Best PCIe replacement for Parhelia 8x?

[Richh]

Grrr, had to register again as my old registration got lost.

Anyway, I'll admit, I've felt safe with a Matrox card in my personal PC for the last, ooh, 14 years or so. Right through from the original Millennium through to a P8x they've given me everything I've wanted - i.e. top analog output picture quality at 1600*1200, enough 3D oomph for an occasional bit of rendering and gaming, and something approaching the P8x's multi display versatility.


Now, I've just ordered a new rig, and, it's PCI Express based, so new graphics card ahoy. The only question is... which one?

If there was such a thing as a Parhelia 8x, but with a PCIe connector on it, then I'd buy one just for the piece of mind and that glowing feeling of comfort. Still, there isn't a direct equivalent so I'm looking at an alternative of some sort. If it has better 3D, better picture quality, well, I can live with that, but I don't want something that performs significantly worse.

The APVe is one option, but it seems overpriced, and apparently its 3D performance is significantly reduced even compared with the P8x - as, so I believe, a result of it using the Parhelia LX core rather than the "proper" one. Anyone here evaluated both the regular P and the APVe and can comment on the differences between them?

There are obviously plenty of ATi and nVidia based cards around, but is the analog output quality of these now on par with Matrox?

There must be a few folk round here who've made the same decisions, so which way did you jump, and what did you think of the results???

[Sasq]

sorry rich, got some anti spam software that blocks certain keywords in first 10 posts of users.

drop me an email or pm and we can dig up your old account and merge.

[schmosef]

I recently went from a Parhelia 4x AGP to an Asus nVidia 7600GT PCIe in my work rig and the IQ sucks on analog. I also recently tried an ATI x1600 AGP card and it sucks too.

I used to run at 2048x1536 on my Matrox card but that resolution is totally unreadable on either an ATI or nVidia based card via analog output.

Sorry about the bad news.

[rylan]

I agree, at 2MP and up the image quality on most of the boards from ATI/nVidia is crap with analog output. If you have DVI you'll be fine.

[Nowhere]

I recently went from a Parhelia 4x AGP to an Asus nVidia 7600GT PCIe in my work rig and the IQ sucks on analog. I also recently tried an ATI x1600 AGP card and it sucks too.

I used to run at 2048x1536 on my Matrox card but that resolution is totally unreadable on either an ATI or nVidia based card via analog output.

Sorry about the bad news.

I agree, at 2MP and up the image quality on most of the boards from ATI/nVidia is crap with analog output. If you have DVI you'll be fine.

Oh...crap. I still want to give some new life into my computer (mostly for HL2 with its episodes and Portal), but I definatelly won't be changing monitor (Eizo CRT running on G400). However "sad" poor IQ might be, it's somehow understandable when new computers almost exclusively have LCDs...too bad especially in the case for ATI.
So...what do you think, what is the last (ATI/Nvidia(?)) generation of GFX cards were IQ received proper attention? Radeons 9xxx?

[rylan]

Well the FireGL line had better analog output, except the boards are a lot more expensive than the Radeons.

[Richh]

Nadgers, not what I wanted to hear! Have a pair of Iiyama Visionmaster 454Bs here that I'm not planning on replacing anytime soon, so the quality of the analog output is a key issue.

I've built a few systems for friends over the years using alternative brands of graphics but never done any really serious comparison of the image quality on my own monitors at the resolutions I usually use. A mistake in hindsight, but there you go.

For the time being I've ordered one of the cheaper Radeons just to get things going as I'm working on the old urban myth that their IQ was generally better than nVidia stuff. Even then I had to avoid the cheapest cards as most of those seem to be low profile designs with onboard ribbon cabled-headers for the VGA output - that certainly seems to be a way to reduce image clarity.

I considered something like a Quadro or a FireGL, but they're much dearer than I really want to pay, and even then I'm not sure I'll be getting what I want. If I'm going that far I may as well plump for an APVe as at least then I know it'll be giving me most of what I want.

Also considered a dual card solution, but want to avoid that level of faffing about if at all possible, and in any case, options are limited by both the PCI slots on the board being occupied by cards I can't do without.

Annoyingly I sent an email to Matrox a few days back asking how the functionality and 3D performance of the APVe compares with the P8x, and have heard back precisely nothing. Seems that the demise of the user forums has not, despite the noises, seen the load taken up by the support staff.

Anyone know if Haig is still with them BTW?

[gt40]

Anyone know if Haig is still with them BTW?

Haig is no longer with them, but he is a mod here for the Linux forums.

[Richh]

Yep, so I've found gt40. Seems you can take the man out of Matrox, but you can't take Matrox out of the man! :-D

Really in two minds about which way to jump now, leaning more towards the APVe but still think it a tad overpriced.

Plus, I don't, on principle, want to go through the expense and time of upgrading my rig and find myself with slower 3D. Something a bit perverse about the principle of that! Sounds as though the APVe might overclock, but how far is anyone's guess!

[schmosef]

So I've just tried my ATI x1950XTX based PCIe card with my Cornerstone p1750 CRT monitor and I'm somewhat happy to announce that it is better than the nVidia 7600GT PCIe card that I have at the office at 2048x1536.

It's still to fuzzy for me to work with for an extended period of time but 1600x1200 is very usable and I also believe the IQ is better than my nVidia card at this lower resolution.