Matrox Parhelia 512?

murder by syntaxmurder by syntax
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Does anybody know if Matrox is working on a Mac-version of the new Parhelia cards?



The Parhelia

source: <a href="http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia512/home.cfm"; target="_blank">MATROX Parhelia512</a>



The revolutionary new Matrox Parhelia-512 high-fidelity GPU delivers a new level of visual quality, excellent performance and a wide range of innovative technologies. Parhelia-512 is an 80 million transistor, 0.15µ, 2D, 3D and DVD/video GPU with a true 256-bit DDR memory interface providing over 20 gigabytes per second (GB/s) of raw memory bandwidth. This AGP* device supports unified frame buffers up to 256MB in size and integrates two RAMDACs, a TV encoder and support for dual TMDS transmitters. Designed to surpass the expectations of the most demanding professional users and PC enthusiasts, Parhelia-512 has three major goals: to dramatically increase the quality of all aspects of visualization, to sustain high performance for the most complex and demanding graphics rendering and to deliver a number of innovative and substantive features.



This card would look nice in a new powermac I think

AGP 8x , 512bit GPU , 256bit DDR ram (128 mb and prob 256mb in future)

The card supports 3 displays

And out-performs every other card by nVidia or ATI :cool:

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    cindercinder Posts: 381member
    if I remember correctly, their response to this question was "oh, they still make Macs?"
  • Reply 2 of 8
    murder by syntaxmurder by syntax Posts: 14member
    M but they do...

    So would apple not be able to convince them to make them for mac to?
  • Reply 3 of 8
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    This is just announced.



    Expect upcoming nv30-nv35 and R300 product fron nVidia and ATI to compete quite nicely.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    BTW, if some mod is reading a message from me above, I dunno WTF happened, but I was given a very abnormal failure??? warning. Now I look at this thread and it says I posted, but I don't see my post? weird.



    Anyway, at the risk of doubleposting my phantom 1st post:



    This Matrox card isn't shipping yet, and regardless of what they say you don't know when it will be available untill you can actually go to the store and buy one yourself.



    By the time they release it or shortly after, you can count on ATI and nVidia having comparable product. However, the more the merrier.



    2-d pros would, I think, greatly appreciate the greater colour depth on offer 2-10-10-10, 32bit color versus the 6-8-8-8, 32bit currently used (which is really just 24bit colour with a few extra bits for control).
  • Reply 5 of 8
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    8-8-8-6 doesn't add up to 32...but yes, it's pretty much 24-bit color with 8 bits wasted.



    ---



    Don't expect a Mac product using the Parhelia chip...



    [ 05-23-2002: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
  • Reply 6 of 8
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    Ooops, my bad. Wasn't thinking.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    bug hunterbug hunter Posts: 3member
    I work in the high-end 3D graphics software market and follow graphics boards all the time. I would love to see the Parhelia make it to the Mac, but I don't think it will happen.



    The one hope I see is that the card is being made by 3DLabs (who was just bought by Creative). 3DLabs took over the OpenGL 2.0 initiative from SGI and is the main company behind the OpenGL 2.0 spec proposal. With OS X ?Jaguar? relying on OpenGL even more that any previous Mac OS and Apple sitting on the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (see link below) along with 3Dlabs, NVIDIA, and ATI who knows what could happen. If Jaguar truly has OpenGL as its visual base now, and knowing what video card spec Apple has put forward for running it, it seems likely that Apple will have some kind of new graphics card in their new pro systems.



    The one interesting bit that I just read about was some journalist let it slip that NVIDIA was going to release a new graphics card in the August time frame. If you look at the last two NVIDIA card releases (GeForce 3 and 4) they both débuted on the Mac and were then released on PCs anywhere from a few days to a month later. Could there be a new NVIDIA graphics card debuting in a new Mac at MWNY? I think signs point to yes. If it isn?t a NVIDIA card I think it will be a next generation card from one of the other players.



    That?s just my two cents worth.



    - Bug Hunter

    <a href="http://www.opengl.org/developers/about/arb.html"; target="_blank">OpenGL ARB</a>
  • Reply 8 of 8
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,458member
    Both ATI and nVidia have been making noises about their next-gen cards, but haven't needed to publicly announce anything yet. They've been talking them up to developers, and of course Microsoft has been finalizing the DX9 spec -- which requires hardware on the order of the Matrox Parhelia and the new 3DLabs chip. OpenGL 2 is trying to play catch up or leap frog with DX9, but only time will tell if the ARB can move fast enough. Sure hope so because I'd like to play with one of these awesome boards on my Mac under OSX.



    It'll be interesting to see if Apple tries to leverage this new hardware's capabilities in Quartz Extreme. 3D software will be out of this world, however. You have to see what these things can do, and even then you won't believe it.
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