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Video Cards Can Accelerate Graphics
By LARRY BLASKO
Associated Press Writer
Personal computers priced at or around $1,000 are entering the market and offer fine value, but there are some compromises. One may be on the video card.
The card shipped with the new PC may have only one megabyte of video RAM and may not support resolutions greater than 800-by-600 pixels. But there's a way to add spectacular performance without costing a bundle.
Number Nine Visual Technology of Lexington, Mass., has a graphics accelerator called Revolution 3D that can take video performance from the go-cart level to Indy 500 performance in a few minutes.
The Revolution 3D graphics accelerator offers video RAM in our-megabyte and eight-megabyte models, and installation is as easy as installing any other card. Open the PC, find an empty slot, firmly seat the card in the slot, close the PC and install the drivers. The whole process takes about 20 minutes.
Although the graphics accelerator is optimized for Pentium II processors, it still adds zip to graphics performance in the 100-megahertz plus Pentium ranges. They were considered top-of-the-line two years ago but now define entry level, which is typical for PC progress.
And while you may trade up processors in the future, the video card will keep pace with the newer chips for a bit of time to come, since it's aiming at the 266-megahertz monsters now current.
The differences in video performance on a slower Pentium that had been
equipped with a slower 64-bit video card with one megabyte of video RAM were noticeable. A Star Wars-based fighter simulation was crisper and smoother. Graphics jumped to the screen.
The card also supports full-screen MPEG (a compression scheme for video developed by the Motion Picture Experts Group) at 30 frames per second playback, which for most of us means flicker-free viewing. (Most humans can't perceive anything faster than .30 of a second, which is why, for example, we don't see the flicker of lights run on alternating current, which changes 60 times a second, and why motion pictures seem to move.)
The video engine of the Revolution 3D processes data 128 bits at a time. Most of the cards shipped with new PCs process information 64 bits at a time. So putting complicated pictures on the screen is a lot like shoveling coal other things being equal -- the bigger shovel works faster.
Three-dimensional graphics are the latest wave in game-playing, and it's not unreasonable to expect a bumper crop for this year's holiday software surge. But without an appropriate graphics card, they don't display their wares.
The video card supports standard and multi-frequency analog monitors and Windows 95 and Windows NT drivers. For the four-megabyte board, the maximum two-dimensional resolution is 1920-by-1080 pixels at 65,000 colors or 1152-by-870 pixels at 16.8 million colors.
In three-dimensional viewing, its 800-by-600 pixels for 65,000 colors and 640-by-480 pixels for 16.8 million colors. The manufacturer estimates the retail price of the four-megabyte Revolution 3D at $299. |
