Benchmarks and impressions are just starting to surface regarding Matrox’s new graphics card, the Parhelia. Although hopes were high, and specifications offered hope of improved performance over existing graphics card offerings from NVidia and ATi, the Parhelia seems to fall short. I for one am quite disappointed with initial benchmarks.
The card consistently does worse in game benchmarks with respect to those of NVidia’s GeForce 4, although performance is fairly close to that of the ATi Radeon 8500LE, and the 8500 in some cases. According to theAnandtech benchmarks,
“In the end it comes down to what sort of a value Parhelia brings to the table. At its ESP of $399, Parhelia doesn’t deliver performance that’s equivalent to what a $399 card should provide. […] If you look at the performance under Unreal Tournament 2003, the Parhelia is entirely too slow compared to the GeForce4; and we’re not even taking into account the fact that in the very near future ATI’s R300 will be introduced with much higher performance under Unreal Tournament 2003.”
With respect to games of the future, it seems the Parhelia just can’t outperform the cards from NVidia and ATi. To me, this is of much more importance than benchmarks of games of the past, such as Quake 3. John Carmack, the infamous id Software programmer also seemed to be disappointed with the Parhelia. In a.plan file update, mentions he’s disappointed with the performance of the card, and although it will run Doom, it won’t be able to compete with NVidia or ATi. This seems unfortunate, as I was hoping the card would generally run games of the future well, especially with the price tag it has.
