Matrox Graphics, who was first to announce the partly DirectX 9.0-supporting graphics processor back in mid-2002, has removed all claims in regards Parhelia’s DirectX 9.0 capabilities. The company has never released drivers to support Vertex Shaders 2.0 in its hardware, now that the claim about the Microsoft’s latest API is gone, users of Matrox Graphics’ Parhelia-based graphics cards will never be able to fully utilize the hardware capabilities of their graphics cards.

“Most new games will have the fall back path, so that is good news in case we do not do any DX9 drivers.” Haig, a Technical Support Manager for Matrox Graphics said some time ago.

Parhelia 512 graphics processor launched in mid-2002 was the first principally new chip from Matrox Graphics since 1999. The company advertised Quad DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shader Array after the product was released to the market, as we may see by using Wayback Machine, a service that archives the World Wide Web. 

Users, who acquired Matrox Parhelia 512 graphics cards as “partly DirectX 9.0 supporting” are now very disappointed with the fact that there will be no support for hardware DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shader Array and complain in Internet forums here, here and here. They also accuse Martox Graphics in breaking promises.

“Barring any unforeseen consequences, we will have a new product next year.” Haig added. He did not get into details about the product and we do not have any additional information about the next-generation graphics chip from Matrox Graphics.

Update: We should obviously expect a Pixel Shader 2.0-compliant chip from Matrox Graphics, as Microsoft Longhorn operating system requires hardware support for them.