From: andrey@cco.caltech.edu (Andre T. Yew)
Subject: Re: TECH: Amiga Vivid 24
Date: 28 Sep 1992 21:17:17 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena



cnews@umr.edu (UMR Usenet News Post) writes:

>Has anyone heard of the Vivid 24?  From what I gather it is a 24 bit
>graphics board for the Amiga computer by Commodore.  I don't really
>know anything about the Amiga itself, but I heard that this board can
>to 160 MFLOPS and 2048x2048 resolution!  If anyone has heard more
>about this please post it!

	It's a Zorro III board (meaning you can use it in only Amiga
3000s and 4000s) that uses a single TI 34020 graphics chip and up to 4
of the FP coprocessors made for it.  How they got the 160 MFLOPS
rating was by saying, "Oh, gee the coprocessor can go at 40 MFLOPS
peak, so if we have four of them, we can go 160 MFLOPS."  The
resolution of 2048x2048 is either interlaced or virtual.

	I saw the board and played with some software on it about two
weeks ago, and it was okay -- below the level of an SGI Personal IRIS
4D/25TG, ie. << 20K polygons per second, but the board itself is way
overrated (they tried to compare themselves and their 160 MFLOPS to
SGI Predators and Crimsons).  It's also very new -- it didn't work
until about 5 or 6 weeks ago, and there's nothing like SGI's GL for
it.  For the money, I'd spend a little more and get a real graphics
machine with a real processor and a proven track record -- an SGI
Indigo.

--Andre

             Andre Yew andrey@cco.caltech.edu (131.215.139.2)