nbeck@weber.ucsd.edu (Nathaniel Beck) (04/07/91)
I am getting a 486 system. I want to be able to use 1024x768 (or whatever the correct numbers close to that are) on a non-interlaced monitor (a Seiko 1450, I think). One vendor has told me I need 1M on the video card to support non-interlaced SVGA, another has said that a much cheaper (ATI Wonder) card with only 512K will do. Which vendor is correct, or am I totally confused, or both? Thanks in advance Neal Beck -- Neal Beck Dept of Politcal Science, UCSD beck@ucsd.edu Dislaimer: The Regents pay me (a bit!) to distribute my opinions.
jayh@ms.uky.edu (Jay Hofacker) (04/07/91)
A S-VGA card is adequate for 1024x768 with 16 colors. In order to do 1024x768 with 256 colors, you need 1 Meg of RAM. I personally have a clone VGA card (the name in the docs, on the card, and in the BIOS are all three different...) based on the Tseng4000 chipset. It was about $140 (cheapest I could find mail order) and came with 1 meg of Ram. -- Jay Hofacker, sysop of the Audio/Visual Exchange, (606)254-1751 3/12/24 MNP 5 Mail: jayh@ms.uky.edu / uk02779@ukpr.uky.edu -- Yes, my signature is only 2 lin
alun@sunatb.UUCP (Alun Saunders) (04/08/91)
nbeck@weber.ucsd.edu (Nathaniel Beck) writes: >I am getting a 486 system. I want to be able to use 1024x768 (or >whatever the correct numbers close to that are) on a non-interlaced >monitor (a Seiko 1450, I think). One vendor has told me I need 1M on >the video card to support non-interlaced SVGA, another has said that >a much cheaper (ATI Wonder) card with only 512K will do. Which >vendor is correct, or am I totally confused, or both? >Thanks in advance >Neal Beck If you only want to use 16 colours then 512k is fine, only if you want to do 1024x768x256 do you need the full 1 Meg. You can quite easily confirm this by working out 1024*768=768k. For 16 colours you only need 4 bits per pixel, ergo you only need 384kbytes video memory. For 256 colours you need 1 whole byte per pixel, i.e. 768kbytes. The next round figures for these amounts are 512k and 1M respectively. BTW, the interlaced vs. non-interlaced issue has no effect whatsoever on the amount of memory you need. Its only a question of timing on the card. Hope this is useful. Alun Saunders