[xcel]

Hi All:


___Some may not remember when the Matrox G400 was king of the HTPC graphics cards but rumors are hot and heavy as to what they are going to release to the public … Matrox’s new DirectX 8.1 complaint card w/ a 256-bit memory bus should be plenty fast for us non-championship gamers but it’s the overlay control that I am looking for from them … OpenGL has always been a problem for them so they had better have fixed that problem as well. They have always had the best 2D DT in the business and had a very good overlay although it was unconfigurable way back when. With the new design and configurable shaders, you can almost guarantee an adjustable overlay. Give me an adjustable but accurate overlay with 10-bit or higher DAC’s along with Matrox’s extremely stable clock and you will receive some of my dollars There was discussion about 36-bit internal processing in the G400’s core so we can be sure to see the same or better with their latest, I am sure. The only negative is that they will probably be very expensive. Let us all hope a few of the Matrox engineers have been silently lurking amongst us.


___For more information, take a look at this thread in Ace’s Hardware General Message Board. I saw this in a link from Hard OCP .


___Good Luck


___Wayne R. Gerdes

___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.

___ [email protected]

 

[Li On]

Hi Wayne,


Thanks for the update! Besides a tweakable (gamma?) overlay with excellent picture quality (color space convertion), the software DVD player needed to support the new HW accel functions too.


Since current DirextX mainly use DXVA video accel, does it means if the display card driver has the proper DXVA hook, the DXVA enabled software DVD player can automatically use the display card DXVA functions such as HWMC, iDCT, adaptive video deinterlace? And if so what these DXVA functions will the new Matrox card provided?


Without the proper support from the software players, any powerful display card is not going anywhere...


regards,


Li On

 

[xcel]

Hi Li On:


___It is nice to see you participating in the forums actively again. I look forward to your PQ reviews with the next generation cards in particular. For everyone else, I believe Li On was one of the two individuals that found the Radeon’s to have a higher quality overlay thus making it the card of choice for the HTPC’er and dethroning the GeForce almost overnight after initial release.


___And now back to our regularly scheduled programming I cannot say for sure if this follows along with the DXVA comments but I believe DirectX 9 has some DXVA related interactions in it. If so, you can expect almost all future VC’s to either meet the specs or simply disappear. Given Matrox’s past problems with OpenGL, who knows what they will release but there is supposedly some DirectX 9 capability in this card out of the box. Having read the 3D Labs reviews from both Anandtech and Toms HW yesterday, it appears that it will take a .13-micron core DIE shrink to finally fully meet the DirectX 9 spec’s which may come later than we had all hoped. Maybe the GeForce5’s? will be the all inclusive card but currently, the Radeon’s have unstable clocks and driver issues with the 8500’s as we all already know and the GeForce’s have not implemented an adjustable overlay w/ the properly implemented MC’s correctly nor have they given a damn about them for us apparently. Nvidia also has OEM’s playing willy nilly with the output filtering specs (this will be cured with the next generation GeForce’s) and the internal precision is lacking in comparison to the Radeon’s. In my case, I have become weary of the lowly “LEâ€/7200 ATI cards for my gaming needs. All the ATI cards but the 8500 Radeon’s simply s$%k in this regard I simply aspire for something a bit more advanced in pure performance terms for my Flight Sim/Gaming needs as well as a better CSC with higher levels of precision to remove both banding (ala GeForce), graininess, and Swarminess/Compression artifacts for everyones HTPC needs.


___Good Luck


___Wayne R. Gerdes

___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.

___ [email protected]

 

[Esben]

I read some of the pages regarding Parhelia at the Matroxusers forum some time ago as well.


Perhaps Matrox has a chance in the non-2D market afterall


Otherwise I'm just sticking with the 4. generation NVIDIA cards.

 

[xortam]

xcel ... A little birdie told me that you can expect professional grade OpenGL with the Matrox Parhelia cards. Matrox is really going all out on this new release.

 

[pivot]

Here are some official details; http://vr-zone.com/#2348 .


"TV-Out, DVD/HDTV Decoder"

"Triple Ultra Sharp-II 400 MHz RAMDAC"

 

[Frank Terpstra]

 http://www.digit-life.com/articles/_...es_/index.html


This article offers some interesting information on the new card

10 bit dvd and hdtv decoding 10 bit dacs and 10bit-> 10bit table for gamma correction. Add to that a very flat frequency response on two(!) outputs (like in the geforce4 mx 2 equal fullblown dacs) and a 10 bit tv out.

Sounds very promissing for htpc, i wonder how many tabs the scaler will have.


Frank Terpstra

 

[Shawn Pilichis]

The new Matrox better have a substantial improvement in PQ to make me convert my DVD archives over. With all the movies and batch files I have been creating to create my ultimate media server I would be a little hesitant to undo all that and change gears so soon after starting. After investing time into TheaterTek and the variances between WinDVD and PowerDVD some DVD software somewhere will have come around that will utilize and tap into the Matox card specificaly.


I hope members post reports when the time comes!

 

[Burned&Warped]

...and what is the price tag?

 

[[email protected]]

 http://jc.planetpei.com/parhelia/
http://www.pcpop.com.cn/read.asp?id=518&page=17


64MB version is about $299 and 128MB version is about $399.

 

[chap]

Is there a release time table yet?


Edit: Either someone changed the topic while I wasn't looking or I'm an idiot

 

[TheLongshot]

After being disappointed by ATI, I kept hoping that Matrox, who have been in the past the master of 2D graphics, would reenter the market somewhere. I've always thought that they would have the best potential for a card that would speak to us. Let's hope that they come through on that.


Jason

 

[xortam]

One draw back of the Parhelia cards for HTPCs is that it will require a HSF. The cards will also be a bit pricey but that shouldn't deter most of you. Perhaps they will produce a card w/o a HSF when they later start using .13 production.

