Matrox Parhelia 512?
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:
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
So would apple not be able to convince them to make them for mac to?
Expect upcoming nv30-nv35 and R300 product fron nVidia and ATI to compete quite nicely.
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).
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Don't expect a Mac product using the Parhelia chip...
[ 05-23-2002: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
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>
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.