Thumbs up for Matrox!

[Gohan]

Today on the german 3dcenter Site are an positiv comment for Matrox's drivers...
I believe currently everyone know what going on with nVidias and ATIs driver cheating.

So 3dcenter has written:

... Denn der Sumpf wird immer tiefer und mittlerweile kann man sogar die Frage stellen, ob eine solche Firma wie Matrox mit ihrer Parhelia nicht womöglich sogar zu Unrecht "abgestraft" wurde, nur weil deren Wettbewerber ihren Performance-Vorsprung von 20 Prozent durch Optimierungen an der Bildqualität erreichten..

... Because the sump become deeper and deeper, in the meanwhile one can ask the question, if it wasn't a injustice to call the parhelia slow, only because ATI and NV get their faster performance about 20%, by optimizations that make the image quality more worse...

I've tought the wholw time so, beacuse the Parhelia was in a few games, that are not so famous, realy faster than a Ti4600, even without FAA. Its not good what is going currently on...

[TdB]

makes you wonder, if people would have a diffrent view of the parhelia, if the competition played fair...

I wouldn´t be THAT suprised if the parhelia turned out to be a GF4ti 4200/4400 killer, once all the cheats had been removed.

well, at least we can choose trilinear filtering in ut2003, if we want to...

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6719

my next gaming-card will also be from a company that doesn´t try to compete in the speed race, at least then I can choose the settings I want to play my games at.

[thop]

Matrox have their very own way of cheating (trading quality for speed) ... they just completely disabled >2AF!

[TdB]

but at least they are honest about it.

[XHotKolaX]

eheheheh

Verily cute sig, thop=)

[Zao]

thop...
The Parhelia is not capable of doing more than 2AF.

[K6-III]

It can do greater than 2x AF, but only in bilinear.

[TdB]

Originally posted by K6-III
It can do greater than 2x AF, but only in bilinear.

are you sure about that?

I asked Haig that particular question a while ago, and he said that wasn´t the case, however he could have been talking about what they supported in the drivers, and not the true aniso limit.

the whitepaper is a bit "cloudy" on that subject...

[Che Guevara]

I think Parhelia can do up to 16xAF trilinear in hardware, but it is limited to a very good 2x (AF is not AF ) by the drivers for better performance.

[TdB]

the 2x AF in trilinear is a hardware-limitation.

[Che Guevara]

Matrox support said the limitation is a driver-limitation and was made as a compromise between performance and quality.


Perhaps Pitou can bring perfectly working FAA-16x and 16xAF...?

[Faramir1966]

Hm? Pitou
Never heard of that....

[gpremec]

Parhelia is fast, as I proved to miself. Compared to ATi Radeon9500 Pro 128MB, there is no segnificant diference in games, Mafia for instance. 1024*768*32, full details, on P4 2.4B and 512MB RAM (sig), there is not segnificant diference while playing Mafia. On the oder hand, Parhelia makes about 7.800 3DMark 2001SE, while R9500 Pro 128MB makes around 10.000 3DMArk 2001SE score.

I don't care about score in 3DMark 2001SE and 2003, I care about can I play a game or not. There's no many people that belives me that I played UT2003 Demo on G550.

[Mikko]

My friend is using my old G400 for a while, before he buys the card of his own for his new PC.
He says that he can play F1 Challenge 99-02 with full details at 1024x768x32 (CPU AthlonXP 2600+ and 512MB DDR400 memory).

Maybe that game uses more CPU than GPU, but still...

[Stringy]

its nice that someone actually realized that there are driver cheats in the drivers and that they have just gotten more and more aggressive with their "Optimizations"

But at the same time, that's business... whatever it takes to sell cards, thats their goal... if the 3DGamer measured how good a card was by how big it was, they would make them bigger, or by how much heat, or How wacky the cooling unit was on it...
Oh and don't think Matrox doesn't cheat at all... don't be nieve, they do, they just haven't been caught, or haven't cheated so far to be so obvious..

these companies filled the demand for better performing 3DMark acceleration, as well as a better Q3 accelerator...
and they made millions doing it...
Since when was life "fair"?? ever been passed up for a promo because the other guy played golf with the boss? that's not fair...


Anyways, I would have bought the Parehilia if it weren't for banding, for a card that costs that much, the banding issue is unacceptable, even if it happens in a small set of conditions...
Maybe now we'll start to see improvements on how a card is measured...
prolly not, but heres one for wishful thinking


Craig