*BSD News Article 11125


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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!umn.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!hasty
From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr)
Subject: Re: Ree: What kinds of G card are there?
Message-ID: <1993Feb15.173425.22979@netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
References: <4102@tansei1.tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 17:34:25 GMT
Lines: 82

In article <4102@tansei1.tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp> mhiroshi@tansei.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp (H. Murakami) writes:
>
>
>Please give me some information.
>
>We are now planning to buy a machine with VL-local bus DX2/66 ISA machine.
>We are thinking 1024x768 or 1280x1024 dots colored CRT display.
>
	It is not clear that a DX2/66 is faster than a DX/50 ISA machine.

>1)
>	  Is the X-server for the S3 chip MUCH faster than the
>	X-server for the chips like ET4000? How faster?
>	  If I read from the article quoted above, the XS3 is about 
>	10 times faster than X386. Is this real now? 
>	Is there no pain for the XS3 compared from X386 for ET4000s?
>	(No pain no gain?)
If by pain you mean installation, it is easy to install XS3 there
are a few minor error recovery on interpreting the Xconfig which
I will address with our next release.

Here is an old benchmark for my Actix GraphicEngine32 (S3 801 isa card),
running at 1024x768 at 45Mhz interlace. 
Orchid 486/50Mhz 256k cache Vesa Local Bus ISA and 8MB of memory.

TOTAL    308018 lineStones
TOTAL     64306 fillStones
TOTAL     48712 blitStones
TOTAL   3509459 arcStones
TOTAL    166718 textStones
TOTAL    113137 complexStones
TOTAL    100253 xStones

At higher refresh rates the performance of the 801/805 will degrade.
At 60Mhz 1024x768 we expect the 801 to be faster than the ATI Ultra Pro.

>
>2)
>	  Does the X-server for S3 chips use the advantages
>	of the S3 chip's instruction over the ET4000 ?

We sure do take advantage of the S3 graphic functions over the
ET4000. XS3 is not X386 but is Kevin Martin's X server for the
8514/a with minor modifications for the S3 chipsets.


>3)
>	  For the VL-local bus or EISA-bus, which is 32bits wide, 
>	does the X-server really use that 32-bits width of the bus ?
>	(Or it still uses only 16bit width transfer?)

	We use 32bit wide bit wide for reading or writing pixels
	to the card. 
>4)
>	  I read new ET4000/W32 is quite fast or faster than S3's.
	Don't anything about the et4000/W32...
>5)
>	  What is the fastest X-server with the combination with
>	the G-card on the VL-bus (ISA) ?
	Good question I just posted an S3 survey to help answer this
	question so far I have received very few responses.
	The fastest S3 G-cards are those based on the 928 cards.
	We are getting a 928 soon so I will inform you and the net
	how much faster is over the 801/805. Actix is going to start
	selling their 928 starting at $329.

	We are not recommending 805 cards till they work and we
	can prove that they are faster than their ISA counterparts.

	There is no performance comparison between the et4000 and
	S3. To summarize I have  seen et4000 being quoted at 11k xstones
	and that was fast.

Hope this helps,
	Amancio


-- 
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Amancio Hasty           |  
Home: (415) 495-3046    |  ftp-site depository of all my work:
e-mail hasty@netcom.com	|  sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/incoming