madd@world.std.com (jim frost) (11/17/89)
I'm looking for opinions on what the "best" video board for 386/ix X11 might be. I'm looking for fast color, 8 bits preferred, resolution should be close to 1024x1024, better resolution preferred. Please give some idea of board and monitor costs. If you have a monochrome card which you are particularly fond of, that would be interesting too. Thanks in advance for any replies, jim frost software tool & die madd@std.com
tyager@maxx.UUCP (Tom Yager) (11/26/89)
In article <1989Nov16.190054.15473@world.std.com>, madd@world.std.com (jim frost) writes: > I'm looking for opinions on what the "best" video board for 386/ix X11 > might be. I'm looking for fast color, 8 bits preferred, resolution > should be close to 1024x1024, better resolution preferred. Please > give some idea of board and monitor costs. If you have a monochrome > card which you are particularly fond of, that would be interesting > too. > > Thanks in advance for any replies, > > jim frost > software tool & die > madd@std.com I think the best advice for anyone in your situation is, "wait." The best board available now is Matrox's PG-1281, which does 1280x1024 in 256 colors. It's a 34010-based card, with tons of custom silicon devoted to speeding up line-drawing and text. It is a screamer, but the price (>$4000) is enough to make you scream, too. A competent monitor will set you back another $2000-$3500. This is the combination I use with 386/ix and, obviously, I like it a lot. The reason I suggest waiting is that the next release of ISC's X11 will include generic support for 8514/A register-compatible adapters. These can deliver 1024x768 in 256 colors, and can do an interlaced mode that makes monitors much more affordable. Another system in my lab is running an Orchid Pro Designer VGA that happens to have a 1024x768 interlaced mode that syncs with 8514-compatible monitors. ISC's X11 supports this, and, while I'm not a great fan of interlacing, it's really not half bad. It helps to have a good monitor--the Seiko CM-1430 I'm using is terrific, and they've got some new ones out that will surely be worth looking at. Everything that follows is opinion, so if you're not interested, don't trouble to read on. Since generic 8514/A support is here, generic TIGA (TI's 340x0 standard) can't be far away. In any case, expect that these two standards will duke it out to the delight of us consumers: Prices should fall dramatically. The under-$1000 intelligent graphics card is already here (8514/A cards shown at Comdex), but I predict that the $700 price barrier will be broken by mid-year, and that buyers will be able to choose between 340x0 and 8514/A based on more rational criteria than price. Which do I like better? I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong, but what little I know of the 8514 leads me to believe that the 34010, which has been out for some time now, is more advanced. There are at least two boards that implement the entire X11 protocol ON THE BOARD, and that could bust the market wide open. If this becomes a popular method, vendors won't have to port X11 themselves. All they'd have to port is the client libraries and the board-level interface. The toughest part (and toughest part to get right), the server, wouldn't have to be touched at all. A company called AGE is offering a generic 34010-resident X11.3 server to OEMs now (don't call them--they don't give any info to ordinary mortals). I don't know anything about the cost or who will be supporting it, but my hunch is that the Artist board from Control Systems will be among the first in line. I believe that the advent of affordable intelligent graphics controllers, coupled with hardware-tuned X11 software, will eliminate the final distinction between workstations and UNIX PCs. (ty) -- +--Tom Yager, Technical Editor, BYTE magazine------------------------------+ | NET: tyager%maxx@m2c.m2c.org -or- tyager%bytepb@uunet.uu.net | | I speak only for myself "If our knees bent the other way, | +-------------------------------------what would a chair look like?"-------+
lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) (12/09/89)
Jim Frost (madd@world.std.com) writes: > I'm looking for opinions on what the "best" video board for 386/ix X11 > might be. I'm looking for fast color, 8 bits preferred, resolution > should be close to 1024x1024, better resolution preferred. Please > give some idea of board and monitor costs. If you have a monochrome > card which you are particularly fond of, that would be interesting too. We have tried a number of cards, including the Matrox, the Orchid and the Microfield. The Microfield T8 was the best of all of them, giving highest resolution (1280x1024 I think -- I forget, sorry), and having the least problems in terms of monitors, not conflicting with ethernet/SCSI/..., and so on. The price was not prohibitive, even in the UK -- I don't know what the exact price is we're paying, but the end user price is under UK#12K, and falls to about UK#8K in quantity, including the 25/33MHz 386, the SCSI 10.7 ms 380 Meg disk, the monitor, card, ethernet, 8 Meg RAM etc. So I would guess that you'd be looking at under UK#5,000, or about UK$4,000 for the graphics card plus the monitor. (as usual, the prices are much lower in the US). It is important to remember that most of these graphics boards take up of the order of 150Kbytes of the bottom Meg of RAM, so be careful about ethernet (for example) conflicting. The first safe address is usually at about c4000, or C37XX, I forget. (is that the right number of 0's? It's been a while, sorry). Hope this helps. This is getting dangerously close to being "commercial", so I won't give any more details, but I'd be happy to do so by mail. Lee -- Liam R. Quin, Unixsys (UK) Ltd [note: not an employee of "sq" - a visitor!] lee@sq.com (Whilst visiting Canada from England, until Christmas) -- I think I'm going to come out at last... -- What? Admit you're not a fundamentalist Jew? They'll *crucify* you! :-)