From: sn@plato.chemietechnik.uni-dortmund.de (sn) Subject: Re: Vesa Local Bus and Linux ?? Date: 7 Aug 1993 23:28:06 GMT
EngelsG@uni-duesseldorf.de (Engels, G.) writes:
>Now we want to make the jump into the next generation of graphic cards and
>ordered the Elsa Winner 1000 with 3Mb (S3 928 chip). This card exists as
>EISA, ISA and Local-Bus card, so you can compare the performance of the bus-
>systems. The german magazin iX and others did it (with Thomas Roell as one
>author) and they can't find big differences between their performance, for
>example xstones (I know this isn't a perfect benchmark):
>ISA: 177638
>EISA: 194374
>VLB: 180555
>The argument for the VLB-Winner 1000 is, that only the VLB-card can use up
>to 3Mb. The price differences between ISA and VLB are not big, so you should
>buy the VLB, but you should not expect miracles, for examples performance in
>the ratio of 8Mhz to 33Mhz.
Well, sorry to disappoint you, but the Elsa Winner 1000 VLB only allows
for 2 MB VRAM operation. The 3rd Meg can only be DRAM and is used for
font cachine (if the software permits).
The article in the iX magazine stated this wrong. I know it better, because
I have an Elsa Winner 1000 VLB. BTW, my card is lacking the sockets for the
3rd Meg, so if I wanted to add it (maybe if XFree86 2.0 takes advantage
of the DRAM for font caching..), I'd have to solder in the sockets first :*.
At least the S3 86C928 is dated after 93133 (I have 93134 :), so there
is no problem on that side. I've heart about Elsa cards with older versions
of the S3 928.
Just my 0,000.02 K$ worth
-Sven