Re: Matrox Parhelia

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Re: Matrox Parhelia

Does anyone have experience with this card? Please share.
I tried Matrox G550 at one time. The text sure looked much sharper, but overall I found it slower than my cheapo SIS315/64mb card. This was especially anoying at high magnifications in Nuendo.
I wonder, how Parhelia compares to other dual head cards in terms of performance?
 
While I have no experience with that particular card, I'm going to throw my vote in for *just about any* Geforce4 dual head card (of which there are many, as the Geforce4 chipset has dual head support built in).

Drivers for nVidia chipsets are worlds above what is typically offered by ATI and Matrox. Just my 2 cents.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Generally, stable drivers have been a strong point of Matrox. I get about one BSOD every two months due to my video card drivers, which are made by nVidia.

Anyway, the concensus is that the Parhelia is overpriced and underforming. It was supposed to provide great 3D performance, but fails to deliver in a big way.
 
it is, however, the only dual-dvi output card that I'm aware of. I'm lusting after one for my next machine, unless something else comes out with dual-dvi and dualhead.
 
Workstation versions of the GF4 (Quadro4) I believe come with dual DVI. Also, the workstation version of the ATi 9700 (the FireGL X1) should have dual DVI as well.
 
I suppose I should have said the only "consumer" dual dvi card. If you want to drop $1000 on a vid card, then fireGL away ;)

Not that the matrox is cheap by any strech...
 
Actually the quadro4 can be done for $266-350.

And the Geforce4 chipset has dual DVI support, it's just a matter of finding a manufacturer who implements it...like gainward offers a dual dvi Geforce4 Ti4600 for around $260 (if you shop). That's really not much more than your average Ti4600, which IMO is still the best performing card when reliability and driver support are factored in.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Thanks for replies.
It appears that I need to rephrase my question:
How does Parhelia compare to other cards when used in a DAW?
In "Tom's Hardware" reviews Parhelia does not look well at all when compared to other top "gaming" cards. I am still waiting for them to publish long promised review of Parhelia's 2D performance, which is what I am interested in most. This computer is not for games, it is strictly for music, so frame rates and filtering are of secondary importance.
Like I said in my first post here, I found G550 to be slower than simple 64mb AGP card. How will Parhelia stack against Ti6400 or Radeon 9700 in a DAW?
 
mwave has a pny quadro4 nvs200 for only $148! It's limited to 1280-1024 through the dvi though. Anyways, thanks for the info - I'm glad there are more dual-dvi options out there...
 
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