IO80141@MAINE.BITNET (Steve Trefethen) (05/17/91)
I am interested in getting a graphics board for my model 70 and I am wondering if anyone has had any experience with ATI's 8514/Ultra. Is it really as fast as they say is it i.e. 10X 8514/A? Should I just wait until the price of the XGA board falls enough or until a clone of the XGA is produced by some one else? Right now I can get the /Utlra with 512KB for $419 and w/ 1MB for $559. Theses prices are pretty good as compared to IBM's. Finally, can the 512KB version of these boards support 256 colors under Win 3.0? Thanks in advance!! -steve
U39648@uicvm.uic.edu (Darius Vaskelis) (05/17/91)
>I am interested in getting a graphics board for my model 70 >and I am wondering if anyone has had any experience with ATI's >8514/Ultra. I just got finished evaluating one for about a week. In general, my experiences were positive. >Is it really as fast as they say is it i.e. 10X 8514/A? Well, yes and no. It may possibly run 8514/A software ten times faster if you use a special ATI/8514 ULTRA driver to run the card so it can take advantage of the Mach 8 graphics coprocessor on the board. However, when running software that accesses an IBM 8514/A in hardware, the ATI 8514/ULTRA may only be four times faster or so. The board included a couple specific drivers: Windows 3.0 Fast Driver, Windows 3.0 Crystal Fonts Driver (300 dpi screen fonts!), AutoCAD and AutoCAD 386 Display List Drivers. For programs that access the 8514/A in software, through the 8514/A AI, the board includes a Turbo AI driver. You can use the IBM driver and get an average four times speed difference, or use the Turbo AI driver and get an average ten times speed difference. I didn't benchmark the board per se, this four times/ten times difference is just from the "feel" of a few applications. Byte magazine said that in 1024x768x256 colors in Windows 3.0, it was on the average 10 times faster than the IBM 8514/A, and 24 times faster than a Super VGA. >Should I just wait until the price of the XGA board falls enough >or until a clone of the XGA is produced by some one else? Well, the IBM XGA Display Adapter/A is a 32-bit bus-mastering card, so it's a bit faster than the ATI 8514/ULTRA. I think the ATI 8514/ULTRA has a definate price/performance edge over XGA... a plus on each side: ATI 8514/ULTRA can display 1024x768 in interlaced 87Hz, or non-interlaced 60/66/70MHz for a flicker-free picture, the current XGA can only do an interlaced 1024x768. However, XGA is more colorful, in that it offers a 640x480x65536 color mode (16 bits of color) where the ATI 8514/ULTRA can only display 256 colors (8 bits of color). >Right now I can get the /Utlra with 512KB for $419 and w/ 1MB for $559. >Theses prices are pretty good as compared to IBM's. Those prices seem pretty good. In Chicago, at a "bargain basement"-type of computer store, the best I found the 1M version for was $498. >Finally, can the 512KB version of these boards support 256 colors >under Win 3.0? Nope. There are two Windows drivers that currently ship with the board: Fast driver: 512K - 1024x768x16 colors 1M - 1024x768x256 colors Crystal Fonts driver (requires 1M): 1024x768x256 colors, but not all are available, some used for anti- aliasing the fonts. The card is the most impressive with a monitor that can handle 70Hz non- interlaced at 1024x768. The Crystal Font driver is incredible, and Crystal Fonts really work. They actually look around 300 dpi on the screen, and it comes with Times, Helvetica, Courier, Symbol, and System typefaces. It works fine with Adobe Type Manager installed too, and a utility to port Adobe Type 1 fonts to Crystal Fonts for the screen is in the works according to ATI. - Darius ========================================================================= BITNET: U39648@UICVM | "I'd rather laugh with the sinners Internet: u39648@uicvm.uic.edu | than cry with the saints, ====================================| the sinners are much more fun, "Don't set fire to strangers." | and only the good die young." - Mr. Zarniwoop | - Billy Joel