On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:51:45 -0500
Michael <macallan18@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> > Hi, does anyone know if there is much difference in performance for 2D
> > applications between creator3d and elite3d frambuffers? I think
> > elite3d has extra floating point units for fast 3D rendering, but are
> > they used at all for regular desktop applications, like GTK2, etc?
> 
> We don't have any docs about the afb's extra bits so we run it like an
> ffb ( the only user visible difference is that the afb needs a firmware
> image loaded )
> I have both, an Elite3D/M3 and a Creator3D ( ffb2+ ) but I'm using the
> Creator, mainly because:
> - the Elite gets a lot hotter than the Creator
> - since we can't use the extra bits that's a waste of energy
> - I couldn't see any real performance difference, at least not afb vs.
>   ffb2+
> 
> If your Creator is an older type, like an ffb1 then the Elite might be
> significantly faster and less troublesome but if you already have an
> ffb2+ then the Elite won't offer any extra benefit right now.
> 
> To get better performance in gtk2 applications you may want to try the
> sunffb driver from -current, it uses hardware alpha-blending which
> significantly speeds up rendering of anti-aliased text, icons and so on.
> It's not really final yet though.
> 
> have fun
> Michael
> 

Yeah, I'm running NetBSD-current on Ultra 10, the Xserver is faster than on
Solaris for GTK2, since Sun's Xserver on sparc does not support Render
extension, etc.