Here my New Matrox Collection

  • Hey All here at VA <3

    Here seven Matrox Graphics Cards I bought if a friendly guy from Ebay Ireland for just 45 euros, all cards are tested and working as well :)

    That be these beauties:


    Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.B 4399


    Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.B 1800


    Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head AGP 16MB 64Bit DDR SGR Rev.A 4500


    Matrox Millennium G550 Dual Head AGP 32MB 64Bit DDR SGR Rev.A 4102


    Matrox Parhelia AGP 256MB 256Bit DDR Rev.A 5103


    Matrox Parhelia LX P650 AGP 64MB 128Bit DDR Rev.B 4505


    Matrox Parhelia LX P750 AGP 64MB 128Bit DDR Rev.B 0905

    Each PCB Date is written with the week first then the year, same as with 3dfx.

    But hey for 45 euros these seven beauties, pretty damn rare find for 2020, Matrox is my most loved non 3dfx brand and I find that Toucan & Parhelia also deserve more love too.

    These are fun cards to have and to play you classic games on even the P65 & P75 are good enough for classic gamers and what they add is the ultra crispy image quality one of Matrox's infamous advantages over everything else.

    I will add separate shots per card but the photos I have here now are of the cards after I unpacked them, Enjoy my friends and stay safe

    Here the two photo's for now:


    My Favorite is the Parhelia AGP 256MB DDR with the Universal AGP Connector, this model mostly comes with an AGP x8 Connector, looks like I got lucky with this beauty :)

    Matrox Parhelia AGP 256MB 256Bit DDR Rev.A 5103


    Here the other cards up close:

    Matrox Parhelia LX P750 AGP 64MB 128Bit DDR Rev.B 0905

    Matrox Parhelia LX P650 AGP 64MB 128Bit DDR Rev.B 4505

    Matrox Millennium G550 Dual Head AGP 32MB 64Bit DDR SGR Rev.A 4102


    Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head AGP 16MB 64Bit DDR SGR Rev.A 4500

    These two G400's look as if they are refurbished G400 MAX cards and downclocked to G400 clock speeds, not really sure tho, I have two and one has a different VESA connector than the other as it looks like.

    Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.B 4399


    Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.B 1800

  • For those that want the entire Driver archive for the Parhelia & Parhelia LX Cards here you are, as I have made an archive of these hard to find drivers the gaming drivers date from 2002 to 2003 just for those wondering:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/b2lkvq52je13…rchive.zip?dl=0

    And here a zip with all the Matrox Tech Demo's for the G200, G400 & Parhelia series:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/swxps5xepvl2…mo%27s.zip?dl=0

    dr.zeissler you might find these very helpful :)


    Here the test system I used to test my Parhelia AGP 256MB DDR:


    Sveta 2002

    AMD AthlonXP 2200+ Thoroughbred-A, 1 Core @ 1.8Ghz

    EPox EP-8K7A+ AMD 761 Chipset with Via 686B SB

    2x 1GB PC-2700 Kingston @ PC-2100 266Mhz DDR

    Matrox Parhelia AGP 256MB 256Bit DDR Rev.A 5103

    Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro

    Mitsubishi Electronics LS-120 F200 Super Floppy Drive

    1x Seagate Barracuda V 80GB 7200 RPM Main disk

    1x Seagate Barracuda V 120GB 7200 RPM Game Disk

    Belkin 5 port NEC USB 2.0 PCI Card

    3-Com 3C905C-TX-M PCI Ethernet Adapter 10/100Mbit

    LH HD-DVD Drive 16x / 40x

    BTO Plusdeck 2c Cassette Tape Convertor/Player/Recorder Drive

    Antec True Power 550 Watt PSU

    Addtronics 6896A Entry Level Server Tower

    Compaq S710 17" Blackshade CRT from 2001

    Reso @ 1024x768x32 ! 85Hz | 0.22.5 Dot Pitch

    1995 Roland E-14 Keyboard

    Win2K Pro + SP4 & RU1 for SP4

    Matrox Parhelia Gaming Drivers, November 2003 for Win2K/XP


    Here some pics of the Parhelia Reef Demo 1.1 in action:


    it seems the Parhelia prefers WinXP Pro + SP3, as it has lots of stability issues when it comes to Win2K Pro +SP4.
    So my next goal is to install WinXP Pro + SP3 on the test system and go from there.

