🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov17.213906.504@cbnewsh.cb.att.com> young@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (young.u.huh) writes:
>I am looking for an inexpensive way to improve the speed of Windows
>applications running on my PC.  An example of the type of improvement 
>in speed I'm looking for:  I compared the speeds of Quicken for DOS 
>and Quicken for Windows.  In DOS, I can scroll through the transactions 
>very fast by holding down the up-arrow or down-arrow, and as soon as I 
>release the key, the scrolling stops.  In Windows, however, the 
>response is much slower.  When I hold down the key, it scrolls very 
>slowly, and after I release the key, it keeps on scrolling for a while.  
>
>The PC has an Intel 386SX/16MHz processor, 8 MB of RAM, and a Trident 
>SVGA card with 1MB RAM running at 640x480 with 256 colors.  In the
>above example, is the speed bottleneck in the graphics card or in the 
>processor?
Since Quicken runs so much faster under plain DOS on the same machine
(yours) what do you think? (;-))
Due to the antiquated hardware design of the PC the CPU has to put the
image onto the Windows screen pixel by pixel and all that via the slow
AT-bus. 640x480x256 - that's a lot of info to be put into the VRAM on
your card (How many MB does that amount to, by the way? I could never
get that right). And that takes TIME.
>
For a quick fix, try switching to the plain vanilla VGA-driver included
with Windows. That'll only give you 16 colours, but at the same time it
reduces the amount of info on the screen by a factor of 16. Consequently
things like scrolling are a lot speedier.

HSK

-- 
Sie singen das alte Entsagungslied, das Eiapopeia vom Himmel,
womit man beruhigt, wenn es greint, das Volk, den grossen Luemmel.
Ein neues Lied, ein besseres Lied, oh Freunde, will ich Euch dichten,
Wir wollen hier auf Erden schon das Himmelreich errichten.    ... H. Heine

In article <1992Nov19.094530.5007@news.uni-stuttgart.de> skok@itwds1.energietechnik.uni-stuttgart.de (Holger Skok) writes:

> Due to the antiquated hardware design of the PC the CPU has to put the
> image onto the Windows screen pixel by pixel and all that via the slow
> AT-bus. 640x480x256 - that's a lot of info to be put into the VRAM on
> your card (How many MB does that amount to, by the way? I could never
> get that right). And that takes TIME.
> >
> For a quick fix, try switching to the plain vanilla VGA-driver included
> with Windows. That'll only give you 16 colours, but at the same time it
> reduces the amount of info on the screen by a factor of 16. Consequently
                                                          ^^
Not quite. 256 colors require 1 byte per pixel, whereas 16 colors
require 4 bits per pixel; thus, the amount of video data is only
reduced by a factor of 2.

> things like scrolling are a lot speedier.
> 
> HSK


Per Solberg
pso@si.no / perfred@idt.unit.no

In article <PERFRED.92Nov20171529@gullregn.idt.unit.no> perfred@gullregn.idt.unit.no (Per Fredrik Solberg) writes:

>> For a quick fix, try switching to the plain vanilla VGA-driver included
>> with Windows. That'll only give you 16 colours, but at the same time it
>> reduces the amount of info on the screen by a factor of 16. Consequently
>                                                          ^^
>Not quite. 256 colors require 1 byte per pixel, whereas 16 colors
>require 4 bits per pixel; thus, the amount of video data is only
>reduced by a factor of 2.

Interestingly, I have found that 1024*768*256 is faster on my vanilla
Trident card that 1024*768*16.
 
I guess there's something to be said for bytes around...
-- 
    Thomas Beagle | thomas@datamark.co.nz           Work: 64 4 233 8186
Datamark Intl Ltd | thomas@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz     Home: 64 4 499 3832
 Technical Writer |   Be kind to me, I think I'm suffering from angst.