HP P Class 450/500/550/600/650/700/750 hp visualize workstation - Graphics for - Page 8

Comparing the VISUALIZE fx4+ to the VISUALIZE fx4 The following features or improvements have been added to the Visualize FX+ products to significantly enhance performance, and quality, as compared with the Visualize FX4. • AGP DMA Engine. This increases a driver's ability to drive the rest of the hardware to its full capacity. • Immediate mode graphics (higher performance and better parallelism with applications) • Display list performance for primitives with less than 6 elements (e.g., less than 6 triangles per triangle strip) • Faster pixel operations (e.g., glDrawPixels) • Faster texture download to hardware (for the initial download, or applications that need more textures than fit in on-board texture memory) • Support for DirectDraw hardware acceleration • Asynchronous cursor for better interactivity (e.g., with Unigraphics) • Faster 2d operations through driver improvements. To see the improvement in immediate mode performance, Figure 7 compares the older fx4 technology to the fx+ series. The performance of the fx4 is always bracketed between fx4+ and the fx2+, but generally closer to the fx2+ for single processor systems. Triangles per second 4000000 3500000 3000000 2500000 2000000 1500000 1000000 500000 0 0 Figure 7. Immediate Mode Performance 1 2 3 4 5 Triangles per Triangle Strip (25 pixel triangles) fx6+ fx4+ fx4 fx2+ 6 The display list performance difference is not as dramatic. The fx4 is comparable to the fx4+ for triangle strips with 7 or more triangles per triangles strip, but is significantly less than the fx4+ for 6 or less triangles in a triangle strip (see Figure 8). This is significant because many applications generate triangle strips with 6 or less triangles per strip. 03/12/99 HP 7