Parhelia - Voodoo5

[Deeko]

Hmm...the situation with the Parhelia reminds me of the situation with the Voodoo5 when it was released. It was slower than the competition(although the Voodoo wasn't as far behind), but it had far better image quality and FSAA that put the others to shame. It lacked some new features that are a given today(occlusion culling - parhelia/hardware t&l - V5). Core speed was slow. Memory was slower but didn't need to be faster due to a wider bus. Weird, isn't it?

 

[spanky]

quick, someone play the twilight zone theme!

 

[MTVsucks]

funny

 

[CubicZirconia]

Yeah, and look what happened to the voodoo 5 (ok this isn't really fair since 3dfx went out of business, but still...).

 

[Woodchuck2000]

That's a ridiculous comparison! All the people anticipating the VooDoo5 said it was gonna thrash nVidia and make their latest card into a paperweight whereas the Matrox lovers anticipating the parhelia never said... oh wait... forget it.

 

[dude]

Shouldn't we at least wait a few months before declaring the Parhelia... never mind.

Man, if it runs that slow compared to the other cards, how badly would this card run in 3 head mode?

 

[gregor7777]

Originally posted by: dude
Shouldn't we at least wait a few months before declaring the Parhelia... never mind.

Man, if it runs that slow compared to the other cards, how badly would this card run in 3 head mode?

According to Carmack, between 33-50% worse.

 

[Angus]

interesting point

 

[aswedc]

Matrox has other areas of their business to support them should the Parhelia not be successful in the gaming market (high end video, networking, ect.) 3dfx did not.

 

[Rand]

The biggest difference is 3dfx was losing money rapidly and was far in doubt before the V4/5 was ever released, their share-holders were on their backs as it was.
3dfx was pretty much assuredly dead even if the V4/5 was a huge success almost over night.


Matrox on the other-hand privately held corporation they don't need anywhere near the income that nVidia/ATi and the like need to stay competitive. Their a tightly owned and controlled company.
Matrox's largest market is probably that for medical imaging, air-traffic controller displays, financial market analysts etc.
Matrox has a pretty tough stronghold in the Digital Video Editing and film making market also, and are extremely competitive in said market with a lot of influence.

The biggest threat to Matrox is Appian, not nVidia/ATi as was the case with 3dfx.
From a market standpoint I see precious few similarities between their respective conditions.

 

[CubicZirconia]

I wasn't trying to imply that Matrox is going to go out of business or even that the Parhelia won't be succesful, I was only pointing something out.