[Sunhelp] Recommendation on a Frame Buffer and Monitor

[James Lockwood]

On Sun, 18 Jul 1999, Bill Bradford wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 18, 1999 at 04:34:30PM -0500, Jonathan Eisch wrote:
> > I use a SS5 at home.  And I think it's great for user type applications (gimp,
> > netscape, staroffice...).  I think that it is a bit 'zippier' with these type
> > applications than a SS20.  That maybe just me.  But I'm rather sure I have a
> > TGX+ in my 5 and it's a 24bit.
> > -Jonathan
> 
> The TGX+ is a 4mb 8bit card, the TCX is the slow 24bit card that uses the AFX
> bus.

This is mostly correct.  The TCX comes in two flavors, the S24 card for
the SS5 (which is what you describe here) and the onboard video in the
SS4.  The S24 card has 4MB VRAM, the SS4 onboard video has 1MB but can be
expanded to 2MB with a SS4 VSIMM.  This only allows the use of higher
resolutions, it does not increase possible bit depth.

The SS4 TCX in 8-bit mode is actually quite zippy, a bit faster than an
sbus TGX.  The S24 is, sadly, slow for blitting (but not as slow as, say,
a GT or GS).

It's possible that some interactive applications may seem a bit "zippier"
on a SS5 than a SS20, memory latency is higher on the 20 especially when a
module has e-cache.  The SS5 design is built around very low memory access
times and a tiny cache, while the SS20 design is much more hierarchical.
The 20 will definately outperform the 5 for anything involving FP.

-James