#Compaq 486/66m
9 messages in this thread
Well, it depends on how you mean a lot of boards are better for 3DS. I
personally have no complaints using Qvision for 3DS. The Panacea and Vibrant
drivers make it a very good choice. All the M boxes are shipping with them now.
( as far as I know ).
Larry,
For one thing, and please correct me if I am wrong, the Qvision has no
truecolor or hicolor capability. I know that the best way to run 3DS is with a
separate framebuffer and monitor (I have the Targa64+ and a Sony PVM-1341) but
it is nice to be able to use Windows-based paint and drawing programs at 24bit
depth in support of 3DS. I refuse to run Windows on a TV monitor.
Also, the Qvision is not the fastest thing around for drawing lines. It is
reasonably fast, but for what it adds to the cost of the machine, I bet you
could get something much better from a vendor that specializes in graphics
hardware.
Don't get me wrong. I think Qvision is a good setup for 95% of the PC power
users out there. And nobody does Intel machines better than you guys.
Bailey
Bailey,
PMJI, but since I started this thread, I thought I'd mention that QVision
_does_ support true/high color. When using Vibrant Graphics' ProRes 3DS set up
for QVision, true color is one of the options, although apparently the highest
resolution it will support in this mode is 640×400. When viewing images
rendered with this setting, they _are_ obviously true color. I didn't try the
hicolor settings, but I assume they will work. Vibrant Graphics usually does
its homework very well. (Did you see the 3DSr3 features list that mentions
Vibrant Graphics is supplying the built in drivers for the new 3DS?)
John
John,
ABout Vibrant supplying the drivers. I just think that is pretty strange as
Panacea supplies the drivers for AutoCAD. I'm glad they went with Vibrant
though – much better drivers. I just think it's odd.
Dave Mennenoh
David,
I don't think it's particularly odd, as Vibrant seems to be the only company
willing to actually go in and look at the program code to find ways to enhance
performance. (re: their APATCH.EXE program for 3DS r2). It seems the other
driver suppliers have been content to just tack on 3DS capability to their
existing ACAD drivers; who else besides Vibrant has put out a driver
exclusively for 3DS, (ProRes 3DS). I agree with you; Vibrant makes great
drivers, and I too am happy the Yost Group went with them.
John
John,
It's not odd they went with Vibrant if you look at driver technology. It's just
the fact that Autodesk has always seemed to use Panacea's drivers in the past.
It would be nice to see them do the same thing with AutoCAD. Can't wait to see
R3!
Dave Mennenoh
Standard Qvision supports 512x480x24 and 640x400x24bit. Also 640x480x65K and
various other modes. So yes, it does have Truecolor support.
As to line draws, it's one of the fastest line draw engines I've seen. If you
are doing poly lines you can send the engine the first X0,Y0 X1,Y1, Color
parameters and then for the next segment only send the end points X1,Y1. This
greatly speeds up poly lines. It also has hardware bitblt and probably the
neatest feature is the ability to map the video memory anywhere above 16MB for
direct protected mode linear access.
> Standard Qvision supports 512x480x24 and 640x400x24bit. Also 640x480x65K and
> various other modes. So yes, it does have Truecolor support.
As I said, I want truecolor support in the graphics card mainly for Windows
(because I would always have a Targa+ or Illuminator Pro for 3DS). It is a real
pain to run Windows with non-square pixels (512×480 or 640×400). The
640x480x65K mode would be adequate, but since even cheapo $149 boards do
640x480x24bit, it is strange that the Qvision cannot.
> As to line draws, it's one of the fastest line draw engines I've seen. If you
> are doing poly lines you can send the engine the first X0,Y0 X1,Y1, Color >
parameters and then for the next segment only send the end points X1,Y1. This
My 66MHz machine with an s3 805 based board gets 13.4M winmarks. The Deskpro
66/M gets 12.3M (according to PC Mag). My machine gets a higher number for
Polylines than the Deskpro 33/M (I don't have a number for the 66/M). The s3
805 is twice as slow as the Weitek P9000, and the P9000 is almost twice as slow
as the Matrox MGA.
> greatly speeds up poly lines. It also has hardware bitblt and probably the >
neatest feature is the ability to map the video memory anywhere above 16MB for
> direct protected mode linear access.
The ability to map the frame buffer linearly is very common now. I know the s3
928 and the ATI Ultra Pro can do it, and probably most others (though I think
the s3 805 has a bug in it that prevents this from working) can too.
I am sure your customers are happy with Q-Vision because I am sure, being a
Compaq product, it works all the time. I do wish I could buy a machine from
Compaq without graphics, so I could use the board of my choice without having
to pay for the Q-Vision. I think the ideal machine would be a Pentium Deskpro
with an MGA.
Bailey,
PMJI, but Qvision does indeed support 24bit mode at a weird 640×400 though. But
it does work. Qvision is not the fastest out there. That is for sure. It is
actually a pretty slow card compared to many others out there. While Compaq
makes wonderful computers (that's all we sell to our CAD customers) their video
cards leave much to be desired. I think you are very right about getting a
compaq with another vendors video card. I think that would be a much better
option. Even their EISA cards are slower than a lot if ISA ones out there.
Figure that one out.
Dave Mennenoh