Graphics Accelerators

[Guest]

I use an application, DesignCAD, that requires turning off graphics
accelerators. (If you don't know what this means, right click on desktop, go
to properties, and settings and advanced and eventually there is a slide bar
that by default is set to 'all'. For this program I moved it to 'none'as
directed by the programs support desk. Maybe it would have worked in middle
but I have not yet checked that.) I know what graphics accelerators are and
why they are used; pixel rendering can be 10 to 100 times faster with them.
In the case of DesignCAD and this machine that seems to be the case, referesh
is slow. On another machine it did not seem to make a difference, so the
questions probably bridges OS and Graphics card interfaces.

Can I find out which accelerator features are being enabled/disabled as the
slide bar setting is changed?

Is it possible to debug/understand why an application can't use the best HW?

 

[David Candy]

I know the answer for 95. Had to think where I wrote about it. I didn't link it to any setting but there is probably a KB about it. Note the locations would be different now - like the registry rather than win.ini..

Most display settings are set in System Properties (in Control Panel or right click My Computer). The following are the changes that changing Video Acceleration make.

System.ini
[Display]
SWCursor=1 (turns off hardware cursor)
MMIO=0 (disables memory mapped input/output on S3 chips)

Win.ini
[Windows]
SafeMode=1 (Small bit block transfer)
SafeMode=2 (No acceleration)

Additional changes that can be made by editing the files directly are:

System.ini
[Display]
TrueColor=24 (24 bit color)

Win.ini
[Windows]
HighColor=15 (fixes funny color in 16 bit color mode)