TR Forums

First Post!!!!!!!!

Well after a brief period where I ran a GF4 4200 I returned to my beloved Matrox G550. Why?

The fact is I just don't game that much anymore & I found my ole Matrox to have slightly sharper text and better defined colors at 1280x960-- my desktop resolution of choice.

I just wish they would offer up a midrange (read cheaper) version of the Parhelia.

I have to agree with you on the matrox vs G4. Matrox has the best looking 2D on all their cards. If only they could get back in the performance arena again.

Well the 3d gaming aspect of the card would be "OK" except for the serious problem with banding that is so far still unresolved.

The card would be the ultimate solution for 2d desktops IF one could be had for say...$199.99 or less. That seems to be the sweet spot for the average enthusiast budget IMHO.

Anyway so far there are two versions of the Parhelia currently for sale:

Parhelia 128mb

$354.00 (newegg.com)

&

Parhelia 256mb

$599.00 (newegg.com)


A 64 meg cheaper version has been rumored to be "coming soon" but I dunno..

The price you pay for good 2D quality. I think matrox needs to drop the price on these cards or they will be left out in the cold. For $50 more, you can get the 9700 pro which is much faster and an awesome gaming card. Maybe with a die shrink they may be able to drop the price and get better speed out of it. If they dropped the price down to $150, I would get one in a heartbeat, but not at the $350+ it is at now.

Some dummy sold me his G550 for $30.
Then he wanted it back so I gave it and $100 to him in trade for his Leadtek MyVIVO Ti4200 card.

$130 for a $175 card ain't bad.

Seriously, I don't notice much of a difference between the 2 cards at 1280x960 and none at all at 1024x768 on my Sony E200.

I miss QuickDesk and the customizable refresh rates.

Well I am a picky bastage about my 2d. Glocksman, maybe if you had the Image Archives that I do you would too?

You think it's bad in the US, check this out:

UK, http://www.dabs.com (£100=US$160)
GF4TI4200 £102
Rad9500 (non-PRO) £132
Rad9700 £207
MATROX G550 32MB £82
Parhelia 128MB retail £289

Australia, http://www.ausPCmarket.com.au (AUS$100=US$55)
GF4TI4200 $330
Rad9500PRO $440
Rad9700 $550
MATROX G550 32MB $314
MATROX Parhelia 128MB oem $924
MATROX Parhelia 256MB oem $1331

Considering the 3D perf (priority or not) that's a LOT to pay for slightly better 2D IQ!

Austin --I said "slightly" better at 1280x960. More and more folks are running 1600x1200 on their desktops and a few are going even higher than that. I bet the gap would widen beyond "slightly" when you get into those extreme resolutions.

But, I agree they really need to do something about the prices.

Good lord. That's an incredible difference to pay, even for Matrox 2D quality.

Nice to see ya Gendou!

Wow, that 256 MB Parhelia card is really expensive. I guess it will be a while before 256 comes to the desktop.

All this time WebHobbit, and only 113 posts? Congrats on the mod job.

I personally would never buy a Matrox card. One, gaming sucks from what I have seen. Second, the 2d quality I have seen vs my geforce4 ti4600 was similar. Not a big difference. Ofcourse, I only have a 17inch monitor at home, and run at 1024x768

Thanks Tateman......but just WAIT 'till you get a big monitor!

WebHobbit wrote:

Thanks Tateman......but just WAIT 'till you get a big monitor!

Yeah, I think that is gonna have to be one of my next upgrades.

I just purchased a G550 and Win 98 SE won't shut down. The resolution to this is to install the latest drivers, but I have the lastest drivers and it still doesn't shut down properly. Anyone have any advice?

Have you hit WinUpdate? I seem to remember there being several patches for Win9x shutdown issues.

Yeah Win9x was plagued but shutdown issues, esp 98SE. Search on the M$ Knowledge Base and you'll find plenty of very useful help & fixes.

Thanks for your help. It was definitely the drivers. When I uninstalled the driver I could shutdown. I finally found something that helped on the Matrox support forum http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum9/HTML/010333.html. I have an Abit VH6 motherboard. Following the advice in the last post resolved the shutdown issue.

Thanks

Cool!

A happy ending....ya gotta love that.