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From: hd7x@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: VGA Cards
Message-ID: <1990Nov12.232157.969@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
Date: 13 Nov 90 03:21:57 GMT
References: <45534@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Distribution: comp
Lines: 28

In article <45534@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>,
v053qgzj@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (David M Snyderman) writes:
> Hello all!
> I just called Gateway 2000 for a 386sx system this morning and they gave me
> two options for a video card.
>
> 1)  A "diamond scan" (?? never heard of it??) that is supposedly fast and
> can accept up to 1 meg of memory.
>
> 2) An ATI Wonder card with 512K of memory.  Supposedly, according to the
> salesman, slower than the diamond scan and with a disadvantage of less
> memory, too.
>
> I chose the ATI-- because I had heard of it and thought it was more of a
> standard than the diamond scan.
> Did I make a mistake?  Should I have gone with the faster/higher memory

Well, the ATI, I believe, has been around longer, but I seem to remember PC
Magazine saying a few months back (when they reviewed VGAs) that they had
received a prerelease version of a card called the "Diamond" VGA that was
faster than anything they had seen, including the ATI.  If this is indeed the
case, perhaps Diamond is a good deal.  Also, the 1 MB video RAM allows
1024x768x256 to be attainable.  In my opinion, standardization of these
super-VGA modes is not really an issue, since the only programs that use such
modes are Windows programs, and the VGA manufacturer usually provides a driver
for Windows.

-Sanjay Aiyagari (hd7x@vax5.cit.cornell.edu)