How we tested the Parhelia

To determine the performance of the Matrox Parhelia-512, ZDNet carried out the following benchmark tests:

Benchmark tests: Parhelia-512
Application	Genre	API	Benchmark
3DMark 2001	several	DirectX 8	integrated
Comanche 4	Action-Sim	DirectX 8.1	integrated
DroneZ-Mark	Action	OpenGL	integrated
Quake 3	Action	OpenGL	Quaver
Quake 3	Action	OpenGL	NV15-Demo
Aquamark	Adventure	DirectX 8.1	integrated
Spec Viewperf 7.0	CAD/CAM	OpenGL	integrated

The test platform was an Athlon XP/2000+-based system with an Abit KR7A RAID motherboard. This was fitted with 256MB of memory (DDR, PC2100, CL2) and an IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 hard drive with a rotation speed of 7,200rpm. We tested under Windows XP at 1,024 by 768 resolution in 32-bit colour. The Matrox Parhelia was controlled with the 226 drivers; an nVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 card with the detonator drivers 29.42 (WHQL) served as a comparison.