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Parhelia Weakness?

by Steve Gibson, Jun 18, 2002 11:59am PDT
Related Topics – Matrox

Well the Matrox Parhelia has been announced as being available in all of 12 days, but we still havent seen any actual benchmarks etc. Word is that those benchmarks will be hitting the streets around the 25th, but HardOCP has something you might want to read in the mean time:

Matrox said they would not be sending us a review unit on the same schedule as other sites and then revealed some interesting reasons. Matrox stated that due to the nature of our testing that they were not “comfortable” with sending us a Parhelia card. They seemed to think that we would be a bit too rough on the Parhelia and possibly show some issues that the 'enthusiast' might identify as weaknesses. Logic would dictate that this of course means that Matrox thinks that the hardware review sites getting the first round of Parhelias would not expose those weaknesses. I had to take that as a compliment. Still, you might keep this in mind when you see the initial reviews hit and we will of course make sure you are aware of them as we always want to keep our readers up to date with current information. [snip]


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Comments

39 Threads* | 178 Comments
  • #101
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    By: Ride-My-Rocket This person is cool! x
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    Whoops -- struck out that last post par accident. Can somebody nuke #100?

    -----------------------------------

    Jesus........ some people are getting so damn bent out of shape about this HOCP shiznizzle. First of all, is it even possible for HOCP to "whine" if they got the card in the end? No.

    And even after they received word that Matrox would be shipping them a card, HOCP said that for the reasons mentioned throughout the article, AND in spite of the fact they'll be getting a review copy, they're NOT gonna review the card until it hits retail. Why? Because the board isn't finalized yet, and because the way / reasons Matrox distributes its test boards does not lend itself to credible benchmarking.

    I actually thought HOCP's stance was good stuff -- more than anything else, they brought up the issue of why Matrox wouldn't ship them a card. Granted, the card might not be as high-end a piece of work as the Radeon or GeForce4, but that's why we have the whole "value" and "mid-range" class of hardware. And if Matrox wasn't confident that their hardware could pass muster, they should have simply kept the boards in-house while they finished tweaking it, THEN shipped them out to reviewers.

    Whether or not Matrox opts to send HOCP a review board is up to them. But the explanation that Matrox gave -- that they believed HOCP would be unduly harsh on their board -- was insufficient. Benchmarks are benchmarks -- among similar test environments, they'll always average out to the same thing. So what would have given Matrox pause? Perhaps because HOCP does a more thorough job in evaluating boards than other sites......... that's not a fact, btw, that's a guess.

    Anyway, believe what you want -- I thought Frag did a pretty good job of arguing HOCP's point, but clearly there are some people on this board who want to sensationalize this issue. As HOCP already said, the best course of action (now and always) is to wait until the card hits the market and then test it, so that there's no PR blustering to hide behind when it's time to see what the Parhelia can (or can't) do.
    Jun 18, 2002 2:15pm PDT

    Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.

  • #162
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    By: abrasion This person is cool! x
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    I read a preview about the upcoming cards which placed parhelia not much better than a 4600.

    No benchmarks, I do believe it was either speculation or leaked (Without figures only words saying "roughly around") - unfortunately this was a few weeks back, but I sincerely think Matrox are fucking up with this one - for that price anyhow, not with R300 coming soon and NV28 soonish also - they NEED a cheaper one in the 299 or less range which is acceptable for gamers and a cut down one for 199 or less - otherwise it will be ignored, so they won't sell money so they won't make drivers due to less demand so they end up basically burning a lot of people for 399 and 499$ US.

    Definately avoiding this one until a Carmack comment or a damn good review.
    (plus I just got a 128mb GF4 ti 4200 shipped for 191.50$ US - that SHOULD last me at least 12 months if I overclock it and pair it with a nice cpu)
    Jun 18, 2002 5:18pm PDT