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Date:      Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:25:08 -0500
From:      Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org>
To:        Ulrich Spoerlein <q@uni.de>
Cc:        Doug Barton <DougB@freebsd.org>, stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: HEADSUP: XFree86 4.3.0 update
Message-ID:  <3E78B604.70909@mitre.org>
In-Reply-To: <20030319181304.GC335@galgenberg.net>
References:  <200303180051.LAA03851@lightning.itga.com.au> <20030319003933.J88684@znfgre.tberna.bet> <20030319181304.GC335@galgenberg.net>

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Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
> On Wed, 19.03.2003 at 00:40:41 -0800, Doug Barton wrote:
> 
>>>	Make sure your X session is running with depth >= 16!!!!
>>
>>I read an article from what should be a reliable source that said all
>>modern SVGA cards perform best at their maximum color depth, since that's
>>how they're optimized.
> 
> 
> _Probably_ true for 2D and Desktop usage (though I doubt it) and
> _definitely_ not true for 3D Usage (all those 32bit textures need to be
> transferred from Chip <-> RAM, the smaller they are the faster the card
> goes).
> 
> So the 16 vs 32 bit case is clear. But it might be true that 8bit modes
> "suck" at newer hardware (because of emulation?)

I've heard this said many times over the years, but when I go and 
actually benchmark my cards I always find that they perform faster at 
lower bit depths.  Granted this is fairly simple stuff like xengine, but 
it has been a constant.

It's easy to test on your machine.  Just start X in the various 
bitdepths and run a few benchmarks.  I'd be interested to know if there 
are actually cards out there that prefer higher bit depths.

8 bit is usually considerably faster than the 15/16/24/32 bit cases as 
well.

-- 
   \  |_ _|__ __|_ \ __| Jason Andresen        jandrese@mitre.org
  |\/ |  |    |    / _|  Network and Distributed Systems Engineer
_|  _|___|  _| _|_\___| Office: 703-883-7755



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