I'm trying to figure out which is better, and why. A HT216-32 VLB Motherboard Integrated chip, or an ATI Graphics Ultra Mach8 ISA Card. It's going in a 486SX (soon to be DX2) machine for DOS/Windows 3.1. I've found many people like the ET4000, but on eBay they're like $50+, and I can't afford that right now.
Thanks!
The onboard video is probably going to be your best option. Those old Headland chips were pretty mediocre performers, but even a mediocre VLB card is generally going to be faster than pretty much any ISA card... especially something old like a Mach8.
The Graphics Ultra isn't a bad ISA card, but it does have one major flaw...now high or true colour modes. For ISA it's reasonably fast in 256 colour windows graphics though.
I'd probably stick with the Headland. Just being VLB is going to give it a huge advantage over the ATi. I believe that one supports higher colour modes too.
"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium
Would the headland also be better than a CL-GD5422 ISA Card?
Any VLB will be fastest than the fastest ISA card...with the exception of maybe matrox or weitek stuff.
"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium
What about more compatible?
I don't specifically recall how compatible headland is. ATi apparently has just so-so compatibility according to people who tested cards...but I used VGA Wonder, Mach8, Mach32 and Mach64 in DOS for years and don't recall having trouble.
"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium
Yeah, that's the thing about the Headland chips... nobody really remembers them. There's hardly any information to be found about 'em online, aside from some passing mentions. But that may actually be a good sign... perhaps there was just nothing about them that was interesting enough to talk about. Those chips were equipped on quite a few OEM systems, so if there were any real problems with them, you can be sure there would've been people bitching about it on newsgroups.
Probably the best thing to do is just try the Headland and see how well it works. You can always go back and add a different card if need be, but there's not much sense in spending the money if what you have works.
I suggest you try some benchmarks like 3Dbench, speedsys, landmark, topbench and leave your results here. I'm sure there are a lot of people here with 486SX-25 or DX2-whatever, who can run the same benchmarks to help you with your choice. Me included.
btw, can you show us some pics of your motherboard? Perhaps Headland is not the chip responsible for video? I remember it as chipset manufacturer from 286 / early 386 era.
I should have the machine later this week or early next week. Until then, here's the board in it. It's a PB410/420.
