer cards with 128 megs of memory, because they have higher clocks and probably also overclock better.

[Guru]

It would be nice to see the diff on coded creatures for example!

[leech]

Quick question. Would that extra 128mb of RAM enable 4800x1200? (With the 128mb Parhelia the max res with three monitors is 3084x1024) I could probably figure that out myself, but I'm just too lazy.

Other than that, the question also remains..... why did they use the clock of the OEM version on the RETAIL 256mb card? That just doesn't make sense, unless the ram they're using gets too hot when they add more.

Leech

[K6-III]

Better yields...

[Goc]

Quick question. Would that extra 128mb of RAM enable 4800x1200?

I think that's related to DVI standard and to Parhelia itself... I guess that the maximum throughput of a single DVI connector when feeding two monitors is 2056x1024...

I could be talking out of my arse, of course...
Anyone to confirm this?

[Pace]

Originally posted by leech
Quick question. Would that extra 128mb of RAM enable 4800x1200? (With the 128mb Parhelia the max res with three monitors is 3084x1024) I could probably figure that out myself, but I'm just too lazy.

I'd make a wild, wild guess that this might be a RAMDAC limitation

Other than that, the question also remains..... why did they use the clock of the OEM version on the RETAIL 256mb card? That just doesn't make sense, unless the ram they're using gets too hot when they add more.

Aren't we doing well today? They do use the OEM clock on the 256MB card. Capisce?

P.

Edit: Goc, this isn't really DVI, because it's TripleHead. DVI would allow at least 2 x 1600x1200, possibly 2048x1536.

[leech]

Aren't we doing well today? They do use the OEM clock on the 256MB card. Capisce?

Yeah, that's what I said. Sheesh.

Leech

[Pace]

Originally posted by leech
Yeah, that's what I said. Sheesh.

Leech

Uh, yeah! Sheesh capisce?