mike@mfgfoc.uucp (Mike Thompson) (02/08/89)
Greetings, This month "Unix Review" published a review of the Sun 386i which gave an overall rating of average. Since I use a Sun 386i as a software development platform I have to agree with many of the conclusions reached in the review. What surprised me most however is how slow the graphics really are on the Sun 386i. With this being my first experience with an engineering workstation I was somewhat disappionted by how sluggish the feel of the graphical interface is. I am using a Sun 386i/250 which runs at 25 MHz, has 8 Megs of RAM, and has the 1152x900 pixel color display. Under both SunView and the X Windows System R3 the display exhibits an irritating sluggishness. As a measure of graphics performance, "Unix Review" gave the following performance values: Sun386i Sun-3/160 HP 9000/360 HP 9000/360 CGI Lib. CGI Lib. Starbase Lib. X Windows Medim-Length Diagonal Line 193 370 2976 376 Medium-Sized Filled Square 18 85 82 202 Medium-Sized Unfilled-Square 4 2 40 50 Unfilled Medium 100-sided Polygon 56 46 198 73 Grafstone Rating 600 2051 7566 7610 My question is: Why is the 386i so slow in graphics when non-graphical programs execute at a speed in keeping with its fast CPU? I know that the video buffer memory has an access cycle of 280 nanoseconds. This seems to be very long. Is the hardware architecture the reason for the poor graphics performance on the Sun 386i or does it lie in the software? Perhaps Sun is trying to pull an IBMish move by handicapping the 386i so as not to cut into the sales of Sun 3's. I hope that someone can shed some light on this subject for me. Until then, I will just keep looking for improved X Windows server software. Mike Thompson Michael P. Thompson FOCUS Semiconductor Systems, Inc. net: (sun!daver!mfgfoc!mike) 570 Maude Court att: (408) 738-0600 ext 370 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA