Home - Hardware - Viewfinder - What is it
Viewfinder is the ultimate video upgrade for the Acorn Risc PC, exploiting the power of mainstream AGP video cards. Larger screenmodes and more performance result in a more comfortable and smoother desktop experience than ever before.
More space. Up to dual-screen 4096 x 1536, or single-screen 2048 x 1536, 16 million colours, 70 Hz.
More speed. A smoother and more responsive desktop, thanks to exploitation of hardware acceleration.
Programmable. Make your own screenmodes, easier than ever before, without monitor definition files.
Feature rich. Dual-head (display on two monitors) and TV-out options (on specific Radeon AGP cards).
Upgradable. On-board software is in flash ROM, simply download a new version and reflash to upgrade.
Viewfinder is an expansion card, and simply plugs into a free 'podule' slot in the Risc PC. All existing screen modes are supported automatically, new ones can be created quickly and easily.
By exploiting hardware acceleration, Viewfinder speeds up many drawing operations, among which the most important ones used on the desktop, such as rectangle copy (for moving windows around) and rectangle fill (for drawing window and menu backgrounds). By a huge factor (see below). Your desktop background will be drawn at a similarly improved speed, thanks to Viewfinder's sprite cache. Your windows will pop up in a flash, and literally zip along the screen when moved around. Regardless of the resolution or colour depth of the screen mode.
| Plain Risc PC | With Viewfinder | Speed increase | |
| Rectangle copy | 11 MB/sec | 612 MB/sec | 5463% |
| Rectangle fill | 17 MB/sec | 1.2 GB/sec | 6958% |
Viewfinder is compatible with all Risc PCs running RISC OS 3.7 or higher, including the latest versions of Select and Adjust.
More details, and more technical information, can be found in the actual Viewfinder documentation. It may be quite helpful to read.
Go here.
Viewfinder is no longer available.
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