this appears to be an awkard configuration for me, because parhelia has only win2000/xp drivers and no support for 98/me, so you have to run your glide games in win2000/xp.

I've never owned a Parhelia, but something more practical that comes to mind: Parhelia doesn't have physical VGA connectors, so you will be using adapters to get VGA for pass-through on the Voodoo2. Having done this with my WildcatVP (and a Radeon VE that uses a y-cable, similar to the Parhelia), it can be kind of unwieldly hanging off the back of the case. Also, if I understand Parhelia's multi-head feature correctly, it will treat three displays as one monitor within Windows, so if you were using the Surround Gaming thing and then wanted to enable the Voodoo2, I'm not exactly sure what you should expect on the monitors - it probably wouldn't be "perfect" though. 😊

Any reason you couldn't just use a GeForce 4 or GeForce FX?

I believe EMBM was supported my many other cards but, in the case of Expendable, was an exclusive feature. Like a "bundle of cash" deal between Rage and Matrox.

My view is that up to the G400 Matrox is quite a decent choice. But beyond that go with Nvidia. For IQ you can just go with DVI.

Who knows if there any driver bugs with Matrox cards. Personally I'd definitely want to check it out but in the end will stick with Nvidia.

I've tried to get my Parhelia to work with Win9x, and it doesn't seem like there's any chance it will. As Mau1wurf1977 says, the G400 (MAX) is a good choice for EMBM and general image quality, but most newer cards of decent quality will be just fine. A high quality GeForce 4 Ti will probably come close to a Parhelia for IQ, and afaik they support EMBM.

Kyro2 had EMBM also, dunno if it worksd with Expendable however. I never tried because I never liked Expendable 😀

LunarG wrote:

I've tried to get my Parhelia to work with Win9x, and it doesn't seem like there's any chance it will. As Mau1wurf1977 says, the G400 (MAX) is a good choice for EMBM and general image quality, but most newer cards of decent quality will be just fine. A high quality GeForce 4 Ti will probably come close to a Parhelia for IQ, and afaik they support EMBM.

A lack of Win9x support is pretty much a deal-breaker for me. I just thought that Matrox quality + newer features would equal awesome, but I guess that just isn't to be. If the Parhelia is just a sub-par DX8 card that only works on Win2000/XP, where once could easily use a Radeon or GeForce of some kind and get better performance, then what's the point? I guess there's the multi-monitor thing, but the uses for that are kind of limited for the amount of space (and identical monitors 🤣) required.

Anyway, I watched this video someone linked in another thread of a Matrox EMBM demo running on a GeForce 4 series card, I believe a 4600 Ti, and it seemed to run pretty well with a small ini file tweak. I could have a more period-correct setup and run a G400, but I'd be willing to sacrifice that for better overall compatibility and performance.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I believe EMBM was supported my many other cards but, in the case of Expendable, was an exclusive feature. Like a "bundle of cash" deal between Rage and Matrox.

My view is that up to the G400 Matrox is quite a decent choice. But beyond that go with Nvidia. For IQ you can just go with DVI.

Who knows if there any driver bugs with Matrox cards. Personally I'd definitely want to check it out but in the end will stick with Nvidia.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a way to trick Expendable into using EMBM on a later card, unless the developers foolishly hardcoded G400 detection into it. 😜

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

If the Parhelia is just a sub-par DX8 card that only works on Win2000/XP, where once could easily use a Radeon or GeForce of some kind and get better performance, then what's the point?P

This is/was basically every review of the Parhelia when it was new. Oh and it cost more than the GeForce 4 Ti if I remember right. 😵

I also doubt any of the IQ improvements the Parhelia may offer against a GF3/4 would matter after going through the Voodoo2 (not to say the Voodoo2 "mangles" things, but it isn't going to be as hoity-toity as the Parhelia's straight outputs). 😊

Random thought regarding EMBM and 9x and such: wouldn't a G550 work for that? Should be faster than the G400 and still have similar support. They're also generally very cheap to buy used, and will have physical VGA connectors. And passively cooled as well. 😀

I got a 550 incoming. However the 550 was a (gaming) disaster. Barely better than the 400. Not sure against the 400 max.

