Reasons for Parhelia's poor performance

[joonie]

1. Too many pipeline stages. Makes it easy to increase the clock for Matrox, but performance decreases.

2. Very low core clock speed.

3. No efficient memory manager in Parhelia

4. Poor driver. But this shouldn't be the main reason of pathetic performance because no matter how imcomplete the driver is, the graphics card should show even a little bit of potential. But for Parhelia, it's hopeless.

5. Just slow hardwares(eg. memory, chipset etc)

I'm saying all this becuase in my system, I can't even run GTA3 or Battlefield with above 30FPS in res. 1024x768 with least quality (No anti aliasing), which is very unplayalbe. I posted the problem at the Matrox Forum, but I don't think it's going smoothly.
And when I connect the Parhelia to tv and watch the movie, I get a headache from the unsmoothness. It's lilke watching a slow mo with pictures sliding quickly.

Don't take any offence in it dudes

[Paddy]

Don't take any offense in it dudes

Well 'dude'. Why come to a Matrox support site and bitch about the card with your first post?

If you want support then stop being a troll and try and be a tad more forthcoming. Who knows, we might even be able to help!

[albatorsk]

Re: Reasons for Parhelia's poor performance

Originally posted by joonie
I'm saying all this becuase in my system, I can't even run GTA3 or Battlefield with above 30FPS in res. 1024x768 with least quality (No anti aliasing), which is very unplayalbe. I posted the problem at the Matrox Forum, but I don't think it's going smoothly.

Well, first of all; you can just forget about playing GTA3 on the Parhelia. It won't be smooth, no matter how low you set the details.

BF1942, on the other hand, works quite well, even in surround mode. I usually play it in 2400x600, and even if I rarely get more than 30 FPS, it's actually quite enjoyable. Don't enable FAA though, it'll make the game crawl.

[leech]

Eh? Battlefield 1942 just depends on your system. I've seen posts by people saying that they're 700mhz p3 is running it fine using a GF3, but using the exact same video card on a P4 2.4 it runs like ass. I think the game is just picky (then again, this is back before any patches were out, it may run better now)

GTA3. I had only ONE problem with running that smoothly on my system (back when I had a P3-850mhz) and that was due to my harddrive needing a defrag (read the readme). So my first suggestion would be to uninstall GTA3, defrag your harddrive, then re-install it so it's not so fragmented and try it then.

Leech

[albatorsk]

I've never managed to run GTA3 at a smooth 30 FPS. And the only one who's ever tried to prove me wrong discovered that it didn't run smooth on his system either.

I would really love to see some screengrabs of GTA3 running on a Parhelia at 30+ FPS.

[Marshmallowman]

GTA3 is not that well coded, it has trouble running on smoothly on most hardware, (NV seems to be a bit of an exception).

A couple of things that did work for me using a 8500, but they are pretty generic.

If you installed using a different video card, delete the gta3.set file in your document folder. This will make sure the game reconfigures for the new card.

Make sure you have the latest patch 1.1 I think?
There are several nocd programs around, some are a lot better that others If you find the right one the game will run a lot smoother...yes I know you bought the game, but the nocd WILL make it smoother.

Disableing FSAA, helps.

An Extreme measure, it seems the AGP textureing is a bit Borked in the game. I don't no if this is ATI specific but setting AGP aperture to 4m effectively turns it off and does make it a LOT smoother on my machine...But makes every thing else slower

GTA3 a nice game, but it has real problems of its own.

I hope some of the above helps

[albatorsk]

Thanks! I've never tried "disabling" the AGP. I will see if it makes any difference on my setup.

[dbdg]

GTA was a complete dog on my 1.8, but seem to run fine now and the nocd hacks are def worth it. There is also a high-fps mod that really does speed up the game, gets rid of all the environmental effects and people.

One thing that really annoys me with GTA is it does not like two monitors and two video cards. While you are in the game you can move your mouse onto your other monitor and then all hell breaks loose. Imagine pressing the right mouse button

Civ 3 seems to do this as well, How come when Multi displays are starting to become fairly common game developers seem to forget little things like this? very sloppy.

[UtwigMU]

I'll install Civ3 and tell you how it plays with 2 monitors and 2 videocards.

[albatorsk]

Originally posted by dbdg
There is also a high-fps mod that really <snip> gets rid of <snip> the people.

Yeah, that really sounds like a lot of fun

[joonie]

Originally posted by Paddy [MU]
Well 'dude'. Why come to a Matrox support site and bitch about the card with your first post?

If you want support then stop being a troll and try and be a tad more forthcoming. Who knows, we might even be able to help!

I thought British guys are all gentlemen... Well there has to be an exception even in small island, eh?
And are you one of those James Bond wannabes or something?

[Kruzin]

Pretty bold talk from a 2 post newbie.
Paddy is right. If you have a problem, try posting about it in an adult manner. When you show up and start whining like you did with your first post, you sound like a troll. And your second post did nothing to sway that perception. Other users offered suggestions for your situation, but you chose to take a shot at someone with over 1000x your number of posts.

Hint: We don't take very kindly to whiney trolls around here...

[WyWyWyWy]

Re: Reasons for Parhelia's poor performance

Originally posted by joonie
I'm saying all this becuase in my system, I can't even run GTA3 or Battlefield with above 30FPS in res. 1024x768 with least quality (No anti aliasing), which is very unplayalbe. I posted the problem at the Matrox Forum, but I don't think it's going smoothly.
And when I connect the Parhelia to tv and watch the movie, I get a headache from the unsmoothness. It's lilke watching a slow mo with pictures sliding quickly.

Did you notice that you only have 256mb ram?
AFAIK, GTA3 uses 400mb ram and BF uses 600mb.
People see huge speed up for BF going from 512mb to 1g ram.
Can't imagine whats it like with 256mb...

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
An Extreme measure, it seems the AGP textureing is a bit Borked in the game. I don't no if this is ATI specific but setting AGP aperture to 4m effectively turns it off and does make it a LOT smoother on my machine...But makes every thing else slower

Use powerstrip and disable it on-the-fly (app specific)

Originally posted by dbdg
One thing that really annoys me with GTA is it does not like two monitors and two video cards. While you are in the game you can move your mouse onto your other monitor and then all hell breaks loose. Imagine pressing the right mouse button

Search for a small util called MouseJail.
I have to use it with many of my games.

[joonie]

Originally posted by Kruzin
Hint: We don't take very kindly to whiney trolls around here...

Well first, I wasn't whining at all, just telling what was going on my computer, and those five reasons are the ones I saw in a computer magazine critisizing Parhelia and thought I could use it to let people know, even the ones in Matrox, so if they make a new product like Parhelia-max or something, they could use it as a reference. If I didn't give it a shit what Matrox would be like, then I wouldn't even have joined this Forums. Becuase I docare.
And Paddy shouldn't have gone saying to the Newbie as you call it Kruzin 'bitching this and bitching that' I didn't even use harsh words on anyone.

Originally posted by Paddy [MU]
Well 'dude'. Why come to a Matrox support site and bitch about the card with your first post?

When he could have used more friendly term...

[Paddy]

Well first, I wasn't whining at all, just telling what was going on my computer

This is a support site, not a 'I'm an unhappy customer and M won't talk to me so I'll vent my frustration here' site.

If you have a problem that you would like some advice on, then post something helpful.