    2 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (16. November 2020 um 12:43)

  • I am totally disappointed from the Parhelia PCI-X.

    1. It crashes my LAN after a view minutes (NV6200too, R9250 not)

    2. It's SLOWWWWWWW compared to NV6200/R9250

    3. The NV6200 displays Reefdemo with twice as much frames and that with 64!!!Bit memory interface.

    I love my Mystiquw/Millenium upt to G400...but Parehlia (no Win9x driver either) is a bad card.

    Sorry

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=

  • But that is understandable!

    Just use the AGP model I am using.

    These have 256Bit DDR there are 128MB & 256MB models, the one I have is a 256MB model.
    The PCI-E ones are not the ones I can advise no, same for the Parhelia PCI-X version these are quite a tad slower than the Parhelia AGP's, the Parhelia APV-e PCI-E uses a P512 GPU but 128MB 128Bit DDR and the Parhelia PCI-X 256MB uses 64Bit DDR the card you are using.

    The AGP x4/x8 models with 128MB & 256MB both have 256Biit memory interface these are the cards you seek for retro gaming :)

    The model I have is this one:

    Parhelia AGP 256MB 256Bit DDR
    https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/parhelia-256-mb.c98

    The Parhelia APV-e has 128MB 128Bit DDR, basically a Parhelia LX for PCI-Express, but using the Parhelia 512 GPU instead.
    https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/parhelia-apve.c1298

    The one you used is this one and these only have 64Bit memory interface ;)

    Matrox Parhelia PCI-X 256MB 64Bit DDR
    https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/parhelia-pci.c95

    If you use the version I use you will be mind blown of it's performance it beats blows with the ATi Radeon 8500 AGP 128MB DDR :)
    Parhelia has a lot of variants before you start thinking of using one make sure you use the models with 256Bit memory interface, these will make you games run super fast with superb image fidelity.

    Here a list of all the Parhelia's Tech Power-Up has listed and this is without the Parhelia-LX chips
    https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/matrox-parhelia-512.g29

    This should help you select the right card if you ever plan on getting a Parhelia again, just make sure you get the cards with the 256Bit DDR memory interface, then you're fine :)

    Also use WinXP Pro + SP3, it's the best OS for these cards.

    9 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (16. November 2020 um 13:24)

  • You used the wrong one card type, check my previous post for the proper details, get an AGP version of the Parhelia the 128MB or 256MB both have 25Biot DDR the one you have has indeedly 64Bit DDR, tghat is obviously the issue.

    My Parhelia AGP 256MB 256Bit DDR beats the Radeon 8500 AGP 128Bit DDR Several times, but it's obvious you had a poor performance yes.

  • Lacking Win9x Drivers is a nogo for me. My retro-rigs have always dos/win3x/win9x and optional win2k.

    Who needs a 256Bit Parhelia if the ReefDemo works just fine with 64B it NV6200?

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=

  • Lacking Win9x Drivers is a nogo for me. My retro-rigs have always dos/win3x/win9x and optional win2k.

    Who needs a 256Bit Parhelia if the ReefDemo works just fine with 64B it NV6200?

    You're assuming that your train of thought would be valid for everybody else ("Who needs..."), which is just not right. Similar statements could be made about 3dfx hardware just as well, but people don't do that for some reason.

    While I never had one, I still think the original Parhelia 256MB is a very interesting card (e.g. fragment-based anti-aliasing). I also am not in the slightest interested in any pre-NT5 Windows operating systems, so there you have it.

