As we revealed nearly a week ago, today Matrox Graphics rolls out its new graphics cards based on the Parhelia LX graphics chip for mainstream market. Unfortunately, new solutions from this well-known company are not intended for gamers, hardware enthusiasts and other members of hardware community who move the progress forward. 

Matrox Graphics’ Millennium P650 and P750 graphics cards support AGP 4x/8x and cannot be installed in older mainboards with AGP 2x. Basically, new features of the Parhelia LX GPU end here: according to the information we have heard so far, the Parhelia LX processor only brings us AGP 8x support and nothing more. Among the 3D features we can point out Direct X 8.1 and even Vertex Shader 2.0 full hardware support, the same as found in the original Parhelia.

The Millennium P650 is equipped with 2 DVI-I connectors, 64MB of memory and DualHead support. It will cost 169 Euro or US dollars depending on the region. The Millennium P750 graphics card also comes with 64MB of DDR SDRAM and a couple of DVI-I connectors. It provides TripleHead support and will be priced at 235 Euro. Both products feature 128-bit memory bus and will be typically slower than the original Parhelia 512 in 3D applications.

The new products are aimed on various markets, according to Matrox Graphics, however, I seriously doubt that the Millennium P650 and P750 can offer suitable level of performance for professional 3D applications or 3D games. The Millennium P-series would definitely be interesting products for 2D/Video workstations and corporate segments thanks to excellent 2D quality and monitor management software, however, they seem to be too expensive for mainstream corporate computers. Millennium G450 and G550 graphics cards will continue to exist as note expensive solutions and will not leave the arena. Novelties will make their appearance later this year.

Generally speaking, Matrox Graphics’ 1% of the whole graphics market tells us everything about the orientation of the company as well as about the efficiency of Matrox Graphics’ execution and policy on the mainstream market, so current product lineup and overpriced graphics cards should not be a surprise.