Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!ico!scottw From: scottw@ico.isc.com (Scott Wiesner) Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386 Subject: Re: Simple X windows benchmark Message-ID: <1990Jul31.152257.5578@ico.isc.com> Date: 31 Jul 90 15:22:57 GMT References: Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO Lines: 19 >> > : X server: ISC X11R3 1.0.0, Xhrc > > Looks like the Hercules is just overly slow - probably because nobody > has done any work on it. The Sun should be significantly slower than > the 33 MHz 386 machines - no graphics hardware in a Sun 3/50 either. While it's true ISC's Hercules server probably hasn't gotten the attention the VGA server has, I doubt it could be made too much faster. There were some improvements made to text output since the 1.0 release, but scrolling won't change much. The basic problem here is that we're dealing with a slow 8 bit DRAM device running over a slow bus. I have heard that on a VGA with a 16 Mhz 386, you're stuck with 20 or more wait states. I've found that accessing video memory can take more than 6 times as long as accessing normal memory. Welcome to the wonderful world of the IBM PC. Scott Wiesner Interactive Systems X Development Group