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523
Company: Village Tronic
North American Distributor: The Software Hut
Price: $99.95 (that's not a mistake!)
Pros: Performance is average, price is super and software is outstanding
Cons: Manual a bit thin
Performance Rating: Very good, a 4 out of 5
Brought to you by Macs Only!
Copyright 1998 by Bill Fox
March 9, 1998
Village Tronic's Mac Picasso 523 (MP523) is a 2D graphics accelerator board for PCI Power Macintoshes and the "little" sibling to the Mac Picasso 540 (MP540) previously reviewed on Macs Only!. The Software Hut , Village Tronic's North American distributor, provided the Mac Picasso 523 for this review.
Mac Picasso 523
The MP523 (photo at right), like each of Village Tronic's boards, looks
well-laid out and 
well-constructed. Be warned, however, that there is
only a 15-pin VGA connector, i.e. there is no Apple monitor port.
The MP 523 uses a 64-bit Cirrus Logic graphics accelerator chip and has
2 MB of 64-bit ultra fast EDO Video RAM. This compares with 4 MB of SGRAM
on the more expensive MP 540. 
The MP 523 supports visible resolutions
from 320x256 to1152x870 with thousands of colors and up to 1920x1080 with
256. Visible resolution up to millions of colors is supported to 832x624,
all according to the manual. See the incredible list of resolutions available
in the screen shot shown at left. For comparison, the list of resolutions
available on the PowerBase 180's built-in video is shown at right. The box
says the horizontal refresh rates are 15.5-84kHz while vertical refresh
rates are 25-160 Hz.
The MP523 supports QuickTime v2.5 and higher
and the MPEG movie compression format.
The MP523 arrived in a small 7x9x2-inch box. The board itself was tightly packed in a bubble-wrap envelope so the card was well-protected. A 60-page manual was included. It is a bit on the skimpy side but still a work in progress. The copy I received was v1.5 and some information in it, like the resolutions supported, conflicted with that printed on the box-- the list provided by the Monitors & Picasso control panel is shown at left. Version 2.5 of the software, same as with the MP 540, came on a diskette.
Test Computers
I used the MP523 in both a PowerBase 180, mostly, and a PowerMac 9600 with a PowerLogix PowerForce G3 250 CPU. In summary, the test computers are:
Installation
I installed the MP523 in a PowerBase 180 and a 9600. All one has to do is open the computer's case, unfasten the screw holding down a PCI slot cover, remove the cover and press the board into the PCI slot on the motherboard (9600) or riser board (PowerBase). After properly lining it up, the board should be pressed firmly, directly and carefully into the slot with a minimum of rocking motion. It must be seated all the way down but be careful to not fracture the motherboard. This was harder in the 9600 as the slots are very stiff and I had to apply a little rocking motion to get it to seat all the way down. In the PowerBase, it just pressed right straight to the bottom with steady pressure so there is some stiffness variability among PCI slots. The monitor , a 17" non-Apple muti-synch, was connected to the VGA port on the Mac Picasso 523.
The monitor control software called "Monitors & Picasso" (M&P) comes on a diskette with the MP 523. I received version 2.5 of the software package and v1.5.2 of M&P. The diskette contained an installer in English and one in German plus "Read Me" files in both languages. Click the Installer and that's it, very simple.
Configuration
The Monitors & Picasso software for controlling the monitor output is marvelous. I covered it in detail in the MP540 review so I won't repeat it here. However, I do highly recommend reading about it. Here's a screen shot of M&P.
After setting the resolution, vertical refresh rate, gamma correction and possibly a few other options on M&P, there is nothing else to configure to use the MP 523.
Use
The main feature of the MP523 is the large number of resolutions and monitors that are supported. The resolutions are noted above. Still, I tried out the MP523 with QuickTime MPEG and one popular game, Quake for the Macintosh.
Motion: Village Tronic supplied several MPEG sample movies. I used one that shows the MP540 card as the camera rotates all around it and does fly-overs, fly-bys and swoop-ins for about a minute showing off every nook and cranny of the card.
Here are the results in frames per second for the PowerBase's built-in video and MP523 using two different window sizes, the default size and the largest possible:
| Window Size (pixels) | Built-In Video (fps) | Mac Picasso 523 (fps) |
|---|---|---|
384x288 |
10 |
10 |
580x420 |
6 |
10 |
Fair frame rates were produced by both with the MP 523 maintaining the frame rate at 10 fps for the largest window size. Both produced fairly sharp images at the smaller window size while the images from both had clearly discernible lines and larger grainy pixels at the largest window size tested.
Quake v1.0.8.5: The speed in frames per second (fps) at which a system configuration runs Quake is calculated by using the command console. The command console is accessed by pressing the " Shift ~" keys during a game. When the command console drops, type in "TIMEDEMO DEMO2" and hit return. A sequence of 985 frames is played and the speed in fps is calculated. I ran these tests at a full screen resolution of 640x480 at 75 Hz and again at 320x240 on a 17" monitor with thousands of colors for Quake Regular since neither the built in video on the PowerBase nor the MP523 support RAVE or 3Dfx. Both computers ran Mac OS 8.1 with Virtual Memory on at 1 MB and Motorola's LibmotoSh disabled. The results for the PowerBase 180 and 9600 are:
| Computer/CPU/Video | Quake Regular (fps) | |
|---|---|---|
| 640x480 | 320x240 | |
| PowerBase/180/Built-In | 9.0 |
21.7 |
| PowerBase/180/MP523 | 8.9 |
19.7 |
| 9600/G3/ATi VR | 15.3 |
42.2 |
| 9600/G3/MP523 | 15.6 |
43.7 |
| 9600/G3/ATi VR -- RAVE | 29.9* |
49.0* |
| 9600/G3/MP540-3DO -- 3Dfx | 23.6+ |
n/a+ |
For comparison, I have included the data for the ATi Xclain VR Rage Pro running the Quake RAVE version and the MP 540/3DO running the 3Dfx version on the 9600.
Quake Regular with only software acceleration has to be run at 320x240 on the PowerBase 180 whether using the built-in video or the MP523. Running Quake Regular on a G3 CPU without hardware acceleration at 640x480 is acceptable. However, it still doesn't compare with RAVE or 3Dfx 3D graphics hardware acceleration.
Conclusions
The Mac Picasso 523 is an excellent high/multiple resolution 2D graphics accelerator. With regard to resolutions and monitor support, it greatly out performs the PowerBase 180's built-in video which in turn is better than Apple's for an entry level Performa. If one needs the increased resolutions or monitor support in a PCI Performa or PowerMac, then at $99.95 the MP 523 appears to be a bargain. If one doesn't need it for the resolutions, then it is still an oustanding second board for using multiple monitors or for a replacement to a bad video card or part of the motherboard video chipset.
Copyright © 1998 by Bill
Fox.
All rights reserved--no commercial use permitted without attribution.
Of course . . . 
. . . and I am proud to be an Evangelista! . . . 
. . [Macs Only!]