Dodgy Matrox Parhelia

kar · 11 Feb 2021 at 19:26

Just looking for some pointers here - I acquired a Matrox Parhelia 512 (128MB, 250 GPU / 300MHZ Memory) AGP 8x card recently and it's pretty valuable piece of kit to me as I have some nostalgia for Matrox graphics cards.

Issue is it is flakey as, so either immediately, or after some amount of time you'll get desktop and graphical glitches, snow. random noise, flashing textures etc.

Running video memory test on it - https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/video_memory_stress_test.html - occasionally it'll be solid as a rock, and other times it will start screaming errors.

I've tried different motherboards, different AGP speeds, drivers etc. In desperation I tried pushing down on the heatsink during the video memory test, and lo and behold, when I Push down on the heatsink (relatively forcefully) the memory errors suddenly stop, I release they start, push down again, they stop.

So there seems to be an issue with the contact between the PCB and the parhelia chip. I've read all sorts about heatgun based re-flow, reballing etc. These all look a bit extreme, but just wondering what any suggestions might be for trying to salvage this board. It's in practically brand new condition almost looks unused, so I suspect it might have come out of the factory a bit dodgy.

Rimsy · 11 Feb 2021 at 19:42

Apologies I cant really offer any help but i do remember those cards were pretty poorly recieved when released... possibly you're finding out why?

kar · 11 Feb 2021 at 19:48

Haha - they had the misfortune of being too slow and too expensive and too late. The Radeon 9700 Pro came out a few months after Parhelia and killed it, then the Geforce 4 came out and buried it properly.

Graphics quality and the multi display handling was years (decades) ahead of its time on Matrox products though and I had a lovely G450 that I used as a media centre PC circa 2002 so I have a soft spot for these slow 3d cards Matrox pumped out start of the century.

paradigm · 11 Feb 2021 at 21:29

As much as I like fixing broken old hardware, if you’re at the point where you think you’ll have to “reflow” the GPU, you’ll likely find that any improvement you make will be temporary (and diminishing each time you try).

Just get a replacement, there’s plenty out there, and they aren’t that expensive compared to their contemporaries.

I’ve got a PCI-X Parhelia 512 256MB and it’s functioning perfectly, they don’t all die because of age.

kar · 12 Feb 2021 at 11:40

AGP Parhelias are a bit pricer unfortunately.

Strangely enough though, I ran this card on a constant loop of 3dmark 01 for 5 or so hours last night and now it seems 'fixed'. No memory errors anymore, no graphical corruption. I haven't changed anything or moved the card at all.

I've had a couple AGP cards like this where they are a bit dodgy until powered up and ran for sometime then they work fine after going back into storage and brought back out.

paradigm · 12 Feb 2021 at 12:14

kar said:
AGP Parhelias are a bit pricer unfortunately.

Ebay disagrees with you, at least in UK listings. The cheapest (and only) PCI-X Parhelia is £152.10. The cheapest AGP 8X is £62.10 + £6 Postage.

PCI-X GPUs are niche enough as it is, without throwing Parhelia in as a keyword

rare · 12 Feb 2021 at 14:59

Damn I remember the hype pre launch for these! Sorry I can’t be any help, but I had almost totally forgot about these, now I’m off to see if I can buy one...

kar · 12 Feb 2021 at 17:15

paradigm said:
Ebay disagrees with you, at least in UK listings. The cheapest (and only) PCI-X Parhelia is £152.10. The cheapest AGP 8X is £62.10 + £6 Postage.

PCI-X GPUs are niche enough as it is, without throwing Parhelia in as a keyword

Ahhh you got me, PCI-X not EX

Guest2 · 14 Feb 2021 at 14:55

I had a Matrox Mystique 220 which was £150. Worst GPU ever. May aswell have flushed the money I had saved as a 13 year old down the toilet.
Little did i know Voodoo 3dfx cards were available and Voodoo 2 came out not long later

I upgraded to a Voodoo 2 maybe 2 years after buying the Matrox and the Voodoo 2 lasted many years and was incredible.

Down with Matrox

edit - I also remember the late 90s were times of new graphics features like lens flares, reflective surfaces, bump mapping, draw distance fading in and other things I cannot remember. The lens flares specifically I remember looking like giant solid polos on the screen when using the Matrox. A friends Voodoo rush the lens flare looked way better. Also the FPS was about triple mine.
Ultimate race pro and Moto Racer were the two games I remember