From: gag@nosc.mil (Gary A. Gilbreath)
Subject: Comparison of 24X, VRAM and 1280 cards
Keywords: Windows, acceleration, video, Speedstart, Fahrenheit, VRAM, 24X, 1280
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 22:59:18 GMT

I recently ran both the PC Magazine WINBENCH and TI WINTACH benchmarks
on the Diamond Speedstar 24X, Diamond Stealth VRAM and Orchid Fahrenheit
1280 Windows accelerator cards (these are the cards I had access to).
In the 640x480x16 test, an unaccelerated Paradise VGA card was included
to provide a baseline measurement.  All tests involving the 640x480x16
mode used the stock VGA driver instead of a board-specific driver.  Even
so, there are significant differences between the boards.

It is interesting to note that in only one case do the two benchmarks
agree on which board is the fastest overall.  However in the case
where this happened I was not able to test the Stealth card because no
driver for that particular resolution was available (800x600x16).

Observations
------------
All the boards generate their highest marks when run in 800x600x256 mode
(unfortunately I could not try the 1024x768 modes as my monitor will not
sync at that rate).  The 24X is the fastest at operations involving
blitting, but the slowest at drawing lines, circles, ellipses, etc.  The
other two cards seem to be roughly equivalent.

During normal use, I noticed very little difference between any of the cards.
However, whenever lines are drawn the 24X is noticeably slower.  If you
plan on doing a lot of CAD you might want to avoid the 24X.

I was a little surprised to see that the 24X did as well as it did in
24-bit mode.  It is quite a bit faster than a normal 16-color VGA.

Caveat
------
The tests for the 24X and Stealth cards were run on a 33MHz 386 while the
Fahrenheit card was in a 33MHz 486, so the Fahrenheit card should not
be directly compared with the other two cards.



The detailed WINBENCH results for each card in each configuration are
available to anyone who wants them.


640x480x16	 | Word Proc   CAD   Spreadsheet  Paint  Overall   WINMARKS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
24X		 |   1.95     1.92      1.72      1.87    1.88       2.9M*
Stealth VRAM	 |   1.66     1.93      1.42      1.71    1.68       2.1M
Fahrenheit 1280  |   2.03     3.37      1.36      2.42    2.30*      1.7M
Paradise VGA Pro |   1.74     1.90      1.50      1.72    1.72       2.3M


640x480x256      | Word Proc   CAD   Spreadsheet  Paint  Overall   WINMARKS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
24X		 |   3.06     4.46      7.58      4.80    4.98      12.4M*
Stealth VRAM	 |   4.64     8.16      8.62      6.60    7.01       7.4M
Fahrenheit 1280  |   5.76    12.74     10.60      7.82    9.23*      8.2M


640x480x32k      | Word Proc   CAD   Spreadsheet  Paint  Overall   WINMARKS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
24X		 |   4.12     6.08      6.56      5.16    5.48*      2.2M
Stealth VRAM	 |   3.08     3.82      4.60      3.82    3.83       6.4M*


800x600x16       | Word Proc   CAD   Spreadsheet  Paint  Overall   WINMARKS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
24X		 |   2.04     2.20      4.26      2.50    2.75       9.7M
Fahrenheit 1280  |   4.67    3.874     5.540      4.42    4.63*     11.1M*


800x600x256      | Word Proc   CAD   Spreadsheet  Paint  Overall   WINMARKS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
24X		 |   4.09     4.65     10.25      6.15    6.29      14.7M*
Stealth VRAM	 |   6.62     9.53     10.84      8.09    8.77       8.3M
Fahrenheit 1280  |   7.87    14.28     12.81      9.18   11.04*      8.8M


800x600x32k      | Word Proc   CAD   Spreadsheet  Paint  Overall   WINMARKS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
24X		 |   5.43     6.43      8.87      6.50    6.81*      2.3M*


640x480x16M      | Word Proc   CAD   Spreadsheet  Paint  Overall   WINMARKS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
24X		 |   5.10     8.16      7.50      5.40    6.54*      2.0M*


Gary Gilbreath, Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA
Internet: gag@manta.nosc.mil
uucp: {ihnp4,akgua,decvax,dcdwest,ucbvax}!sdcsvax!nosc!gag