The Matrox Parhelia Report by John Carmack

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The executive summary is that the Parhelia will run Doom, but it is not performance competitive with Nvidia or ATI.

Driver issue remain, so it is not perfect yet, but I am confident that Matrox will resolve them.

The performance was really disappointing for the first 256 bit DDR card. I tried to set up a "poster child" case that would stress the memory subsystem above and beyond any driver or triangle level inefficiencies, but I was unable to get it to ever approach the performance of a GF4.

The basic hardware support is good, with fragment flexibility better than GF4 (but not as good as ATI 8500), but it just doesn't keep up in raw performance.
With a die shrink, this chip could probably be a contender, but there are probably going to be other chips out by then that will completely eclipse this generation of products.

None of the special features will be really useful for Doom:

The 10 bit color framebuffer is nice, but Doom needs more than 2 bits of destination alpha when a card only has four texture units, so we can't use it.

Anti aliasing features are nice, but it isn't all that fast in minimum feature mode, so nobody is going to be turning on AA. The same goes for "surround gaming". While the framerate wouldn't be 1/3 the base, it would still probably be cut in half.

Displacement mapping. Sigh. I am disappointed that the industry is still pursuing any quad based approaches. Haven't we learned from the stellar success of 3DO, Saturn, and NV1 that quads really suck? In any case, we can't use any geometry amplification scheme (including ATI's truform) in conjunction with stencil shadow volumes.

News source: John Carmack .plan @ Webdog

View: the AnandTech UT2k3 demo / Parhelia test

Today MSN announced it had signed up for services in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. This gives the service a potential user base of 24 million across Europe. This figure represents the total number of total subscribers for all participating telcos.

Last December, Microsoft signed similar deals to give mobile access to its Hotmail users in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. Although Microsoft doesn't give out the detailed figures, users for the service are thought to number in the tens of thousands.

John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum said the deal showed Microsoft was struggling to interest the larger mobile carriers in the technology. He said: "Microsoft has a much bigger leverage with the smaller carriers, and a lot of the carriers are still focused on multi-media messaging on GPRS as the future."

#1 Kanecorp on 26 Jun 2002 - 15:20

i'm a little confused...i thought the Matrox Parhelia was a million times more powerful than any card out there? Those benchmarks show it slower than the GF4 4200

(1 reply) #2 kairon on 26 Jun 2002 - 15:29

Trolls / *Sigh*

Last edited by 9315 on 27 Jun 2002 - 14:52

#2.1 [saint dark] on 26 Jun 2002 - 15:31

whatever, the guy up there dont know the difference between the build engine and the doom III engine

Last edited by 4652 on 26 Jun 2002 - 17:40

(12 replies) #3 [saint dark] on 26 Jun 2002 - 15:30

if carmack says it, then its true nobody can deny that he´s one of the best programmer ever at least in the graphics engine department and he know what he´s talking about

#3.1 Tom Servo on 26 Jun 2002 - 15:42

Then again, his engines are only fast coz it's minimum feature. I prefer engines like Geomod, LithTech, UT2003 or whatever, coz they also carry special features, like Karma for UT2003 or dynamic environment damage in Geomod and all. Such stuff is non-existent, even in the Doom3 engine. The special features is the stuff that impacts the speed of the engines.

#3.2 [saint dark] on 26 Jun 2002 - 15:46

I agree, there´s not much features in the engine, but he makes the most beautifull engines nobody cant deny it

#3.3 kairon on 26 Jun 2002 - 15:53

Well who gives a crap about you?I said a statement, you don't like it goto hell.Your like his #1 fan or something, you must live up in his ass

#3.4 [saint dark] on 26 Jun 2002 - 16:34

and when you know whats a graphic engine, and what you´re talking about then come her and talk, otherwise I still dont care

#3.5 kairon on 26 Jun 2002 - 17:16

I'm knowledgable enough about graphics engines I'd say, go back to trying to find some friends, because you obviously do not get out much, come back here when you get a life, please?

#3.6 [saint dark] on 26 Jun 2002 - 17:39

and why is so obvious mr idi0t? Im not the one who come here and start talking about how carmacks tries to know everything and if you know sooo much about graphic engines then whats your f*cking point about trolling? what carmack stated is matter of fact, nothing more, now go back to bed dumbass

One more thing, try to debate every point given by carmack, if you can give us a good reason of why he´s wrong then Im gonna shut my mouth

Last edited by 4652 on 26 Jun 2002 - 17:45

#3.7 kairon on 26 Jun 2002 - 17:49

Oh, ok whatever dubass, trolling?What is that your little 2 year old made up word?OO Your so smart, you obviously have no life because you reply instantly, i assume you dont know what freedom of speech is, go back to your little dirty hole wherever and remember who knows more then you. Now please take this off the site and PM me about your problems if you dare, I don't really care.Prick.

