fischer@utower.gopas.sub.org (Axel Fischer) (03/27/90)
Hello again,
Scott (Interactive XDevGroup) was kind enough to reply to my 8514/A
question.
There are two cards available:
Western Digital and Paradise. After checking the prices out I have deceided
to wait some time before I buy one of them. Both are in the ~$1000 range.
Now I have heard that only four cards are supported from Interactive
in 1024x768 16 colors non-interlaced mode under X-Windows.
a) Genoa Super VGA 5400
b) Orchid ProDesigner VGA
c) STB VGA Extra/EM 16
d) Techmar VGA AD
I'd like to buy one of these.
Could anyone please mail me his oder hers experiences ? I would prefer
the fastest of them. When I move a Window on the screen I don't want to
wait some time as it has happend with my ATI VGA Wonder.
Thanks a lot,
Axel
--
fischer@utower.gopas.sub.org / fischer@db0tui6.BITNET / fischer@tmpmbx.UUCP
The End Is Near
Lucifers Legions Of Death Are Ready To Attack
They've Got Only One Aim: Total Destructionkarl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (03/28/90)
In article <MME*QP*@utower.gopas.sub.org> fischer@utower.gopas.sub.org writes: > >Hello again, > >Scott (Interactive XDevGroup) was kind enough to reply to my 8514/A >question. >There are two cards available: >Western Digital and Paradise. After checking the prices out I have deceided >to wait some time before I buy one of them. Both are in the ~$1000 range. > >Now I have heard that only four cards are supported from Interactive >in 1024x768 16 colors non-interlaced mode under X-Windows. > >a) Genoa Super VGA 5400 >b) Orchid ProDesigner VGA >c) STB VGA Extra/EM 16 >d) Techmar VGA AD > >I'd like to buy one of these. >Could anyone please mail me his oder hers experiences ? I would prefer >the fastest of them. When I move a Window on the screen I don't want to >wait some time as it has happend with my ATI VGA Wonder. You aren't going to like this answer.... Especially if you want to run 1024x768 in colors (more than 2 planes) Get a faster machine. This will help some. Next, buy a board which has an on-board PROCESSOR. That means something like the Matrox board, or the Pixelworks board, etc. I'm not sure about the 8514/A, it may have one. You especially want area-fill and line-drawing intristics on the board; n-gon drawing doesn't hurt. If you don't do this, you are going to have to wait "some time". Here's why: AT buses run at 8Mhz generally. They also run 8 bits at a time with the VGA DATA registers. The >ROM< access may be 16 bit (on some cards), but you aren't dealing with the ROMs at all in Unix! It's all raw device access. What's the upshot of this? VGA hardware speed has some bearing on the speed of the X windows display. So does the bus speed (if your card can handle 12 Mhz, and you can kick up the bus to it, this will help immensely). However, the maniuplations needed to write a full pixel (with color info, etc) to the VGA adapter are a real mess, and therein lies the bottleneck. NOTHING will help this, it's an artifact of the design (which is, IMNSVHO, a big kludge). Yes, VGA is pretty. No, it's not fast. Get dedicated hardware if you're real interested in speed. That ISC does as well as it does is a tribute to their coding in the face of adversity. "X11R3" isn't known as being especially efficient either... R4 is supposed to be much better, but I haven't had the chance to play with it yet (there's this little thing called a server that isn't there yet for 386 displays......) -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 566-8911], Voice: [+1 708 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"
scottw@ico.isc.com (Scott Wiesner) (03/29/90)
From article <1990Mar28.032151.7871@ddsw1.MCS.COM>, by karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger): > > Next, buy a board which has > an on-board PROCESSOR. That means something like the Matrox board, or > the Pixelworks board, etc. I'm not sure about the 8514/A, it may have one. > You especially want area-fill and line-drawing intristics on the board; The 8514 has lines drawing, rectangle filling, and blitting in hardware. It's very fast at moving windows, scrolling, text painting, etc. It's one of the fastest boards we've seen. > .... Lots of VGA discussion deleted... Yes, the VGA is a pretty crufty device. We've spent a fair amount of time trying to wring some reasonable performance out of it. The thing that's most noticably slow is the general blitting (window moving). Character output, line drawing, and to a lesser extent area fill aren't too bad. If you want to speed up the window moving and don't mind sacrificing colors, you can specify 2 or 4 colors instead of 16 in the Xconfig file. This helps out quite a bit for moving windows around because there's less data to move. I've seen a fairly large difference between the various VGA cards. Older cards, such as the old STB, the Orchid ProDesigner, etc, are only fair. Newer ones like the Video 7, Paradise, and upcoming ones from STB and Orchid are noticably better. The issue of 8 and 16 bit cards is just noise as long as you're talking about 16 color VGA support. 