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From: howie@triton.tamu.edu (MATT_K_HOWARD)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Is the 8.24GC improvement dramatic?
Message-ID: <11425@lanl.gov>
Date: 15 Jan 91 05:08:45 GMT
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News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4

I attended the roll-out of Apple's 8.24GC accelerated video
card last year.  Two examples demonstrating dramatic speed
improvements stand out in my memory.  In one a color version
of the diatom program which draws geometric patterns was
run in 8 bit mode while the accelerator was switched on and off.
In the second example, a lassoed portion of a 24 bit bitmap
was dragged around the screen as smoothly as it occurs on
a b/w Mac, ie, no winking phenomena.   In both cases the
benifit was obvious.  The board was installed in the then
new Mac IIfx.

My wife saw the demo and thinks she might buy 6 of the GC's
for an art department she runs.  There, they routinely
work with line art containing 300-500 objects in MacDraw II.
The scroll time is killing them.  They have one IIci and some
II's and IIx's all running the 13" Apple RGB.

I invited her to try a hands-on demonstration on a Mac II
with a 8.24GC a co-worker had.  We experimented with 
MacDraw II, Canvas 2.1, MS Word 4.0, and Kaleidagraph V2.1
and in NO case did we notice ANY speed improvement.  We verified
that we had the required operating system (6.0.5) and that the
required system folder additions, 32bit color QD, and the
GC Init.  We switched the GC in and out via the CDEV.  We tried
rebooting though the manual says it isn't necessary.  There
was plenty of memory on the board and in the Mac.  Nothing
we tried seemed to be any faster.  The owner, who didn't
see the introduction demonstrations, thought everything was fine
because thats the way it had always been.  Someone who works
near that station "thinks" that the After Dark screens run faster.

So here is the question.  How much speed improvement should I
expect.  It should be noticeable right?  Do you know of an example
that clearly demonstrated improvement on a Mac II host? In the last
MacWeek they benched accelerated cards and reported a 5X or greater
improvement. We sure didn't see it.  Talk it up folks and thanks in 
advance.

Matt Howard
Mail me or post here.

Internet: howie@triton.tamu.edu
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