#3.8 [saint dark] on 26 Jun 2002 - 17:55

Im still waiting for your great wisdom about graphics engines, I want to see you debating the points stated in the news first but is funny how you rather to reply to a single word than anything else btw, this is not about freedom of speech, freedom of speech come when something is debateable, but here where´re seeing facts, proved facts, now try to reply like the man that you´re, not like the child that you´re trying to be

#3.9 kairon on 26 Jun 2002 - 19:43

I don't need to prove crap to you and your mom, all I'm saying is this guy is a good programmer but that doesn't mean he has to critique stuff. I'm glad you like how i reply to certain stuff, i hope I don't bother you to much with that,we all know what the parhelia is like and dont need a guy feeding it straight to us, or in your case anything he say goes up your butt, you seriously need a life man, you spend all day home making dumb wallpapers I bet (i really don't care)

It's you trolls that get people pissed at this forum, i mean, i said something and i specifically said it was my opinion and you jumped on what i said, get off your high horse man because no one likes it

#3.10 Neobond on 27 Jun 2002 - 09:38

kairon: shutup..

#3.11 kairon on 27 Jun 2002 - 14:48

Pathetic, he had to get you to go stick up for him...hell, pathetic,pathetic, pathetic

#3.12 Tom Servo on 27 Jun 2002 - 18:32

lol, ever considered that the admin MIGHT read his own website, and MAYBE stumble over this thread, SEEING this flamewar emerging and then TELLS you to shut up?

(1 reply) #4 Fanon on 26 Jun 2002 - 17:28

The problem witht he Parhelia is it's texture filter. It's rather small and creates a bottleneck. If they fixed that, and had awesome drivers, the Parhelia would take the cake and eat it all up.

#4.1 Fonze on 26 Jun 2002 - 19:26

the problem is the clock speeds, you OC a Geforce 4 and ur frame rate goes up. the parhelia needs a higher clock speed!

#5 lx qu33n on 26 Jun 2002 - 17:52

well now i know that i have the fastest consumer home-owned card around, unless i want to get a corporate million-pipline card..... not worth it.... well lets see how they do in the coming months, this isnt the end of it.

#6 iomayho on 26 Jun 2002 - 19:51

i'm sooooo dissapointed.........

i was hoping that the graphic card industry get a little more competitive but seems like only Ati and nVidia still survives.......

#7 Spectre on 26 Jun 2002 - 23:21

the doom 3 engine features physics that not only rival those in UT2003, but they're, most likely, even better (if you don't believe me, read the E3 interviews and watch the leaked video clip) much like the newest unreal engine, it also features automatic lip-sync for the characters and it has an in-game map editor, which the unreal engine DOESN'T have

(1 reply) #8 Vlad on 27 Jun 2002 - 06:39

Man, do some of you people have John Carmack shrines in your closet at home or what? It sounds like saint dark is a little too fond of Mr. Carmack, if you know what I mean...

#8.1 kairon on 27 Jun 2002 - 14:50

Yea, saint dark is like..living up Mr. Carmack's ass, if you know what I mean..

#9 aaron901 on 27 Jun 2002 - 08:01

well, i believe the professional disappointed

#10 Born2kill on 27 Jun 2002 - 08:41

I believe in Carmack as well. I believe he's a true professional, and he knows what he's talking about.

#11 Redmak on 27 Jun 2002 - 09:32

Carmack knows what he's talking about. he's an expert in this area (among others obviously) wether you like his engines or not. I happen to love his work (no shrine yet but I'm thinking about it)

#12 sorlag on 27 Jun 2002 - 09:49

well, parphelia was designed for rendering workstations, and not for gaming, but some newsposters and magazines misunderstood it. parphelia,wildcat..etc are not for gaming.

#13 Spectre on 27 Jun 2002 - 10:23

#12: uh ... where does it say that?

#14 Fanon on 28 Jun 2002 - 22:58

#7, also note that the Unreal Warfare engine isn't even finished. Yes, games are coming out that are sporting the engine, but it is an unfinished engine. The final will be released with whatever Epic is brewing for their Unreal title next year.

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