 

[TheLongshot]

Quote:

Originally posted by xortam One draw back of the Parhelia cards for HTPCs is that it will require a HSF.

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "HSF"?


Jason

 

[xortam]

HSF is Heat Sink Fan. Here are some pictures of the alpha level board. This is not how the final product will appear.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/pc/do...4/matrox_1.jpg

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos...IMG0004661.jpg

 

[Namlemez]

That's impressive looking.


What ATi and Nvidia do to produce passively cooled cards is rather similar to what Matrox could do...release "low-end" cards that are simply the big ones, underclock. Thats how my Radeon LE works and I run my Athlon XP underclock so I can use a dinky fan in a small case on it. Pushing 20% less polygons / second doesn't really matter to someone watching a DVD


If they aren't releasing a low-end, simply get the Matrox, underclock it and see how hot it runs. Only thing that is needed is the ability to change the core and/or memory speeds.

 

[xortam]

Again, those photos are of an alpha level card ... not the final product.


The Parhelia is a next-gen graphics card that uses a programmable GPU which is fully packed with functionality on a .15 micron process. Expect these cards to run hot. Future revs of this chip (maybe by summer end?) will be done in .13 micron which will allow for additional functionality and cooler operation. There will be several cards produced based on this chip ranging from a high-end gamer/business card up to a 256 MB professional CAD/CAM card (probably several months later). Matrox will release all the info on the Parhelia chip tomorrow morning, 09h00 EST 5/14. They will have several .pdf files and demos available for download which will cover the new technologies and features.


/edit

Pro card should have said 256 MB vs. 128 MB.

/edit

 

[xcel]

Hi Xortam:


___Thank you for the inside look at the card as well as some of the details. I don’t like the large GPU HS combo on your Alpha card but this group of HTPC zealots are masters of quiet cooling solutions I can bet you and Matrox will have a great quiet and cool solution for us by release date as well. Even if they didn’t, give me a card like this 64 MB Parhelia, and I will find a way to cool it quietly … I can also get by with losing a PCI slot or 2 so that doesn’t bother me that much but lets hope for a more elegant Matrox designed solution by the time the Gold’s are released. Your going to force us to water cooling one way or the other, aren’t you


___The other item I find really intriguing is the possibility of dual monitor outputs at different resolutions without the hassle and poor configuration of the current dual heads. Matrox had a great dual head utility for their older cards and after seeing that Flight Sim across 3 monitors, I have the feeling that this is the final solution for those of us that truly need duals. 400 MHz DAC’s for each head will be so great! Now on to the overlay. Who knows how many Taps but the spec’s sound encouraging to at least match the Radeon’s overlay. I guess we will have to see about this item however.


___Shawn, don’t worry … Once the Matrox’s internals are scoped, you simply readjust TheaterTek’s overlay to match the 0 ire setup on the Matrox. 3 minutes of work, tops … I hope.


___Thanks again to Xortam and all for the links and insights. Now lets hope for a new “Best in Class†VC to arrive without so much as a complaint except for the price. It is a bit pricey but maybe $250.00 from the Pricewatch vendors for the 64 MB version within a month or two after initial release. Namlemez, I can only hope Ashley can tap this cores clock so we can cool the darn thing down passively. And I was going to purchase a GeForce Ti 4200 for my sons 10th most welcome and blessed birthday. I guess he will be receiving some Star Wars games and Action figures instead …


___Wayne R. Gerdes

___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.

___ [email protected]

 

[xortam]

You're welcome for the info xcel ... but I must clarify that I don't work for Matrox. I'm a G400 Max user (since its release) who happens to spend his entire day on the MURC forums where I've gotten most of this info. I also happened to have heard some details from some well placed "birdies". I've only mentioned what has been written (at least once) publicly. There are a lot of articles starting to appear around the globe now that its 5/14 GMT though the official launch will be at 09h00 EST. Tomorrow is going to be a very exciting day for us Matrox fans.

 

[xortam]

Some video specs being posted:


PC Theater DVD Playback

10-bit DVD playback

10-bit advanced filtering and scaling

10-bit DVD output via TV encoder

Independent gamma and proc-amp controls

Programmable overlay processor

Video overlay with programmable proc-amp and independent gamma correction

Video mixing engine in overlay processor

High-quality horizontal and vertical scaling

Up to 4x4 filter kernel with programmable filtering coefficients

Full-speed bi-cubic filter

Fully VMR-complaint front-end scaling

Advanced de-interlacing with sub-pixel positioning

VIP2.0 compliant video input port


DualHead-HF Display Technology

Fourth-generation DualHead

Dual integrated 400MHz 10-bit RAMDACs

Dual independent RGB outputs

Up to 2048x1536 @32bpp on each RGB output

Support for two digital TMDS transmitters

Dual independent DVI outputs (up to 1920x1200 on each output)

Single dual-link DVI output (up to 2560x2048)

Integrated 10-bit high-fidelity TV/video encoder

NTSC/PAL output

Direct encoding of native interlaced YUV

TripleHead Desktop

Support for 3rd RGB output

Three display desktop at up to 3840x1024 @ 32bpp

10-bit gamma correction

Per-layer gamma and color correction at full speed

Dual independent, gamma correctable hardware overlays

Support for true multi-display under Microsoft Windows 2000/XP

Hardware accelerated multi-screen OpenGL support

UltraSharp Display Output Technology

Highest-quality analog, digital and TV output

Ultra-crisp display quality at high frequencies

Highest-quality design, electronics and filters

5th-order output filters

Highest-fidelity frequency and transient response for optimal signal quality

High signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with super-low PLL Jitter