Another GC Threat: AVS + Parhelia

[Magic.X]

I'm planning to buy a Parhelia because of the VJ'ing possibillities with AVS. Triple Head on one Graphic card is just too cool (or dual DVI instead).
Does anyone has experiences with Parhelia, especially how the multiple out works?

[shreyas_potnis]

i dont know anything about video cards. wait I already said something like that before...so theres no point going into detail...post pump

[anubis2003]

That does look nice.
http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/home.cfm
Never used the card, but dual-head on my GeForce4 is nice. Triple-head is even better. This card looks like it might be good for gaming as well - does anyone know if it would be better than the GeForce FX for gaming?

[legohead]

Triple head...drll...

You'd need a hell of a system to be able to use triple head to any advantage (imagine running resolume/vjo/avs and some realtime 3d bs on your comp at the same time...)

Have you got an 8XAGP motherboard?

The TV out looks pretty good also as I lose a bit of quality/sharpness on my radeon. I'd go it.

[Magic.X]

No only 4*

You can even do Suround Gaming!

But thats not the point, just imagine:

-Screen one: AVS Edit Window + additional control tool
-Screen two: AVS Fullscreen Preview
-Screen three: Output to Beamer

*drool*

[Tuggummi]

does anyone know if it would be better than the GeForce FX for gaming?

According to some tests i have read on magazines, the parhelia is a decent gaming card also, but it doesn't even come near the already existing Radeon 9700 Pro and if FX is suppose to beat Radeon in speed then...

[Magic.X]

We ok, gam ing quality is another point but with fracment anti aliasing it's just below GF4.6, which i consider as fairly enough 3d power.

And anyway, Tug, you don't need a "Gaming" Card, this would only keep you form AVS'ing

[legohead]

Screen one: hotlist running avs (nice)
Screen two: sound triggered video looper (flowmotion) live mixing avs
Screen three: synced output to beamer scr1&2 (flowmotion'wka wkow' *porno sound track noise*

actually I had a quick play on this system last night:

p4 2.6ghz
8XAGP Asus mboard
2.0 gig ddr pc 400
scsi raid 0
cannopus dvstorm

[jheriko]

Originally posted by anubis2003
That does look nice.
http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/parhelia/home.cfm
Never used the card, but dual-head on my GeForce4 is nice. Triple-head is even better. This card looks like it might be good for gaming as well - does anyone know if it would be better than the GeForce FX for gaming?

Basically, NO. The GeForce FX is the best graphics card currently available on the market, the Radeon 9700 and 9800 outperform it in some tests but the FX has stacks of features that these two cards do not. Expect to see the FX and its offspring grow in popularity as games are made to utilise the features. The Radeon 9900 will be the only real threat to the GeForce FX, with a similar and only slightly smaller set of features but higher speeds it should give ATI the time they need to build a much more powerful generation of Radeons enabling them to finish crushing nVidia into subatomic particles. In my opinion all other should just back out of the graphics industry or switch to manufacturing ATI/nVidia based cards.

btw for the record my specs are:

IP4 3.06GHz
Radeon 9000 Pro 128MB
256MB DDR2700(Dual Channel PC333)
140GB HDD Space

On my 'shopping' list at the moment is the Verto GeForce FX 5800 Ultra and 3.0GB RAM. I expect I'll have them in about two months.

Before you start planning out your multiple display arrangements let me first inform you of three major problems you will encounter:

1.) AVS fullscreen will kill anything running on the other two displays or make it unusable by stopping whenever click the mouse.
2.) Expect difficulties in making windows output to three monitors simultaneously... I had enormous difficulties in getting my two monitors and tv to work together, so many difficulties that i just gave up.
3.) The overlay will only be drawn on one screen meaning that some fullscreen video displays (Windows Media Player or Winamp3 for example) will only be able to output to the primary display device.

The TV out looks pretty good also as I lose a bit of quality/sharpness on my radeon.

If you mean through your TV out then blame it on the TV, not many people seem to be aware of it but TV quality is actually shit and blurry (it works well for video because you will not often have one pixel or two pixel wide lines or small text displayed on the screen like a monitor will) this is because the TV beam isn't so precise, which is why TVs are much cheaper than monitors, they are built to much lower standards. Add to that the interlacing and the large amount of black in between the pixels and the result is the inability to read standard sized Windows text on your TV in resolutions above 640x480.

[anubis2003]

The reason you couldn't get your 2 monitors and tv to work together is probably because that card is double headed(I believe). You can only output to two displays at once.

Thanks for your view on this, Jheriko. I didn't know exactly how good this would be at gaming - figured it was probably mainly for doing extreme 3Dgraphics editing, but I wasn't sure.

Perhaps the biggest reason tv's are hard to read off of is because they only have a max resolution of 640x480(or is it 800x600?). Coupled with interlacing, it can be very difficult to read small text. The HDTV's do work well though.

[legohead]

No the deinterlacing/colour conversion stuffs the output resolution (which varies whether its NTSC or PAL output). I can run dvd's through it no problems - but the card converts 32bit colour to pal output which drops sharpness. Perhaps a scan converter issue but I haven't had time too look into it too much.
Either way all these options look better than my radeon 7500. Matrox have a much better reputation for professional graphics solutions and linear editing - Ive never had a problem with one and you're probably not going to need the 3d grunt of a radeon for 2d/video outputs.

[anubis2003]

Yeah, but if your doing a lot of gaming, then that will be very useful.

[legohead]

lol
I haven't played a game since... god knows when! Theres too much fun stuff to do!

[anubis2003]

Um, like what? Games are Grrrrrreat! So is AVS!

Sorry for the Tony the Tiger impersonation.

[legohead]

I know - I used to live in a house that was networked with four other houses. At one stage we had 30 computers linked up... cat5 running allover the place. Imagine the gaming! They're too damn addictive.