#Which Video Card?
7 messages in this thread
Why do you need VGA pass through? The Pagasus is based on the S3 928,
which is a fast SVGA chip with graphics accelerator functions built
in.
The S3-86C928 chip provides excelent windows perfomance and
programs with drivers written specifically for that chip will run
fine I'm sure, but DOS programs that use standard vga or VESA
resolutions, such as Animator pro, will perform less than optimal on
this chip. I have read reviews that rate the 928 chip as having so-so
DOS performance. When playing flics out of Anipro on a slow DOS chip
such as the older Matrox Impression cards (which I've tried) the
frame rates can be painfully slow, even though Windows may run like
lightning on the same chip. Boards such as the ATI or those based on
the Tseng 4000 can run flics at double the speed of slower DOS chips.
So, before I get a new video setup, I'll wait until someone
comes up with an excellerator card that will pay attention to both
Windows AND dos (few and far between!) or that provide a pass-thru
option so I can have a choice to use the card that best suits the
application.
Maybe you should look into the Tseng ET4000Wi or whatever the latest
version is called. It has the same sort of gui accelerator functions
as the 928 (but maybe not lines?) but is as fast as the old ET4000 in
dumb framebuffer/vesa modes.
Personally, I feel the S3 801/805/928 are getting a bum rap with
respect to dos performance because the S3 911 and 924 were so bad.
I've seen benchmarks that indicate that the 801/805/928 aren't that
bad.
I think alot of companies really don't understand the PC power user
market very well and think that we are all a bunch of people with
nothing but Windoze and Winmarks on the brain. I would much prefer
to see fast dumb frame buffer access and bug-free Windows and OS/2
drivers rather than a board/driver that does 100 million winmarks,
draws random junk all over the screen periodically, is slow as mud in
vesa mode and doesn't work with OS/2. How fast do they think 2D
graphics needs to be? I wish they'd use some of that effort to make
some low-end 3D capable boards.
I hear the Tseng 4000 w/32i does dos faster than anybody, and
I have used a first generation Herc dynamite board with the /w32, but
to be honest, the difference between that and the ATI GU pro VL that
I run now is barely noticable. If ATI came out with a 3 or 4 meg
version, I'd get that and forget about any high end cards.(that is,
I'd wait 6 mos. for ATI to clear all the bugs out of thier drivers,
and then get one!) But as it stands now, I don't think a VL card with
over 2 megs exists that will run everything fast. I don't even think
there're any high end VL cards that will accept vga passthrough so
you could at least pick a pair of boards that will do everything
between them.
Your certainly right about the cardmakers apparent attitude
towards our needs. They seem to think "If your not in Win or Acad,
why does it have to be fast?"
If I were you, I'd come up with a good dos/vesa benchmark and then get
somebody to run it on an S3 928 board for you. If you are happy with
your ATI GUP, then I think you will be happy with a 928. The 928's
vga modes are not that slow and use the VRAM on the board unlike the
ATI's SVGA part which uses the separate DRAM on that board and cannot
use the VRAM that is there for the Mach32. Just to give you a data
point, my NDI S3 805 VLB board gets a 3DBench (320x200x256 benchmark)
of 43.4 (I think that number is frames/sec). It is dependant on cpu
speed too, but slower SVGA's impact it alot. The fastest score I've
seen is about 51. Both my machine and the one that got 51 were
DX2/66's. I think the one with the 51 had a VLB ET4000 card.
Actually, I shouldn't be putting too much thought into this
video thing because the last thing I should be putting money into
right now is another video board. I think I'll wait a few months and
then start checking into it again. It seems like every three weeks
something new comes out so I would probably be wise not to worry now,
because when I'm ready to get something there's a good chance
there'll be boards out there that will do just what I wan't without
compromising speed in any area.
Hows that for optimism? <g>
This doesn't fix the problem exactly, but if Animator is an issue, you
might consider getting Vibrant's ProRes/Animator drivers and support
that S3 928 chip directly. Send your address or call us at
800-937-1711 for details.