I got the 450, the 400 is faster and the 400 max even faster.

So the 400 max would be nice.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I got a 550 incoming. However the 550 was a (gaming) disaster. Barely better than the 400. Not sure against the 400 max.

I got the 450, the 400 is faster and the 400 max even faster.

So the 400 max would be nice.

This doesn't have 400 Max, but has 400 and 450 for comparison: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/g550/index.html It appears to do somewhat better at higher resolutions at least...was expecting better owing to the second pixel pipe, admittedly. 😊

It's supposed to support TnL too, but I've read in a few places that it's either broken or unavailable to most applications. 😵

Given the performance differences between G400 and Max in this review (http://www.anandtech.com/show/298/9), I'm guessing the 400 Max would be the faster card against the G550. I think if the "non-Voodoo" card in this build is going to have to do 3D, the Max would be the better choice, but if it just needs to spit out a 2D image when the Voodoo isn't working, the G550 is silent and offers DVI for a second monitor, which seems like a better choice.

Anything a Parhelia does, a GeForce 4Ti can do better.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I got a 550 incoming. However the 550 was a (gaming) disaster. Barely better than the 400. Not sure against the 400 max.

I got the 450, the 400 is faster and the 400 max even faster.

So the 400 max would be nice.

the g550 has 2*2 texture mapping units.
at low to medium resolution(which is what they can get acceptable framerate with): g550>>g400max>g400>=g450
at high resolution: g400max>g550>g400>=g450

obobskivich wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

If the Parhelia is just a sub-par DX8 card that only works on Win2000/XP, where once could easily use a Radeon or GeForce of some kind and get better performance, then what's the point?P

,
This is/was basically every review of the Parhelia when it was new. Oh and it cost more than the GeForce 4 Ti if I remember right. 😵 :

Edge antialiasing is probably the most interesting feature from today's point of view.

noshutdown wrote:

the g550 has 2*2 texture mapping units.
at low to medium resolution(which is what they can get acceptable framerate with): g550>>g400max>g400>=g450
at high resolution: g400max>g550>g400>=g450

I will have all these cards soon and planning on doing a bit of a shoot out 😀

idspispopd wrote:

Edge antialiasing is probably the most interesting feature from today's point of view.

That or 10-bit color. Certainly an interesting card from a historical/collector's POV, but GF4 Ti or Radeon 9700 are likely going to be superior from most users' POV (broader driver support, better performance, etc). 😊

Mau1wurf1977: Very cool on the Matrox shootout. Any plans to add the Parhelia generation cards (P650/P750) or Parhelia itself?

obobskivich wrote:

Any plans to add the Parhelia generation cards (P650/P750) or Parhelia itself?

This card is a Windows XP card right?

For the time being I will stick with Windows 98. I did check last night and couldn't find W98 SE drivers.

I'm running a Parhelia in my PIII system, mainly for the fact that it was Matrox's "swansong" in the world of consumer graphics, it was the card that all fans had hoped would put Matrox back in the game. It didn't however. They had a much too professional outlook on consumer graphics. They had market leading memory bandwidth and a lot of nice tech, so if only they'd ditched the triple head features in favor of more rendering power in the chip itself, they could have had a winner.
I still have to say though, that any game I can't run satisfactorily on the PIII with Parhelia, is modern enough to run on my everyday PC, with much higher resolution/detail settings than any retro system would, so performance beyond that level isn't really relevant in a retro system in my opinion. Also, when it comes to multi-monitor setups, the monitors don't have to be identical, or even similar. They may have had to be with less professional implementations. I know a lot of people had problems with dual monitors on ATI and nVidia cards back in the days, but on something like a Parhelia, you can mix and match, run different resolutions and refreshes. This is something Matrox had (and still have) a lot of experience with.