re question on eisa video board performance from article c ubg k w world std com by cfw world std com christopher f wroten i have an eisa machine and i just do not understand why most eisa video cards only match the performance of their isa counterparts for instance the eisa orchid pro designer iis e is only about as fast as the isa diamond speedstar plus which isn t what i would call fast i don t understand why eisa video cards aren t as a group on the same level of performance as local bus cards given that eisa video cards have a bit bus to move data around instead of isa s bits good question answer the eisa bus does move bits rather than isa s but it still moves it at about the speed as the isa bus i think that s either or mhz the local bus designs also move bits like the eisa but they move the data at the cpu speed up to mhz so on a mhz cpu the local bus is moving bit data at mhz and the eisa is moving bit data at or mhz so the local bus should be to times faster than eisa on a mhz cpu eisa should be about two maybe times as fast as isa since they are not why would anyone me included pay a higher cost for a eisa video card when its performance is no better than and often worse that a much cheaper isa video board such as a diamond speedstar x from pc magazine s i think recent report i know that ati makes a pretty fast eisa video card but it s around which is just about double what my wallet will allow me to spend and for i could get a diamond viper and still have left over of course i d have to get a local bus mother board too that s a very good question the eisa bus does have more advantages over the isa bus than just it s width for example more better interrupts and bus mastering but these other factors do not impact a video card very much they have more impact on file servers with multiple hard drives full throttle network cards cd roms etc can anyone shed some light on my confusion frustration thanks christopher wroten cfw world std com
