rec.autos.simulators

Thanks
Jim Harmon

I currently run a similar setup.  I have a Am486 DX4/100 w/ the Diamond
Stealth 64/DRAM (2meg).  It is more than enough for EGA mode.  I feel that my
processor is the limiting factor in ICR2 rather than the graphics card.  I
have heard some people claim that the DRAM is actually better for DOS games.  
I don't know about this myself.  I too hope to upgrade to an Am5x86 myself as
soon as they will sell me one at the company store!

Clark

Tom

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      Tom Weber                    

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I have a DS 64w/VRAM.  NASCAR works well but I don't know if it is better
than a DRAM.  It is more expensive; and I don't know if it would be worth
the difference in price.  Especially with all of the new 3D chipset video
cards coming out (Video Blaster, Verge(sp?), EDGE 3D).  You might want to
go with the DRAM for now, hoping that the 3D cards will be out and at a
good price in a year or so.

BTW has anyone seen the new 3D cards?  I have seen some stills that show
NASCAR with incredible graphics!  But you can't tell the performance from
a still.

                                Michael Lewis

DRAM: you can either write or read to/from it
VRAM: you can write and read to/from it at the same time

So if you have 60ns DRAM and a 100ns VRAM chip, the VRAM is faster because it
runs two operations at the same time. However, your video driver has to support
this, so in dos based vga games the VRAM actually runs slower than the DRAM.

However, indycar 2 has an independent vesa driver for running it's graphics, I
personally don't know whether it supports VRAM, but since it supports several
chipsets directly, I'd say it supports the VRAM used by those chipsets. Thus -->
if your chipset is supported by icr2, then it probably supports your VRAM. From
what i can say, my icr2 is 2x as fast as Nascar (which doesn't have an
independent graphics driver) running on the same pc, and my video card uses VRAM.
If I were buying a video card for icr2, I'd certainly buy one with VRAM.

Tommi Pajari

Mark

: I currently run a similar setup.  I have a Am486 DX4/100 w/ the Diamond
: Stealth 64/DRAM (2meg).  It is more than enough for EGA mode.  I feel that my
: processor is the limiting factor in ICR2 rather than the graphics card.  I
: have heard some people claim that the DRAM is actually better for DOS games.  
: I don't know about this myself.  I too hope to upgrade to an Am5x86 myself as
: soon as they will sell me one at the company store!

Buying a new P120 last week, the supplier described this advantage
of DRAM over VRAM as being that DOS graphics (say in games) will
be much quicker, but if you do lots of scrolling (plus colour
work etc.) in Windows VRAM increases the speed, refresh rate
and number of colours...

Which is what I knew anyway, but you know what salesmen are like -
can't get a word in edgeways, even to confirm the sale!

:-)

Thomas
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        Is the stingray 64 a PCI video card? What IS the fastest
VL-bus card on the market... for dos performance that is?

So how would Win 95 handle the problem.  If you run the simulation via
(from) Win95 does its video drivers continue to function or does it treat
the simulation as a true dos game?  If the later is true then VRAM still
wouldn't help in any case.  ANY comments?

Thanks...

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Lee

The advantage of VRAM only become obvious when you are at high resolutions and
color depths.  If you are at 640x480 and 256 colors, you will not see a
difference between DRAM and VRAM.  At 1280x1024 and 16.7 million the
difference will be night and day. I don't know what the color depth of ICR2
is so VRAM may be much better or not.  Also, the video card companies tend
advertise the perfomance of thier cards in Windows.  Most of the PC magazines
only benchmark cards in Windows now.  The best Windows cards are usually not
the best DOS *** cards and vise-versa.  Just my experience.