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From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Graphics cards, 768x1024x256
Message-ID: <91371965@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Date: 17 Feb 91 01:59:55 GMT
References: <1991Feb17.161516.9589@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <3523@d75.UUCP>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Lines: 43

In article <3523@d75.UUCP> woan@peyote.cactus.org writes:
>In article <1991Feb17.161516.9589@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) writes:
>>A friend got, a couple of days ago, a new 33 MHz 486 PC with an Orchid
>>Prodesigner Plus card with a meg of memory. He set it up to run Windows in the
>>768x1024x256 color mode. It is amazingly fast. Far faster than my 20 MHz
>>386 machine running a Video 7 card at 600x800x16 colors. Screen redraws
>>when returning from a full-screen DOS session are almost instantaneous.
>>
>>Have other people tried a similar setup? At least for what I tried, with
>>this setup I could only call Windows "blazingly fast".
>>
>>Is this card the way to go?
>
>It is not a bad card, but you must understand that these Super VGA
>cards are just dumb frame buffers, so the observed performance, is
>largely due to a faster CPU/bus driving the card and perhaps a better
>written Windows driver. For really good performance at such high
>resolutions, you should be looking at those with hardware assist (i.e.
>TI340?0 graphics coprocessors); they have come down in price and are
>certainly close to the Orchid's price level. Then again, any ET4000
>based card will probably perform similarly to the Orchid board and
>they start at around $220 for a board with 1 MB (Swan and PC Brand).

Cheaper than that - street price on the Boca SVGA+ is $175 or so.

I would definitely say if you have a fast 386 or 486, get one.  It's so
cheap you can use it somewhere else if you decide to get a fancy
coprocessor board later.

Definitely use the "Generic ET4000" drivers floating around BBS's and
CIS, rather than the Boca-supplied ones.  The Generics are newer, faster
and fix a bug.

Keep in mind that some WinApps have trouble with 256 colors.  Also that
16 colors is still noticeably faster than 256, even on the ET4000.

We're still looking for NON-interlaced 1024x768x16/256 Windows drivers
for the ET, though.  Existing drivers are interlaced.
 
-- 
          PISTOL LICENSES                X\X\X   Tom Neff
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