Comments on: Parhelia Pathetic ? http://www.bigkid.com.au/2002/06/25/parhelia-pathetic/ Games news & reviews, Australian game developers Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:02:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5 by: devo http://www.bigkid.com.au/2002/06/25/parhelia-pathetic/#comment-1078 Wed, 26 Jun 2002 07:51:38 +1000 http://www.bigkid.com.au/2002/06/25/parhelia-pathetic/#comment-1078 Following up - it seems that the benchmarks <a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020625" rel="nofollow">were right</a>. But there are a lot of caveats to the scores, and everyone agrees the 2D and general image quality is top notch. As the review says:<blockquote>Matrox does not see the Parhelia as being the GeForce 4 killer. Instead of going for maximum benchmark scores, the Canadian company focuses on excellent performance at maximum image quality.</blockquote>This is echoed in just about every other site, with <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1645" rel="nofollow">Anandtech summing up</a> the core advantages as:<ul><li>Games that make extensive use of quad-texturing<li>Games with lots of complex pixel/vertex shader programs<li>Fragment Anti-Aliasing<li>Surround Gaming (3 monitors)</li></li></li></li></ul>The problem being, for gamers, that just about zero games support that stuff right now. Following up - it seems that the benchmarks were right. But there are a lot of caveats to the scores, and everyone agrees the 2D and general image quality is top notch. As the review says:
Matrox does not see the Parhelia as being the GeForce 4 killer. Instead of going for maximum benchmark scores, the Canadian company focuses on excellent performance at maximum image quality.
This is echoed in just about every other site, with Anandtech summing up the core advantages as:
  • Games that make extensive use of quad-texturing
  • Games with lots of complex pixel/vertex shader programs
  • Fragment Anti-Aliasing
  • Surround Gaming (3 monitors)
The problem being, for gamers, that just about zero games support that stuff right now.

]]> by: devo http://www.bigkid.com.au/2002/06/25/parhelia-pathetic/#comment-1079 Fri, 28 Jun 2002 08:21:35 +1000 http://www.bigkid.com.au/2002/06/25/parhelia-pathetic/#comment-1079 John Carmack has <a href="http://bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/finger.pl?id=1&time=20020627230700" rel="nofollow">chimed in</a> with his views on the matter - on other upcoming cards. John Carmack has chimed in with his views on the matter - on other upcoming cards.

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