CGTalk - Matrox anyone?

MadSkillzMan

03-02-2005, 04:27 AM

hey guys, tired of pulling my hair out over my current crap card.

REALLY need to upgrade. Im no gamer, i was lookin at buying a second hand matrox parhelia. The 128mb tripple monitor ones have been going for about 100-150$ give or take, thats right up my alley...considaring the 256MB ones cost 300+.

what im wondering:

a 128mb will be able to be "up to date" for awhile correct? i dont wanna hafta buy a 256 in a year.

can i flash this to run on a mac? i hate the x86 architecture, and if i had the money id be on a nice dual g5. Only thing ill miss is 3dsmax.

thanks in advance guys.

Signal2Noise

03-02-2005, 04:36 AM

I'm not sure about the quality & performance of Matrox cards these days. We use to spec them in our CAD stations at work maybe up to about 4-5 years ago. At that time Matrox were highly regarded but seem to have fallen into the shadows of nVidea & ATI. Do some research on benchmarks and reviews if you haven't done so already. Also, make sure that you can get access to any of the latest drivers you might need.

But, seeing that you're not a gamer then that 128MB card should do you just fine. :thumbsup:

MadSkillzMan

03-02-2005, 05:06 AM

well i forgot to mention, i do alot of video editing (premiere, aefx, combustion) and some max...id like to learn maya but my card wont let me even get into it.

if an ATI/Nvidia would allow the things a matrox does then by all means id go for that

hobo

03-02-2005, 06:40 AM

I bought one pretty well as soon as they came out, and I've only had one lil problem in that some of the new drivers aren't xsi friendly. Installed an older one and it runs fine. I have a feeling that the new price has almost doubled in that time, that must say something, and if it did one day die, with all the problem posts reguarding nVidea ati I'd get another one.

As for compostition, well I don't know, but I'd pretty safely guess that it'd be ok. The graphics dept at a local uni bought parhelia at the same time that I did and the reseller said that there had been only good reviews.

Srek

03-02-2005, 06:40 AM

"Flashing" the Matrox for Mac is not possible. You would need to write a complete BIOS for the card yourself as well as OS X drivers.
More then 128 MB are usualy only needed if you work with several high resolution textures at one time and you don't want to compromise display speed.
The Parhelia is a nice and fast card for videoediting and has a good analog signal quality, but for 3D work with Open GL it is simply to slow.
Cheers
Srek

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