#Vibrant Drivers
13 messages in this thread
A question for anyone using Micron computers w/ 3DStudio: My local Adesk vendor
is also a dealer for Micron; I'm having them give me a quote for some systems,
but in a recent review (Computer Shopper, Sept.), the Micron graphics board
(Matrox Ultima MGA) scored way low on DOS speed. The system is the "Micron
P90PCI Power Station." Is this a concern, or do the Vibrant drivers alleviate
system-based redraw speed? The Matrox scored quite high on Windows screen
redraws, but I do NOT want to run 3DS under Windoze… come to think of it, I'd
rather not run *anything* under Windoze…
Maybe I should buy the systems w/o a graphics card and get a #9 or Diamond
Stealth card (if possible)?
Thanx for any help.
Jeff (a soon-to-be ex-Amiga user) Brown
I have the Micron p-90 with the stelth 32 pci and it works fine. BTW look into
the Scsi drives, as you could use your old Amiga drives. sorry to see another
Amiga user bite the dust. I gave mine to my son to work in Dpaint 4 . Now that
Lightwave and Imagine have moved over I just can't see running Amiga any more.
I found that it takes two IBM's to do the job of one Amiga becouse of dos's
lack of multitasking env. But the speed is awesome. Brandon
Will keep my Amiga's around… especially the one w/ the Sunrize audio board in
it., but I probably will move my 1GIG drive to the file server (plan to get one
with PCI SCSI). Thanks for the vote of confidence on the Micron w/ Stealth
board. –Jeff
The Matrox MGA is very fast in 3DS with the latest Vibrant in-line drivers.
The MGA has no DOS acceleration, however, and games and other pure DOS, VESA,
and VGA stuff will be painfully slow. I love my MGA, though, and haven't found
a card that can touch it for what I need.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
John,
Do you have any idea how the MGA compares to a Viper using the Vibrant
Drivers?? Just curious as I am STILL working toward that Micron P90!!
— James — MAP —
Actually, I've never used a Viper with the vibrant drivers because I got sick
of diamond before I started using Vibrant's ProRes 3D (long time ago <g>).
Their hardware was too erratic for my taste, so I switched to Hercules, then
Matrox. The MGA works great with the in-line drivers, and except for very
lousy dos performance (games, etc…), it's incredible, and I believe still the
fastest 24bit card out there.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
Thanks. I will keep that in mind when I finally place the order.
— James — MAP —
John,
>> and I believe still the fastest 24bit card out there. <<
from the reports that I've read, the fastest now seems to be the Diamond
Stealth 64, for 24-bit operations, by quite a wide margin. You can only be the
fastest for a few months in this biz, but Matrox managed quite a long time as
the fastest.
Hmmm… maybe Diamond is worth checking into further…
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
Even though I'm using a Viper VLB (original rev.), I'd really stay away from
Diamond if possible. I've been reading that the ATI Turbo Pro is even faster
and perhaps better supported. Know anything about that product ?
BILL
Last time I tried an ATI the drivers were TOTALLY worthless, and all subsequent
fixes broke something else. The ATI forum seems to indicate nothing has
changed in this department. For me Matrox is the most reliable I've found.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
>> …stay away from Diamond if possible. I've been reading that the ATI
>> Turbo Pro is even faster and perhaps better supported…
I went that route. I dumped the Viper and got the ATI Mach64 thing. It's
pretty cool, fast and does 24 bits in 1224×1024 what I was looking for. The
problem is that the Vibrant driver has some major problems with it. PC-NFS,
the stuff I use for networking, doesn't like it either. Support is indeed
great though. I called and someone answered immediately, I told my problem,
they hadn't heard about it and took notes. A couple of days later they called
me saying they had found the problem and they were working on it with Sun.
They said they would call me as soon as they had a fix. I never got beyond
the answering machine over Diamond.
<< I never got beyond the answering machine over Diamond. >>
I know what you mean. Yes, everything I'd read & heard indicated the ATI board
was the hottest & pretty well supported. I sure as he** wouldn't take much to
beat Diamond's TS ! Is the ATI supposed to work well in a non-networked 3DS
environment ?
BILL