ressler@galileo.ifa.hawaii.edu (Mike "IR" Ressler) (04/18/91)
In article <1991Apr17.192840.5486@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> nan@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Nan Zou) writes: >It's true that different cards are not hardware compatible with each >other. But I have seen some programs that have VESA SuperVGA autodetect >without the use of any device drivers. Fractint is one them, I can put >it in Super VGA mode without loading a specific video driver. I have run Fractint (v15.0) both with my card's VESA bios installed and without it. (It's a Diamond Speedstar with the Tseng 4000 chipset and 1 Meg RAM.) The program draws things MUCH faster when I tell it to use the Tseng 4000 driver rather than the VESA driver (I'm guessing at least a factor of two). It's so much faster that I always use a Tseng driver if a given application has one rather than the VESA. Anybody know what's going on here and if the slowdown is due to something I'm not doing right? -- Mike Ressler - Infrared Photon Jockey ressler@galileo.ifa.hawaii.edu If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger sledgehammer.
fenger@galaxy.cps.msu.edu (Steven V Fenger) (04/18/91)
In article <6710003@pollux.svale.hp.com> dlow@pollux.svale.hp.com (Danny Low) writes: >> My question is are all SUPER VGA boards compatible with >> each other, such that if one manufacturers board fails >> I can plug in another manufacturers board and proceed with >> no problems in the software. > >No. VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) has a SuperVGA >standard but it is new and incomplete. No. VESA is very complete. The VESA standards 2.0 came out sometime last summer and covered displays to 1280x1024. >Right now any SuperVGA >card you buy will be incompatible with any other SuperVGA card. This is true at the SVGA hardware programming level. VESA drivers make them compatible, though. Most major card manufactures have VESA compatible drivers available. I know for sure VESA drivers are available from ATi, Headland (Video 7), and Paradise. A VESA driver is a software method of compatability, though. Its like adding a SVGA BIOS. >You basically have to settle on a company and stick with them. Not really. Major software vendors provide drivers for major SVGA cards and vice-versa. So, for instance, if you use WordPerfect, WordPerfect provides drivers to work with various SVGA cards, and SVGA card companies also provide there own drivers for WordPerfect. If you do change SVGA cards, you would have to install the new video driver, though. >The only good aspect is that many VGA cards use a common chipset >(e.g. Paradise, Tseng or Headland) and are mostly compatible with each >other for that reason. Of course, all SVGA cards are compatible with each other with respect to IBM video standards. Steven Fenger fenger@frith.egr.msu.edu \ fenger@cps.msu.edu >- But all roads lead to fenger@galaxy.cps.msu.edu fenger@power1.ee.msu.edu /