Matrox Parhelia-512 - The Challenger

2D And Board Features

The exact structure of the new Matrox graphics cards is still unknown. What's sure is that Matrox will provide the cards with a third Ramdac integrated on the board. The photo below shows how a special adapter allows up to three monitors to be connected to the card.

Matrox calls this mode "Triple Head Desktop." Dual-head mode, traditional with Matrox, is also possible. The maximum analog resolution in dual-head mode is 2048x1535@32bpp. With digital displays, resolution is up to 1920x1200@32bpp. The maximum resolution in triple head mode is 3840x1024@32bpp.

Full sized 3072x768 pixel PNG image (1.3 MB)

Ultra-Sharp Display

Matrox provides Parhelia boards with new circuits that, along with the Ramdacs and the high-quality filters, are supposed to set new standards in VGA signal quality.

Blurriness at high resolutions and the ghosting effects that appear with a few of the GeForce 4 Ti cards should not occur with the new Matrox cards. Even the TV-out is supposed to benefit from these circuits.

In its own whitepaper, Matrox makes direct comparisons to a GeForce 4 (PNY Verto GF 4600) and a Radeon 8500. However, because we're unable to verify the measurements at this time, we will not take benchmark results into consideration here.