    Who needs a 256-bit Parhelia? Whoever wants to need one. ;)

    1-6000-banner-88x31-jpg

    Stolzer Besitzer eines 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP Prototypen:

    • 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP HiNT Rev.A-3700

    [//wp.xin.at] - No RISC, no fun!

    QotY: Girls Love, BEST Love; 2018 - Lo and behold, for it is the third Coming; The third great Year of Yuri, citric as it may be! Edit: 2019 wasn't too bad either... Edit: 2020... holy crap, we're on a roll here~♡!

    Quote Bier.jpg@IRC 2020: "Je schlimmer der Fetisch, desto besser!"

  • It's never about need , need is a cheap BS excuse lmao, you don't need all them 3dfx cards just get a GeForce 6800 GT or a Radeon X800 XT and emulate glide and presto I mean I can say that as well :mauer:

    Need that's just bs man, if it's all and only about what one really needs
    None of us would be posting here, wasting tons of coin in old hardware, we all would of moved on and done things we really need... which is isn't the case, and to reply to your so called boring question why I need a Parhelia AGP 256MB. thing is I don't I bought it purely out of interest.

    I'd always apply to Win2K Pro & WinXP Pro, thee are far more reliable, capable and stable than any Win9X or WinMe OS for workloads I use my systems for, plus they offer great Dual CPU Support as well, you can wait a long time for 98SE or me doing that I can assure you and yea there is NT 4.0 + SP6 but that doesn't run everything like 2K pro + SP4 & XP pro + SP3 can do so there is always a good enough reason not to use NT anyway.

    All in all I can easily run 98 SE based games in compatibility mode, it's called a better alternative and it works just as fine.
    have a nice day and stay safe :topmodel:

    GrandAdmiralThrawn Well said there though, even I did add in my post as well.

    As for that fugly word named as need sheesh why do people still use that horrible word :steinigung:xD
    It's only purpose would be if it's tied to a fitting sentence that would make sense, but yea I'll leave it at that.

    Here a nice review by Beyond3D of the Matrox Parhelia AGP 128MB 256Bot DDR from 2002
    https://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/43/1

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (18. November 2020 um 02:55)

  • what about P650AGP ? How good is that card? I am thinking about a WinXP machine, perhaps one of my shuttle-xpc's.

    Can this P650 play FarCry 1.0 in 1024x768?

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=

  • I tested it. It's DX8.1 not DX9 so FarCry is not looking good. It's looking really bad, no waterreflection and lightning broken. So wrong card for that. NV-Techdemo Chameleon is working, effects seem to be OK, trasition between the effects is slow, so chameleon sometimes not visible for 1-2 seconds. Card seems to be slow in UE1 (Rune/Unreal) Did not expect that, have to investigate, should be much much faster in thesen.

    More testing to come...

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=

  • I tested it. It's DX8.1 not DX9 so FarCry is not looking good. It's looking really bad, no waterreflection and lightning broken. So wrong card for that. NV-Techdemo Chameleon is working, effects seem to be OK, trasition between the effects is slow, so chameleon sometimes not visible for 1-2 seconds. Card seems to be slow in UE1 (Rune/Unreal) Did not expect that, have to investigate, should be much much faster in thesen.

    More testing to come...

    you're doing it wrong ...again...
    Why on Earth are you using a Parhelia LX P650 in games...this is not even made for games to begin with it has 64MB 128Bit DDR , it's a castrated Parhelia and it's not made for games... at all!
    So it's obvious the performance is terrible with it :rolleyes: I didn't need to research that, it's just something I have always known ;)

    Like I said use the Parhelia AGP 128MB or 256MB these are the ONLY parhelia's with a 256Bit DDR VRAM interface, do not use the PCI variants do not use the Parhelia LX variants.


    Also if people are asking me why I need things I will ignore you for the rest of my entire life, such retarded questions just need to end lol.

