#Graphics Coprocessor?
8 messages in this thread
Gary,
The new "Windows Accellerator" boards like the S3 or the Weitek 5086 won't
do much for Ani Pro. These boards are not memory mapped in their
accllerated modes, so their ability to draw pixels is not any faster than a
VGA board. In fact, they could possibly be slower.
Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Actually, the president of Intel used the Windows flc player with one of
their own accellerator boards and it sped them up by 4x. Ani Pro couldn't
take advantage of it, but the Windows player sure screamed.
– G
Well, that just goes to show you that as soon as you think you know
something, someone else comes along to prove you don't. <g>
Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Gary, Just got the video tape of Andy Grove of Intel from the Comdex show.
Sure is alot of your stuff on his computer screen! Congrats on the
exposure.
Mike
Very interesting, Michael… I didn't know that a videotape was available.
How did you get it?
– G
I was interested in your comment that "Windows Accelerator" boards won't do
much for Ani Pro.
Is the same true, in the 486 world, of the coprocessor? That is, is a 486
DX significantly better for Animator Pro than a 486 SX (with the
coprocessor disabled)?
Edward,
No, it's not true.
Let me first explain why Windows accelerator boards won't help Ani Pro very
much. These accelerator boards speed up Windows through two functions which
they do faster in hardware than the PC's CPU can do in software. These are
line drawing and BITBLTing. A BITBLT is an operation that copies a
rectangular section of memory, either screen or CPU, and copies it to
another section of memory, which can also be either screen of memory. Both
of these operation are widely used in Windows. Unfortunately, Ani Pro
doesn't. Most of its operations involve manipulating single pixels and its
just as fast or faster to draw a single pixel using a VGA as it is an
accelerator board.
As far as a math processor goes, keep in mind that it only helps with
floating point computations and not with generic add, sub, mul, and div
instructions. Since Ani Pro doesn't use floating point insructions, a math
coprocessor doesn't help it any.
Brad Ek [Panacea Inc.]
Thank you.
Is that generally true for other animation packages, too — that math
coprocessors do not help? Or is this characteristic (of not using floating
point instructions) limited to Animator and not application to other
animation approaches? [