On 05/14/2015 08:21 AM, JackOfTradeZ@comcast.net wrote:
""What about the issue of the graphics card (or onboard chip) needing to support the DOS VESA video modes used by Fractint?""
Any P2 or P3 box as is (as was) will have a graphics card from that era, they all work(ed) fine for me - never had a problem. It seems that the older cards actually give better video options with FractInt than the newer ones - I have noticed many times. Obviously new cards are better in all respects, I think it is a DOS/compatibility issue.
Far more likely to be a "no support for VESA" issue. A number of video cards completely dropped VESA support in favor of Windows DirectX support.
I just bought a state-of-the-art video card (circa 2003) for $10 and it gives me 1600 res option.
I had one much older than that that supported 2048x1536 resolution, but never owned a display that could handle that. That card had OpenGL support burned into its hardware, so it could do some amazingly-fast 2D and 3D things without involving the CPU at all. (The card was designed for use in CAD workstations.)
As for chips - I have determined that Athlon64 works better than Intel P4. P2 and P3 work the best of all.
I like Athlon chips, too. Ran them for several years. I have a Phenom IIIx4 running my old server, but haven't tried to see what DOS Fractint could do on it. Nor have I tried DOS on my present i7 laptop with native 1920x1080 display. XFractint works fine on both of them. -- David W. Jones gnome@hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com