CompuServe Messages

For the past 8 months that I've been reading this forum, I've been religiously clipping out all opinions and experiences referring to graphic adapters, hoping to find a fast and well supported one. A couple weeks ago when I finally sprang for a 486/66 (up from my 386/33–i.e., from down there, everything looks fast) I was offered a good price on a Diamond Viper (2 Meg), and so bought it. Unfortunately it did not completely support my monitor (requiring interlacing at its highest resolution), so I picked up another, the Hercules Graphite VLB (2 Meg). Having both at hand I ran a little test. Screen redraws sap my vitality sumpin fierce (far more than I ever realized until I upgraded to the 486!) and so I loaded a 4,800 face mesh into a User View, held down an arrow key and kept time for 72 redraws. The Viper finished in 25 seconds, the Graphite in 29. Side-by-side like this, the difference was noticeable, but I don't think it will be once I've settled in with the Graphite. So the Viper was faster and cheaper, too ($339 vs $375). But I also found that the traffic on the Diamond forum was pretty heavy and HOT, compared to that on the Hercules forum! So it's the Graphite for me. Then yesterday I received my copy of Liquid Speed in the mail. Running my same test, Liquid Speed finished in 20 seconds with the Graphite. That is hardly the "twice as fast" that has been claimed by Vibrant and several forum posters–it's more like half again as fast. I'm curious as to how others measured the speed increase.