Attack Out Of The Blind Spot: Matrox Parhelia-512

Anisotropic Filering Performance, Continued

In Direct 3D as well, the Ti 4600 with 16tap anisotropic filtering (LV2) is faster than the Parhelia in standard mode.

Under Direct 3D, you get a different picture. Parhelia is a nose faster than NVIDIA's GeForce 4. When anisotropic filtering is activated at 1024 x 768, NVIDIA's top product loses approximately 46% at LV8 and 28% at LV2. By contrast, Parhelia loses only 10%. Unfortunately, the frame rate of the Matrox card is too low, so you can't really take advantage of this.

Conclusion: GeForce 4 gives you significantly better quality with anisotropic filtering than Parhelia. Not only that, but in OpenGL it delivers better performance even despite its better display mode (64tap vs. 16tap of Parhelia). Tested at the same level of quality, the Ti 4600 is clearly superior.