Wow! I would never think that graphics cards based on Parhelia-512 chip announced in the middle of May (see this and this news stories) will appear so soon in the market. Matrox officially announced that the mass shipments of 128MB version of this graphics card would begin on June 30 already!

   

The approximate retail price of Matrox Parhelia PH-A128R graphics card will be around $399 (they will also supply a bulk version of this card, the price is unknown though). By the way, the clock frequencies of the retail Matrox Parhelia PH-A128R and bulk Matrox Parhelia PH-A128B do differ: 220/Hz/550MHz DDR in the first case and 200MHz/500MHz DDR in the second case. A bit later this summer another two versions should start shipping too. They will be equipped with 256MB and 64MB of memory.

They also report that the retail versions of the mentioned above cards will go with a Y-shaped DVI-I to Dual HD-15 cable, DVI-I to Dual HD-15 adapter and HD-15 to S-Video composite cable. This set will allow you to build the following display configurations:

• Two independent DVI Outs for 1600x1200 (165MHz each);
• Two independent RGB Outs with 400MHz channel each (two 2048x1536@85Hz);
• Three independent RGB Outs enabling virtual desktop with up to 3480x1024@32bpp resolution;
• Different combinations of DVI-, RGB- and TV-Outs.

The software bundle includes drivers for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2000 with full DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL support, Matrox’ brand PowerDesk-HF utility, Waytech Coloreal utility (to show you the advantages of 10bit RAMDAC), Matrox GigaColor plug-in for Adobe Photoshop (supporting 10bit per channel in TIFF and PNG files), and Reef-program demonstrating all the 3D advantages of Matrox Parhelia-512 chip.

The package of the bulk version hasn’t been disclosed yet.