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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!mks!wheels
From: wheels@mks.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: SPECTRUM 512 how do they do it ?
Message-ID: <321@mks.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Nov-87 13:32:28 EST
Article-I.D.: mks.321
Posted: Tue Nov 24 13:32:28 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Nov-87 04:47:33 EST
References: <19278@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <5021@zen.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ont.
Lines: 24
Summary: Spectrum is reasonably fast.

In article <5021@zen.berkeley.edu>, c9c-eh@dorothy.Berkeley.EDU (Warner Young (WHY)) writes:
> 	I believe  someone mentioned  recently that  they purchased the
> 	Spectrum  512 program?   Could this same  person please comment
> 	on whether  there is  any appreciable  slowing of  the machine?
> 	I've played with DEGAS Elite somewhat, and even that's a little
> 	slow at times.  If Spectrum indeed has most of DEGAS's features,
> 	as the ad claims, then is it also as slow, or slower?

I wasn't the person who commented, but I just got Spectrum 512 and love
it.  All those colours! Some operations are slower than the other
programs, but they are justified.  For example, copying a block from the
buffer to the screen is slower, but they have a lot of work to do to
merge the pallettes of the two pictures.  The manual says that about 80%
of the cpu time is taken by the pallette switches.  During some
intensive operations, such as anti-aliasing, the program gives up the
pallette switching to provide faster computation.  During this time, the
screen looks like garbage. Actual drawing speed is good. Rubber-band lines
keep up with the mouse, no problem. I have no complaints.

-- 
     Gerry Wheeler                           Phone: (519)884-2251
Mortice Kern Systems Inc.               UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!wheels
  43 Bridgeport Rd. E.                            BIX: mks
Waterloo, Ontario  N2J 2J4                  CompuServe: 73260,1043