demarsee@gamera.cns.syr.edu (Darryl E. Marsee) (04/10/90)
Does anyone know if the Apple 8-24 GC card as shipped will do 24-bit color, or does it ship as 8-bit and you need the DRAM Expansion Kit to allow it to do 24-bit? If it does ship 24-bit capable, what does the DRAM Expansion Kit buy you? Darryl E. Marsee Syracuse University <demarsee@gamera.cns.syr.edu>
PACHINN@oregon.uoregon.edu (Patrick Chinn) (04/10/90)
The 8-24 and the 8-24GC both will display 24-bit color out of the box. The
DRAM is used to improve the performance of the 8-24GC when working with large
off screen bit maps and other nasties.
Patrick Chinn PACHINN@oregon.uoregon.eduph@cci632.UUCP (Pete Hoch) (04/11/90)
demarsee@gamera.cns.syr.edu (Darryl E. Marsee) writes: > Does anyone know if the Apple 8-24 GC card as shipped will do 24-bit > color, or does it ship as 8-bit and you need the DRAM Expansion Kit > to allow it to do 24-bit? If it does ship 24-bit capable, what does > the DRAM Expansion Kit buy you? It depends on which monitor you are using. All of the new Apple graphic boards sence which Apple monitor is being used and set themselvs up accordingly. On a 13" Color RBG monitor you will get full 24-bit direct color. However on the Apple two page monocrome monitor you will only get 8-bit (mayby only 4-bit I forget) grey scale. The DRAM expansion will be used by the new offscreen support that has been added to 32-bit Quickdraw. Thus if you have a fully loaded 8*24 GC (Which I think is four Meg) not only do you get parallell processing on Quickdraw stuff but if the program you are using uses the OffscreenGWorld calls the memory for offscreen PixMaps may be allocated on your graphics board too, thus freeing application memory. I expect that a CopyBits call of a 32-bit offscreen to the graphics device will be very fast in this setup. Pete Hoch
davew@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Dave_Waller) (05/04/90)
Is the 8-24 GC the same thing as the "8-bit color video" card? I just bought a IIcx with and 8-bit card and a 13" monitor. It is clearly capable of 24-bit color (you know, 8 bits of red, 8 green, and 8 blue), and also clearly seem to be using 8 bits per pixel to index a color map where the translation to 24 -bits is made (I say all this just by doing some observations with GIF files and a program called Image). Now, am I totally insane about what I think my conclusions are about my video card, or is it 24-bit color? You know, the standard marketing BS: "A pallette of 16.7 million colors, with 256 of them available simultaneously on the screen at a time!" (translation: colormap is 24 bits deep, with 256 entries; a pixel byte indexes into this table to get the pixel color). Is this the 8-24 card, or is it something different? Dave Waller \ The opinions expressed are solely my own, and in no way Hewlett-Packard Co. \ represent those of my employer (but we all know dave@hpdstma.ptp.hp.com | hplabs!hpdstma!dave \ they should!)
dhsieh@topaz.rutgers.edu (David Shea) (05/05/90)
In article <6830002@hp-ptp.HP.COM> davew@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Dave_Waller) writes: >Is the 8-24 GC the same thing as the "8-bit color video" card? I just >bought a IIcx with and 8-bit card and a 13" monitor. It is clearly >capable of 24-bit color (you know, 8 bits of red, 8 green, and 8 blue), >and also clearly seem to be using 8 bits per pixel to index a color map >where the translation to 24 -bits is made (I say all this just by doing >some observations with GIF files and a program called Image). If your card displays 256 colors, it's a 8-bit card. If it's capable of 24-bit color, it should be able to display as many colors as you have pixels on your 13" monitor (307200 colors). >Now, am I totally insane about what I think my conclusions are about my >video card, or is it 24-bit color? You know, the standard marketing BS: >"A pallette of 16.7 million colors, with 256 of them available >simultaneously on the screen at a time!" (translation: colormap is 24 >bits deep, with 256 entries; a pixel byte indexes into this table to get >the pixel color). No, your card, or any other card which displays 256 colors out of a pallete of 16.7 million colors, is called a 8-bit card. The "standard marketing BS" is not BS at all. You can choose a pallete of 256 colors from any of those 16.7 million colors. The impressive array of colors you see on you Image pallete, believe it or not, is only 256 colors. >Is this the 8-24 card, or is it something different? It's something different. The 8-24 card is part of a new line of Apple products which even my local Apple dealer can't get a hold of. David Shea.
d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) (05/07/90)
In article <6830002@hp-ptp.HP.COM>, davew@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Dave_Waller) writes: > Is the 8-24 GC the same thing as the "8-bit color video" card? I just > bought a IIcx with and 8-bit card and a 13" monitor. It is clearly > capable of 24-bit color (you know, 8 bits of red, 8 green, and 8 blue), > and also clearly seem to be using 8 bits per pixel to index a color map > where the translation to 24 -bits is made (I say all this just by doing > some observations with GIF files and a program called Image). Well, the Macintosh world actually is quite alot better than the average marketing. ALL color cards have 24bit depth in color generation, the figure given is the number of colors you can USE at the same time. (i.e., a 24bit card can display all pixels in individual colors, an 8-bit card only allows you 256 colors at the same time) The 4- and 8-bit cards use indexing into a color table, while the 24bit cards explicitly specify the color for each pixel. > Is this the 8-24 card, or is it something different? The card you most probably have is the 4-8, which is 8 bits deep (i.e. 256 color index) on small monitors (Apple 13" color) and 4 bits deep on larger (Apple 15" FPD) Your card can be upgraded (with more memory) to the 8-24 card, which is full 24bit color on small monitors, and 8 bits on large. The $2,000 8-24 GC card is a completely different card, with a 30 MHz kick-ass RISC graphics processor that takes over on graphics operations, and completes them asynchronously while your mac does better things. Trut me, you'd know if you had one. Me ? I just have a RasterOps 24bit card in my SE/30 - it's slow but looks nice. (Much faster in 1bit mode, though :-) h+ --- Stay alert ! - Trust no one ! - Keep your laser handy ! --- h+@nada.kth.se == h+@proxxi.se == Jon Watte longer .sig available on request
cs223101@umbc5.umbc.edu (CMSC 223/01011) (05/08/90)
Actually, it'd be really amazing if they did have one, considering they're not supposed to ship until August... :-) [RICH]