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (5. Juli 2022 um 21:32)

  • Don't get me wrong, I love the underdogs, I also love the low-end versions because I hate loud fan noise, so the P650 was an obvious choice for me. But you are right, it's the wrong card in the wrong machine. This XPC can drive Win9x so I will go for another AGP card. But I did check some further software:

    - Morrowind does not offer the shaders-option (thought it was dx81 compliant, seems to be a vertex-shader, not the pixel-shader)

    - Himmelsstürmer scrolls beautiful. great!

    - no S3TC that'very bad

    - matrox-reef-demo runs with 64mb option. great!

    - jazz2 has no smooth scrolling, no matter what I try.

    - drakan has lot's of glitches, but embm does work indeed.

    more to come.


    In order to get your full quote, I paste it here because of the additional informations:

    Obi Wan Kenobi · 5. Juli 2022, 21:26

    (Zitat von dr.zeissler)

    you're doing it wrong lol, then again this is old research for me yes FC doesn't work correctly for P512, P512 is not fully DX9, it's a hybrid half DX 8.1 half DX9.0a, as I have said in the first post make sure you READ my posts they hold valuable Information!!!

    In theory it should run FC1 just fine, thing is it won't because this game was not optimized to take fully advantage from the P512 it's self.

    It's a NVIDIA funded game bu by their lame The Way it's meant To be Played program, the predecessor program of GPP, which was gladly ended thanks to Kyle bennett for going directly after it, NVIDIA being nGreedia all over.

    Yet he funny part is that Far Cry 1 runs best on the ATi Radeon 9700 Pro this card creams it, which was kind of ironic lol.

    If playing space combat sims this is where the Parhelia truly shines, Freelancer uses Vertex Shader 2.0 in it's open space maps it supports both Pixel Shader 1.3, 1.4 and 2.0 but it's also been very well optimized for the P512 hence why I get roughly 120+ fps with it in that game at 1024x768x32 in max ingame settings + FAA x16 & AF x2, hich is very nice for the AthlonXP 2200+ I am using with it.

    But then again why am I explaining this again if you don't read our posts, yet you post pointless comments :rolleyes:... sigh...

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=

    4 Mal editiert, zuletzt von dr.zeissler (5. Juli 2022 um 22:55)

  • Parhelia P512 does have S3TC support the P650 & P750 don't because as said these are not gaming cards lol, so that it dosn't have it doesn't make it a bad card, it's just not made for those workloads.

    Parhelia AGP 128MB & 256MB 256Bit DDR have the best image quality I ever seen on any retro graphics card in games these are amazing you should seek out V.F Pi Pa Parhelia thread many others from VA did a ton of good research in there:
    Pi, Pa, Parhelia

    Here my 8th Matrox graphics card:

    Matrox Millennium G400 MAX AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.B 4399

  • I'll go for a real perhelia AGP or PCIe with 128MB or even better 256MB VRAM. I'll keep you informed.

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=

  • Should work on amithlon, could you take a picture of that card? thx!

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=

  • nice card, where did you get it?

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=

  • I'll go for a real perhelia AGP or PCIe with 128MB or even better 256MB VRAM. I'll keep you informed.

    Parhelia AGP 128MB & 256MB are the Only Parhelia's that have the 256Bit memory bus the PCI-E version uses 64Bit DDR it's trash tbh.

    Gota G550 AGP with D-Sub VGA + DVI-I here, dowside these cards use 32MB 64Bit DDR, 128Bit DDR would of given the proper justice they deserved, sadly that is not the case.

    Matrox Millennium G550 Dual Head AGP 32MB 64Bit DDR SGR Rev.A 4102

  • Just bought a real 128Mb AGP Parhelia. Thx for the advice!

    SNI-Scovery 212 AMD K6-2/450 CXT 128MB - PCI1 (Matrox-Mystique 4MB) - PCI2 (Soundblaster 128)

    => OS2/Warp3, AMIGA-OS 3.9, WIN95B , LINUX <=