Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!milano!uudell!raid!james
From: james@raid.dell.com (James Van Artsdalen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: TSENG 4000 Cards
Message-ID: <11793@uudell.dell.com>
Date: 31 Oct 90 19:38:18 GMT
References: <9010301701.AA07975@emunix.emich.edu>
Sender: news@uudell.dell.com
Reply-To: james@raid.dell.com (James Van Artsdalen)
Organization: Institute of Applied Cosmology, Austin TX
Lines: 33

In <9010301701.AA07975@emunix.emich.edu>, stretch@EMUNIX.EMICH.EDU
	(Brian Stretch) wrote:

> Now, as for which card to get.. the STB PowerGraph seems to provide the
> most bang for the buck (I have one, bought from Softwarehouse).  [...]
> If you want all-out speed, go with the Diamond SpeedStar.  It is also a
> TSENG4000 card, but Diamond did some really nice stuff with it.. they
> aren't telling what (something about buffering?), but it's a good 30%
> faster than other standard TSENG4000 cards (like the PowerGraph).

When choosing the card remember that they may not be software
compatible in clock selection.  For DOS applications this probably
doesn't matter, since you can call the VGA BIOS to do mode switching.
But for X11, OS/2, Windows and such, the VGA driver has to know how to
set the clock, and that's not standard across ET-4000s.  The card
vendor probably provides Windows drivers and might supply OS/2, but
probably not X11.

> Also, there's a new chip ("Sierra"?) coming out RSN for the TSENG4000
> boards that allow 32,000 color screens.. ie 640x480x32K..

Quick comment here: You do get 32,768 colors, but it's five bits per
gun, no translation.  In some ways this is cleaner, but it's not a
strict functional superset.  For example, with normal 256 color mode
you can have up to 64 shades of gray, or spread out your pallette more
evenly across the spectrum.  With the 16 bit per pixel mode, you can't
quite do that - only 32 shades of gray are possible.  It's a minimal
difference, but strictly speaking, 256 color mode will do better for
GIFs than 32,768 color mode will.  Also, in 32,768 color mode, the
highest supported resolution can't be more than 800x600.
--
James R. Van Artsdalen          james@raid.dell.com       "Live Free or Die"
Dell Computer Corporation  9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759  512-338-8789