Introduction

Back on the 14th of May, Matrox released a press announcement of their highly anticipated Parhelia-512 graphics card. The Parhelia was perhaps one of the most talked-about graphics card for the early part of this year, not just because of its technological marvels, but for the fact that this is the card that Matrox will be letting loose into a market that they have largely missed out and dominated by the likes of ATI and NVIDIA - the lucrative 3D graphics/gaming market, to concentrate on building their core business around the corporate sector.

Now, we know that previous Matrox's cards have pretty much been unmatched in the 2D performance - namely their G400 and G500 series of boards. But where 3D performance is concerned, those cards haven't been quite a popular deal with users demanding cutting edge 3D performances. Still, Matrox did provide a good combination of price, reasonable performance and image quality with those cards.

Presenting the new Matrox Parhelia-512 card.

When the Parhelia's hype was at its peak, many touted the card as a GeForce4-killer. The fact that Matrox have coyly kept much of the card's specifications (before14th May) shrouded in mystery only added oil to the speculation's fire. So now that we've got a Parhelia card in our lab, let's check out how it'll turn out to be.