Technical Information 1-11
Video Controller
The Trident 9440 video controller combines powerful elements aimed at addressing the re-
quirements of personal computer designs. State of the art techniques have been added for
optimizing performance in computer graphic intensive applications and graphical user in-
terfaces (GUI). For example, the Trident 9440 video controller integrates the PCI local bus
in core logic. The key is that the PCI local bus interface is 32-bits wide.
The video controller speeds the movement of large blocks of image data in video memory.
As display resolutions increase, image creation and movement into video memory are criti-
cal factors in graphics performance.
The graphics accelerator is specifically designed for graphics-intensive operations, text and
color pixel amplification, and scrolling. The accelerator minimizes bus traffic by off-
loading the tasks normally performed by the processor.
In addition to the standard VGA connector, the system provides a VESA-compliant feature
connector on the system board.
Video Memory
The system's high-performance PCI local bus video with bit-block transfer (BitBLT) and 1
MB of video memory support resolutions up to 1280 by 1024 pixels with 16 colors, 1024
by 768 with 256 colors, and 640 by 480 with 16.8 million colors.
With 2 MB of video memory, the video hardware supports up to 1280 by 1024 pixels with
256 colors or 1024 by 768 pixels with 64,000 colors.