mkh6317@summa.tamu.edu (HOWARD, MATTHEW KENDALL) (05/30/91)
Bueno dias y-awl, At the 8*24GC roll-out in Houston, Apple demonstrated *dramatic* speed increases in quickdraw display with a color version of the diatom line drawing program and in region dragging with a 24-bit paint program. We were impressed and were happy to pay and wait for the release of the GC. We have installed a fully populated 8*24GC card in both a Mac II and a IIfx. We use Word, Kaliedagraph, Excel, VersaTerm PRO, MacDraw II, NCSA Image, and QUED on a regular basis. We usually run in 8-bit mode. The problem is that we have not seen ANY evidence of display speed-up. (We are running 6.0.5 and the init *is* installed; the rocketship does its launching animation at boot time and is not crossed out anywhere. Noted: The GC init is currently not compatible with system 7.0) We removed non-Apple inits and cdevs and used a stop watch to time the scrolling of text, graphics, text and graphics, and dragged large grouped objects around in MacDraw. We found no significant, or consistant difference with aceleration on or off. I cannot reproduce the MacWeek tests reported a while back. (I don't believe them either.) I bought this matter to the attention of the net months ago and was left with the impression that in order for the GC to produce dramatic results, the various applications must be re-written to use GWORLD calls. Recently, in private email conversations I'm told that in certain situations, GWORLD calls are useful, especially in bitmap applications, (uncovering windows, dragging bitmap regions) but that in general the board is zippy and doesn't rely on GWORLD calls to give benefit. I am seeking demonstrable examples. I'd like to ask users of the 8*24GC (only) about their experiences with this product under 8-bit or lower pixel depths (only). Please name a commonly available program which you feel clearly demonstrates the GC's advantage. Thanks Matt
laf@mitre.org (Lee Fyock) (05/30/91)
In article <16639@helios.TAMU.EDU> mkh6317@summa.tamu.edu (HOWARD, MATTHEW KENDALL) writes: > >Bueno dias y-awl, > ... >I'd like to ask users of the 8*24GC (only) about their experiences with >this product under 8-bit or lower pixel depths (only). Please name a >commonly available program which you feel clearly demonstrates the GC's >advantage. I've found that Strategic Conquest shows _the_ greatest increase in scrolling speed out of all the applications I run when I have the acceleration on. Why are some programs incompatible with the card itself? It would seem that you would really have to go out of your way to write a program that's incompatible with a given video card! I hope Apple comes out with an updated INIT soon... Lee Fyock laf@mitre.org