#Which Video Card?
6 messages in this thread
I have the MGA Impression with Zbuffer and 4 megs. It's a great card,
but currently lacks good support for 3D Studio. The key problem is
Matrox idiotic choice of VGA chipset. It is sooooo slooooowwww!!!!
Until Vibrant finishes the MGA in-line driver for R3, the redraws in
3DS using the Vibrant VESA mode are slow (this is a particular
nuisance and hindrance in the keyframer where wireframe playback is
too slow, and only rendering previews will give you a decent idea of
the motion/speed). I still love the card, though, and am suffering
with the horrid VGA VESA until the Vibrant drivers are finished. I'm
sure it'll scream then.
John,
I was considering the card for a while, but decided to wait
until they added hardware shading support for 3ds, or I should say
"if". When I spoke to Matrox tech support a few months ago, I asked
about dos speed, which is a major concern for me. I asked if the
onboard vga could be disabled and a seperate card be used for vga
pass through, and was told "sure!". I don't know if he was full of it
or not, but you might give them a call and see if that will work,
because if it will, an MGA impression VL and a Hercules Dynamite pro
(fastest dos on the planet and under $200) would make an unbeatable
combo.
Thanks for the tip, but I think he was referring to a two monitor setup which
is the only situation in which you can disable the VGA on the MGA and use the
other card instead.
John Tissavary (La Luna cie)
Well that's dissapointing. If that's the case, I'll have to consider
another card instead, because if I pay $1k for a video card, it
better give knockout performance in all areas, including DOS video
speed (or at least give the option of vga passthrough with onother
card that WILL give the DOS speed).
I am also considering the pegasis card, I received some litature
yesterday from STB, it says that their is pass through, I don't
really know how that works!. I was also looking into the Matrox
Impression board, The Pegasis is supposed to be faster and has more
VRAM, it has 65k colors at 1280, I do not know about dos speed but
the guys at Matrox said that their Dos speed was slow!, it seems some
people were complaining about the speed with games! One guy said he
bought the
pegassis for $649, thats a bit less than the Matrox! Its a tough
decision any feed back! Also one more for Pegasis, they have 16-bit
drivers for os2!
Sounds interesting. Is the Pegasis a VLB card? I 'll call them
and get more info, but it'll be a little while before I get serious
about another video card. Too many things on the list! I've got a
Hercules chrome right now which does 1024 at 24 bit, and is fast for
an ISA card, (actually, I was perfectly happy with it until I got a
local bus machine and now I won't be happy until I have a local bus
card! Funny how that works).
If the STB card requires vga pass-through, it means that there
is no vga chip on the card, and you need a seperate vga card that
passes its signal through the STB. The STB would only kick in when
its drivers are engaged, and everything else (DOS command line, vga,
super vga, and vesa programs) would only use the vga board. This is a
good thing because you can buy a cheap one that has good dos speed,
without worrying about its Windows performance, etc. provided it has
a feature connector.