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From: nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: VGA Card Recommendation for Zenith Flat Screen
Message-ID: <495523d0.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 21 Mar 90 20:55:00 GMT
Sender: root@apollo.HP.COM
Distribution: usa
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 69


    dlow@hpspcoi.HP.COM (Danny Low) posts...

>>There is no reason to use a 1024x768 card with the Zenith FTM, which is only
>>capable of 640x480...although I've heard that it does that better than any
>>monitor out there.

  I just bought the Zenith 1492 and I love it.  The contrast and 
  sharpness are incomparably better than any other monitor I looked
  at.  I'm using it with an ATI VGAWonder card, BTW.

>These two cards are among the fastest around. The Video 7 VRAM and
>the Wizard VGA boards are faster but also more expensive. Even if you
>cannot use the SuperVGA modes, the speed of these cards makes a
>noticeable difference in normal VGA modes. 

  Info World did a comparison test of 20 16-bit VGA cards in their
  December 11, 1989 issue and found virtually no significant difference
  in the speed of any of the cards.  The only exception was the Video 7
  card, due probably to its dual-ported RAM, and this was only faster
  for ONE application they tested it on (I forget which one).

  Actually, none of this is surprising when you consider that VGA
  cards don't really DO very much.  All of the real work is done
  by the CPU; VGA (and CGA and EGA) cards are basically dumb frame
  buffers.    This fact is becoming even more of a problem now that
  resolutions are becoming higher, it represents even more work for
  the CPU.

  Back in EGA days when I first heard that IBM was coming out with 
  a new graphics device I desperately hoped that they would define
  a REAL graphics processor that the CPU could offload some of
  the work to.  It would not be real expensive, especially in 
  mass production, to create a board which knows about coordinate
  systems and line-drawing algorithms, and graphics primitives and
  area filling.   With a short FIFO, which would be kept fed by the
  CPU, a system like that would positively fly and you could use it
  to great advantage for everything from windowing to 3D graphics. 
  Moreover, software to drive such a device would be much simpler
  than for VGA since the CPU would not have to be generating primitives
  at such a "primitive" level.   NEC, Hitachi, Intel, and TI have
  had chips out for years which support such functionality.

  Instead, IBM came out with VGA, which is only incrementally better
  than EGA.  
                   
  I understand that TI is promoting their TIGA line, which is based
  on the 34020.  I haven't seen anything about it, but based on the
  processor it probably is more like what I described.  Unfortunately
  TI lacks the industry leadership needed to establish this as a major
  standard so 3rd party software support for it will probably be limited and
  production volume will probably never get up to the point where
  it gets real cheap.   Does anyone know more about TIGA?

  Also some specialized companies like Matrox have hi-res boards
  complete with z-buffering but these are wicked expensive and don't
  much software support compared to the IBM standards.

  Now that PC's are entering the workstation-range of MIPS (33MHz
  386's are 5-7 MIPS, 486's are claiming 10-15 MIPS) it's about
  time to get workstation-range graphics.  Intelligent graphics
  processors are the way that workstations do it, and its the way PC's 
  should (and eventually will) do it too.   It's not a question of
  "if" but "when".  How many more universally-supported low-end
  (CGA/EGA/VGA) standards or poorly-supported high-end standards
  will we have to endure before we get a universally supported 
  high-end standard?

                                                  ---Peter