From: rich@Rice.edu (& Murphey)
Subject: Re: Suggestions for buying a graphics card.
Reply-To: Rich@rice.edu
Organization: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice
	University
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 04:55:41 GMT

>>>>> In article <SBAKKE.92Dec28104553@xcalibur.MITRE.org>, sbakke@xcalibur.MITRE.org (Steve Bakke) writes:
Steve> I have at most $200 to spend on a graphics card for my system. I would
Steve> like it to support at least 1024x768 non interlaced.  Does anyone have
Steve> any suggestions on what type of card I should buy.

Yep, here's a thumb-nail sketch of some XFree86 & XS3 performance
comparisions I've written for the X386 FAQ.  We really need more
xbench results for various cards on identical host hardware to make a
better comparison.  Till then this is the best I have on hand.  Feel
free to send me mail/comments/suggestions if you need info on xbench
or have results we can include or see better advertized prices.  Rich

  For under $100, the Tseng ET4000 is reasonable.  For double the cost
  an Actix graphic engine gives six times the performance.  Here are
  the rankings by xstones:
  
  model                 chip            xstones price   ratio
  GraphicEngine VLbus   S3 805          84K     $290    3.4 $/k
  GraphicEngine 32b     S3 801          64.1K   $210    3.3 $/k
  F1280 (most recent)   S3 924          48.6k   $210    4.3 $/k
  GraphicEngine 70      S3 911          37.4K   ?       ?  $/k
  F1280 (first model)   S3 911          24.6k   $170    6.9 $/k
  ProDesigner II        ET4000          11.6k   $130    11.2 $/k
  Tseng                 ET4000          11.6k   $88     7.6 $/k
  Trident 8900C         TVGA8900        5.1k    $58     11.4 $/k

  The following performance ratings are relative to a value of 10000
  for a monochrome SUN 3/50 running X11R3 communicating via unix
  sockets.  A machine with double the performance will therefore get
  20000 and a machine with half the performance will get 5000.  These
  benchmarks were taken on various PC hardware, so the results cannot
  be quantitatively consistent.  We should not rely on them
  quantitatively, but untill we have all the cards available in one
  place this will be the best we can do.

  machine              p  comm   line  fill   blt   text    arc   cmplx xstone
  Sparc2 gx            8 local  244821 44250 50912 435875 7763207 85816  97803
  Gr.Eng.801 13MHz bus 8 local  107908 42632 31590 117562 2975512 92352  64061
  Gr.Eng.801 6MHz bus  8 local  102774 45363 27382 113125 2485082 97712  60897
  F1280 924  486/33    8 local  111640 30450 21935 103812 2871708 62222  48559
  GraphicEngine70 911  8 local  103781 21777 16997  83875 2580416 46797  37496
  X11R5 S3 X386        8 local  107087 22917 15007  56375 2522818 44117  34032
  Sparc1+ cg3          8 local  121149 13219 10735 134750 2112958 22418  25901
  F1280 911            8 local   56746 16390 10463  53625 1425872 34444  24625
  ET4000 486/33        8 socket  88671  9562  3372  97281 1377355 11307  11621
  Sun3/50 (R3)         1 socket  10000 10000 10000  10000   10000 10000  10000
  Trident 8900C        8 socket  55957  2503  1990  45937  705011  4248   5123

  line = solid-line, dashed-line, wide-line and rectangle performance.
  fill = solid-, tile- and stipple-rectangle-fill performance.
  blt = invrects, screencopy, scroll, and bitmapcopy performance.
  arc = arc- and filledarc performance.
  p = color/greyscale planes. '1' means monochrome.

  Actix's GraphicEngine 23b $210 Palo Alto Micro 415-493-8209
  Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 1Mb+Sierra $210 OS Computer 800-938-6722
  ATI VGA Wondercard XL 1Mb $129 Harmony Computer 800-441-1144
  Orchid ProDesigner IIs 1Mb+Sierra $130 Dee One Systems 800-831-8808
  Tseng ET4000 1Mb $88 OS Computer 800-938-6722
  TVGA8900 Trident 8900C 1MB $58 Dee One Systems 800-831-8808

  NB: XFree86 does not yet support the Trident 9000 or any Diamond
  card designed after the Diamond Speedstar+.
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.i386unix