Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!utastro!bigtex!james
From: james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 16 bit cards vs 8, SHAFTED?
Message-ID: <14504@bigtex.cactus.org>
Date: 3 Mar 89 05:05:12 GMT
References: <37020@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <14313@bigtex.cactus.org> <3778@peora.ccur.com>
Reply-To: james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen)
Organization: Institute of Applied Cosmology, Austin TX
Lines: 20

In <3778@peora.ccur.com>, joel@peora.UUCP wrote:
> Another thing I'm wondering about is whether a 16 bit card card will
> actually faster than 8 bit cards for most cases.

Yes.  You'll see it too.

> As I recall the arguement was that since most accesses to video
> memory were 8 bits at a time, the extra bandwidth was usually wasted.

Ha!  Mr. Gibson wasn't thinking.  The most visually obvious speed
issue is screen scrolling, and that happens 16 bits at a time.  16
transfers have fewer wait states than 8 bit, so you get not only two
bytes at once, but fewer wait states to boot.

Keep in mind that most/all VGA cards have the video BIOS on the card,
and don't use the motherboard BIOS.  One tends to assume that the card
vendor optimizes their BIOS for their board design.q
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen          james@bigtex.cactus.org   "Live Free or Die"
DCC Corporation     9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759         512-338-8789