On around Mon, 3 Dec 2001 06:40:09 -0800, [log in to unmask] posted
this message in news:internal.mailing-list.computers.pc-build . . .

> On 28 Nov 2001, at 1:54, Ethan T. Matthews wrote:
> 
> > I run a 19" monitor with a 1600x1200 resolution, 32-bit color and a
> > 75Hz refresh rate (I can't use 85Hz because it makes rolling, fuzzy
> > black lines for some strange reason).  Anyway, there is no way I could
> > run that resolution and refresh rate with my old 16 megabyte Creative
> > Labs video card.  It just wasn't capable.  I now use a 64 megabyte
> > card which can handle this without breaking a sweat.
> 
>   4x1600x1200 = 4x16x12x100x100
>               = 64x12x10000
>               = 7680000
> 
> which is somewhat less than 8 MB.

Just curious...why break it down like that?  Why not just say 4x1600x1200 =
7,680,000?

>   I do not doubt that your old video card did not offer support for
> this video mode.  I just want to point out that the issue was NOT
> that at 16 MB it did not have sufficient RAM to support this mode.
> The limitation you encountered was in the video coprocessor chip, its
> on-board ROM code, or the available drivers, and your new card gets
> around that -- in addition to possibly adding more RAM as well.

I never had a monitor to actually max out the capabilities of the Banshee.
A while back the Banshee was running my housemate's monitor at 1280 x 1024,
but only at a 60Hz refresh rate.  And now that I remember, the Banshee would
indeed display up to about 1920 x 1440 x 32, according to the specs, but
only at a 60Hz refresh rate.  But the quality seems to degrade as you move
into higher resolutions.  That was the point I was making.

I upgraded his video card to a Pine GeForce 2 MX and now it runs at a higher
refresh rate, but at a slightly lower resolution because the monitor doesn't
support anything higher than 60Hz at 1280 x 1024.  I think he's running 1152
x 952 or something like that.

I moved the Banshee to his mother's computer, an old Packard Bell with a
Pentium 150 and 80 megs of EDO-RAM, and it does a whole lot better on her
15" monitor running at 1024 x 768.  The 1 megabyte video card that's on the
motherboard of the Packard Bell's Intel LX motherboard (PB680) was only
capable of 256 colors at 1024 x 768.  Funny thing is, I used to use the
Packard Bell when it only had the 1-meg video, and before that I had a Win
3.1 computer which also was only capable of 256 colors.  I thought web
images were just grainy by their very nature.  I thought GIFs looked better
than JPEGs.  It wasn't until I upgraded the Packard Bell to a Banshee video
card when I saw the images the way they were supposed to look. :-)

Ethan

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