Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!milano!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: <14505@bigtex.cactus.org>
Date: 3 Mar 89 05:18:38 GMT
References: <37020@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <14313@bigtex.cactus.org> <3778@peora.ccur.com> <4710@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen)
Organization: Institute of Applied Cosmology, Austin TX
Lines: 33

In <4710@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>, toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) wrote:
> In article <3778@peora.ccur.com> joel@peora.UUCP writes:
> >Another thing I'm wondering about is whether a 16 bit card card will
> >actually faster than 8 bit cards for most cases. 

> Well, if you are going through the BIOS, your won't see any improvement.
> I have made the following observations:

How so?  VGA cards have their own BIOS.  I assume those vendors code
their BIOS to use their hardware properly.  The code in the
motherboard BIOS isn't generally used.  The video card BIOS is certain
to use 16 bit moves to scroll the screen.

> 3) Most text applications are not display speed limited, and thus won't show
> much speed improvement by the clock, but they sure look lots faster since a
> page of text snaps instantly to the screen.

"snaps instantly to the screen"?  "won't show much speed improvement"?

If you can see it, it's definitely an improvement.  If you can't, it
usually isn't.  Whether or not something is an improvement from the
CPU's perspective is entirely irrelevant: on the user's perspective
matters.

> 4) Speed improvement in graphics modes is less since you cannot do 16 bit
> graphics manipulations.

Oh?  I've been doing it for years.  If you store sixteen bits to the
screen, you get that bit pattern displayed.  You just have to store
the right sixteen bits.
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen          james@bigtex.cactus.org   "Live Free or Die"
DCC Corporation     9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759         512-338-8789