*BSD News Article 12520


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!tuegate.tue.nl!rwa.urc.tue.nl!rcpt
From: rcpt@rwa.urc.tue.nl (Piet Tutelaers)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: 45 graphic cards tested for MSWindows
Message-ID: <rcpt.731580191@rwa.urc.tue.nl>
Date: 8 Mar 93 08:43:11 GMT
References: <rcpt.731543293@rw8.urc.tue.nl> <1993Mar8.004919.6027@netcom.com>
Sender: root@tuegate.tue.nl
Reply-To: rcpt@urc.tue.nl
Lines: 48

hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) writes:


>About S3 cards and their performance from my personal experience
>with XS3:

>Not all s3 based cards run at the same graphic engine speed.

>So far S3 VESA Local bus cards are not showing higher performance than
>their ISA cards. It is almost as if the VESA Local bus interface was
>not properly design. I will find out more about this in the near
>future by testing an S3 card with a faster local bus interface
>(I can't named the manufacturers till I am certain that they 
>perform faster)

....<your S3 experience deleted>...

>When I get my hands on a working S3 928 card which works with XS3,
>I will let everybody know :-)

I think a lot of people (like me) thinking to start with 386BSD are
confused which card to buy and which X-server to run. In the mean time
I have a little experience with 386BSD on our 486DX-33 with two
different ET4000 boards. Given the fact I am still not able to get an
ergonomic performance out of these cards, with this I mean 70 Hz at
1024x768 with 256 colors, I would be very anxious to leave the official
XFree86-1.2 line and choose the XS3 server. You could help us by giving
an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of the XS3 server
compared to the XFree86-1.2 (and for example answer the question why
XS3 is not part of XFree86-1.2) and a list of cards on which this
server runs.

If people provide me with the basic information I will make a summary
answering questions like:
  - XFree86-1.2 or XS3?
  - if XFree86-1.2 which card?
  - if XS3 which card?
  - VLB / ISA / EISA
  - 386 / 486
  - how much memory?

Another tool that might be very helpfull would be a program that runs on
MSDOS and checks if the graphic card is supported by either XFree86-1.2 or
XS3. I can imagine of a program that shows a video test image (like you see
on TV) which can give you an idea about the suitability of a given card in
combination with a given monitor.

--Piet