Hands-On Testing: 76 Cards For Fast Graphics

Our custom tests use real-world applications to find the fastest accelerator cards for Windows and the Macintosh

Jim Hurd and Mark Paxson

Users have always wanted faster graphics and truer colors, but until today's sophisticated chip technologies and new bus architectures appeared, these goals were attainable only at high costs. But for this report, we tested 76 color graphics accelerators for Windows and the Macintosh and found dozens of fast cards that are also economical, whether your work centers on mainstream Windows tasks or high-end Macintosh graphics applications.

Our test sampling included both DRAM- and VRAM-based (video RAM) accelerators, in configurations that ranged from 1 MB of video memory t o 4 MB or more. However, to be considered for this roundup, a board had to run at a minimum of 1024- by 768-pixel resolution with 256 colors in noninterlaced mode. Our rankings also include boards that run at 1024 by 768 resolution with 64,000 and 16.7 million colors, as well as at 1280 by 1024 resolution with 256 colors. We tested boards only in their noninterlaced modes.

If you just need the power of a 1-MB video board to run general-business applications, a DRAM-based adapter fits the bill for a low cost. We tested 10 such boards that retail for less than $200. If you need higher resolutions and more colors, you'll need a more expensive VRAM-based board to achieve good picture quality. While the fastest boards we tested all use VRAM, our tests show that the performance difference is usually minuscule; often a fast DRAM adapter will outperform an average VRAM board.

To gauge performance for real-world conditions, we used 15 test screens that included such commercial graphics-intensive applicat ions as CorelDraw, Microsoft Excel, and Aldus Persuasion. We based our tests on actual applications because many video adapters continue to be tuned more for benchmarks rather than for real-world use.

We tested adapters for four different bus interfaces: VL-Bus, ISA, EISA, and NuBus. Some drawing operations do not stress the bus speed enough to show any significant performance advantages of using the faster VL-Bus. But copying images from memory to screen (known as Blting), which is especially important for graphics illustration and multimedia applications, was the major exception: VL-Bus adapters generally outperformed their ISA and EISA counterparts by a margin of more than 2 to 1 in this operation.

Our test sample also included a wide variety of graphics accelerator chip sets. The most inexpensive boards were based on the Cirrus Logic GD5426 accelerator. The fastest chip sets varied by application and vendor implementation, but boards powered by the Tseng Labs ET4000/W32; the Weitek Power 900 0; the IIT AGX015; and proprietary accelerators by Compaq, SuperMac, Appian, and Matrox ran fastest. Our rankings don't include boards that use the Texas Instruments 340x0 coprocessor. Although it is flexible, the 340x0 architecture is being overtaken by the lower-cost, higher-performance boards with fixed-function graphics accelerator chips.

How to use this guide

To find the best graphics accelerator board for your needs, follow the main headings until you come to the appropriate bus architecture and then look for the subcategory that is most relevant to your work.

PC-based accelerators are grouped by the resolutions and color levels they support rather than traditional Lab Report rankings based on best overall and low cost (our Mac rankings follow the traditional breakdowns).

The time (in seconds) it took the graphics adapter and driver to draw a screen image. The tests use a collection of screens from top Windows and Macintosh applications. Lower numbers indicate faster performance.

**** (Excellent) boards came with installation software

and the clearest manuals;

*** (Good) identifies boards that can be installed without

checking the documentation;

** (Fair) boards required a check of the user's manual;

* (Poor) boards needed jumper resettings.

Price as configured; typically, the cost varies based on the amount, kind, and speed of RAM installed.

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Illustration: Accelerator Essentials MONITOR INTERFACE Most video cards provide a single video connection based on the standard D-shell, 15-pin VGA connector. Some high-end boards offer RGB connectors (i.e., BNC). Some boards have multiple active video connectors, allowing multiple monitor attachments. PASS-THROUGH CONNECTOR Commonly called a feature connector, this is required for boards that must use a separate VGA card. When possible, choose cards that integrate VGA support; they are easier to install, and the VGA card doesn't take up an extra slot. VIDEO MEMORY VRAM boards have the reputation of being dramatically faster than DRAM boards, but DRAM designs have improved to the point where they're not necessarily slower than VRAM designs. Choose DRAM for economy if you mainly operate in 1024 by 768 resolution with 256 colors. VRAM is a must for refresh rates that provide clear images at higher resolutions and greater color levels. VIDEO BIOS The video BIOS is where programs that support basic DOS functionality reside. Look for boards that provide VESA BIOS support in ROM (preferably version 2.0 or higher) rather than boards that make you load a TSR program. The BIOS is not used at all when Windows is running. BUS INTERFACE For the best all-around graphics performance, buy a local-bus graphics card if your computer supports either a PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) or the VL-Bus. These interfaces give you the highest bandwidth connection to your video card. The difference is especially noticeable in raw pixel copies. VIDEO ACCELERATOR Most accelerators combine VGA compati bility into the accelerator chip to save cost. The fastest boards in our tests used accelerators from Tseng Labs, Weitek, or IIT, or a proprietary design. The lowest-cost accelerator designs pack the DAC (D/A converter) onto the accelerator chip, but most video boards still have a separate chip responsible for turning the digital information stored on the card into an analog signal to drive the monitor.