16 bit cards show their worth when you move to a 256 color mode. It makes a big difference here, with 16 bit cards running up to 2 times as fast as 8 bit cards. How do I know about this? Well, you see, we've got a new server coming that will support 256 colors. It's not as fast as the 16 color server, but it's reasonable, and for people who just have to have more colors, it's a low cost alternative. > "X11R3" isn't known as being especially efficient either... R4 is supposed > to be much better, but I haven't had the chance to play with it yet (there's > this little thing called a server that isn't there yet for 386 displays......) Much of the MIT R3 slowness was due to a lack of specific code for drawing on color displays. R4 added new code to rectify this, but of course, we had already done this for VGA support, so you won't see the kind of dramatic improvement that is shown on something like a Sun between R3 and R4. Scott Wiesner Interactive Systems X Development Group
brando@uiucme2.me.uiuc.edu (Brando W. Brown) (03/29/90)
In article <MME*QP*@utower.gopas.sub.org> fischer@utower.gopas.sub.org writes: > >Now I have heard that only four cards are supported from Interactive >in 1024x768 16 colors non-interlaced mode under X-Windows. > How do you sit in front of a normal sized VGA screen while viewing X in 1024/768 mode?? The characters were so small it gave me a headache!! I have an 800x600x16 Vega VGA card that seems to be as fast as the others for about 1/2 as much as the Orchid card. Brando +============================================================================+ | Brandon Brown Internet: brando@uiucme.me.uiuc.edu | | Addamax Corporation UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!addamax!brown | | 2009 Fox Drive GEnie: xmg23356 macbrando | | Champaign, IL 61820 CompuServe: 73040,447 | +============================================================================+
karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (03/30/90)
In article <1990Mar28.170031.10574@ico.isc.com> scottw@ico.isc.com (Scott Wiesner) writes: >From article <1990Mar28.032151.7871@ddsw1.MCS.COM>, by karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger): >> >> Next, buy a board which has >> an on-board PROCESSOR. That means something like the Matrox board, or >> the Pixelworks board, etc. I'm not sure about the 8514/A, it may have one. >> You especially want area-fill and line-drawing intristics on the board; > >The 8514 has lines drawing, rectangle filling, and blitting in hardware. >It's very fast at moving windows, scrolling, text painting, etc. It's >one of the fastest boards we've seen. Yep. And expensive. Then again, you get what you pay for :-) >> .... Lots of VGA discussion deleted... > >Yes, the VGA is a pretty crufty device. We've spent a fair amount of time >trying to wring some reasonable performance out of it. The thing that's >most noticably slow is the general blitting (window moving). Character >output, line drawing, and to a lesser extent area fill aren't too bad. If >you want to speed up the window moving and don't mind sacrificing colors, >you can specify 2 or 4 colors instead of 16 in the Xconfig file. This >helps out quite a bit for moving windows around because there's less data >to move. Correct. Considering that the processor does everything on a VGA card, and it's really only an 8-bit data path to the actual video memory, things can be really el-stinko. >Newer ones like the Video 7, Paradise, and upcoming ones from STB and >Orchid are noticably better. The issue of 8 and 16 bit cards is just >noise as long as you're talking about 16 color VGA support. 16 bit cards >show their worth when you move to a 256 color mode. It makes a big >difference here, with 16 bit cards running up to 2 times as fast as >8 bit cards. How do I know about this? Well, you see, we've got a >new server coming that will support 256 colors. It's not as fast as >the 16 color server, but it's reasonable, and for people who just have >to have more colors, it's a low cost alternative. Yep. >> "X11R3" isn't known as being especially efficient either... R4 is supposed >> to be much better, but I haven't had the chance to play with it yet (there's >>this little thing called a server that isn't there yet for 386 displays......) > >Much of the MIT R3 slowness was due to a lack of specific code for drawing >on color displays. R4 added new code to rectify this, but of course, we >had already done this for VGA support, so you won't see the kind of dramatic >improvement that is shown on something like a Sun between R3 and R4. That I wasn't aware of, but I should have figured considering that you have one of the best "X" implementations I've seen on a PC-based machine. -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 566-8911], Voice: [+1 708 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"