Very Computer

Hi. Maybe this is not a good question to post here, but at your mercy,
Here goes it.
I'm about to buy a S3-86C924 board (used, ISA) for my Linux box (486
EISA - alas, I wish I could buy a new EISA board..).
I have another Linux box in my lab with a S3-911 (Orchid Fahrenheit)
and we are very happy with it. My question is, how S3-924 compares to
S3-911, or in general, to others in S3 family (if any)?
Thanks for your time,
       Han..

--

Wave Propagation Lab.                 | (217) 333 - 4406
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Linux - to die for

Well, the 924 is quite similar to the 911.  The problem with both the
911 and the 924 is that they have been orphaned.  Vendors jumped
ship to support the 801/805 S3 chips, and some do not provide 911/924
drivers and others only do so as an afterthought.  The 924 and then 911
were the first generation of S3 chips.  Boards based on these chips used
VRAM and were quite fast given proper drivers.  Then the 801/805 chips came
out; boards based on these chips use DRAM.  The use of DRAM makes it
cheaper/easier to make a board but there are some performance penalties.
I just replaced my 911-based board with an 801-based board; the 801 is no
faster and in fact may be a tad slower, but at least I can now get the
driver support I need.

If it is cheap and you have drivers for everything you will ever want to
run, get the 924 based board.  But if it is more than $50 or if you
will need future driver support, forget the 924-based product and get
an 801-based board.  Some of the 801 boards are hovering at the $100
price mark - new - these days.

 -rick warner-
  Network Manager