Rasterops Horizon 24

slomacuser · Jul 26, 2022

I got this card recently and want to do some research. Was this one of the best graphic cards available at the time or is it just rarer to get? Not many information is available online. It started as a Mercury project.

Here is a classified document about Mercury project
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/nubus/rasterops/docs/horizon24.pdf

InfoWorld December 1993 Announcement

Tech Monitor January 12, 1994

RASTEROPS LAUNCHES HORIZON 24 COLOUR GRAPHICS SUBSYSTEM FOR THE MACINTOSH THAT AVOIDS BOTTLENECKS

Santa Clara, California-based RasterOps Corp has introduced its graphics display technology code-named Mercury which enables the display and manipulation of large colour images up to 256Mb in size on the Apple Computer Inc. Macintosh computer in real time. The first Mercury-based product is RasterOps’s Horizon 24 – a 24-bit colour graphics subsystem for the Macintosh that brings workstation-class performance to the desktop, the firm claims, by removing system bottlenecks through the integration of 24-bit colour display capability, QuickDraw acceleration, a signal processor engine, local RAM and a high-speed data bus. The Horizon 24 daughterboard holds twin signal processors, which boost the performance of computationally intensive image processing functions such as Adobe PhotoShop filters. Licensed from Spectral Innovations of San Jose, California, a suite of Adobe-charged custom PhotoShop filters and effects enable the Horizon 24 to make special use of the AT&T Co 3210 signal processor processors and ARTA Apple Real Time Architecture. Horizon 24’s architecture features a high-performance data path that is 50 times faster than the Macintosh and virtually eliminates system bottlenecks, the firm says. Local memory can be expanded to 256Mb and is used for off-screen imaging. Horizon 24 comes in three configurations: a 4Mb, 16Mb and 64Mb image memory version for a suggested retail price of $5,000, $5,800 and $12,500,respectively

It quickly changed to Paintboard Professional not Horizon anymore. Why they changed the name? Probably to fit with other Paintboard naming of Rasterops video cards and as DSP board was not necessary for PowerMac users as it is automaticly disabled in PowerPC mode. The DSP board was optional for Paintboard Professional cards.

The card got very bad review in Macworld October 1994. At the time, everybody designed 7” cards, Radius had Le Mans GT, SuperMac Spectrum 1152 and both cards outperformed the Horizon 24 in speed tests. GWorld was abandoned and few really use it. Its author is talking about sluggish 2.0 ROM and beta software drivers 3.0 but the ROM 2.0 was the latest for the card it was probably software drivers which came up to 3.2 the lates revision. See below chart. And what is worst Rasterops charge for its drivers.

So I my expectations were low but when I did the first test with the card, I was blown by its speed. It is the most fastest Nubus card I had. It outperforms SuperMacs Thunder II GX card. Tried the Speedometer ver 4 see results comparising with Quadra 840AV built in video.

Some pictures of the card and daughter DSP board