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Back in the day I had a no-name Cirrus Logic GD5428. Performance and compatibility were OKish, but the card was quite unreliable. I had to take it out and reseat it every few days, otherwise the BIOS would give me the "no video card" beeps. Cheap CL cards often turn up at ebay, make sure the card has been tested before getting one of these.

I also had the PCI version of the Trident TGUI 9440. It was a real dog in both DOS (crappy VESA mode support, loading UniVBE was mandatory) and Win95 (driver crashes and compatibility issues).

About running an Intel DX4 on a 40 MHz bus: I've been doing that for a long time now, and the performance increase is really noticeable. However, not all DX4-100s are up to the job, only one out of my three CPUs is stable under Windows at 120 MHz.

Cirrus Logic cards aren't the best VL-Bus cards, but they do have the advantage of being cheap and readily available most of the time. They make a great card if you're just starting out building a VL-Bus system until something better comes along that you can afford. A day hardly goes by when there aren't several of them for sale on ebay. Performance is pretty good for a budget model card, but they aren't the fastest cards available. They are definitely higher up the ladder than a Trident card, though. Trident cards were quite possibly the cheapest VL-Bus cards you could buy at the time and worst performing. They are a big "NO" today.

Totally agree with the last statement on CL. There is a reason why that's the majority of what you find for sale...because all the good stuff has already been taken. The 5434 seems to be an exception, however...especially for ISA.

CL cards were just made in the millions so they are still many around. I wish I still had my computer shopper mags from that time to see what all the OEMs were using back then. The good 2/4MB VLB cards came out when everyone was switching to PCI 486/Pentiums so there were not that many made.

Good 2MB VLB cards were available in 1992. The bigger problem was the price. Good cards were usually $500. I remember wanting to buy a mach64 2MB VLB or ISA card in 95/96 and still be surprised they went for $400.

Example: Feb 1995 (PC Magazine)

ATi Xpression (Mach64 DRAM) 1MB -$179, 2MB - $249
ATi WinTurbo (Mach64 VRAM) 2MB - $399
ATi Graphics Ultra Pro (Mach64 VRAM) 2mb - $449, 4MB $699!!!!

Yeah I got my first VLB cards in 1996 and managed to score both for around $40. Hercules Dynamite Power (ET4000 W32p) and Number Nine Motion 771 (S3 968). That's quite a loss of value 🤣. PCI was the new hotness.

Somebody also gave me a VLB version of CL GD5426. I recall it being pretty decent for DOS games. I previously had used an ISA 5426 which had been an upgrade from an awful Trident 8900C for my ISA-only 486.

I've never owned a VLB system in the 90's. Went from ISA only 486DX2-80 to Pentium 90. So I'm not really emotional enough about VLB cards/mobos.

As stated before, from my testing on 486DX4-100MHz there isn't any difference between the different chipset in DOS games. But in Windows there are big. I'd like to see how the latest gen of VLB cards compare to Tseng et4000/w32i-p 2MB. As it is around 2x faster then S3-805p - benchmarked with Winbench 3.11 at 800x600-15/16-bit colors.

There is also a factor about FSB speed as many don't do more then 40MHz with 0-WS.

CL cards were very common, as evidenced by the 6 or so I have in my collection without even trying. I think they're excellent for non SVGA DOS games and there's some handy utils around for them, but the image quality varies from card-to-card, so although they're cheap, you might go through a couple before finding a decent implementation.

I did a half-assed roundup of my VLB cards a while back and the WDC Paradise WD90C33 won out. I think it rocks:

The ultimate Ultima 7 machine

The only problem I've noticed with the WD chipsets is that they always seemed to be paired with lowend RAMDACs. Does anyone know how C&T chips perform? There was a latter generation one with an integrated RAMDAC similar to S3 Trio that seemed like it might be okay.

At the moment there are 3 S3 based miro CRYSTAL VLB cards on German ebay. They are offered for 24,95 € including shipping within Germany, no shipping outside Germany.
I suppose it could be possible to make a deal so the price for the card itself stays below 22,50 € and the card gets shipped to Norway. (The seller Goniema is specialised in retro stuff.)

I'd love to try the Miro Crystal 12SD card (Trio32), but sadly I don't live in Germany, anyone there willing to forward to me?

idspispopd wrote:

At the moment there are 3 S3 based miro CRYSTAL VLB cards on German ebay. They are offered for 24,95 € including shipping within Germany, no shipping outside Germany.
I suppose it could be possible to make a deal so the price for the card itself stays below 22,50 € and the card gets shipped to Norway. (The seller Goniema is specialised in retro stuff.)

Thanks for letting me know. I've added the Trio32 based card to my watch list, the others, 805 based ones, simply are too primitive I think to make my VLB project able to compete with my current PCI setup with Matrox Millennium. After all, I'm looking for something that'll give an over-all user experience close or equal to what I can achieve with my current setup.
I'm going to contact the seller and see if he's willing to come to some sort of arrangement.
Thanks for all the advice so far.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

ATi Graphics Ultra Pro (Mach64 VRAM) 2mb - $449, 4MB $699!!!!

I got one of these (4mb) sealed in box for $45 about 5 or 6 years ago. I think it's probably the most powerful card released in ISA format and one of the last. Mach64 was released as ISA,VLB and PCI cards around the time the first PCI motherboards were hitting the market.

I also picked up Graphics Xpression 2mb ISA for around $30 complete in open box at about the same time.

LunarG wrote:

Thanks for letting me know. I've added the Trio32 based card to my watch list, the others, 805 based ones, simply are too primitive I think to make my VLB project able to compete with my current PCI setup with Matrox Millennium. After all, I'm looking for something that'll give an over-all user experience close or equal to what I can achieve with my current setup.
I'm going to contact the seller and see if he's willing to come to some sort of arrangement.
Thanks for all the advice so far.

In my experience, no VLB card can compete with a Matrox Millennium. They can be more compatible, but once you move into DOS SVGA land or Windows, PCI is the only way to go.

iv got a Trident pm-513, a 2mb mach32 and a CL-gd5426-80qc-a, just from testing them out in win95 the mach32 doesnt seem bad. All of them were $2 Goodwill finds xD

Mach32 is great in Windows. DOS performance is said to not be great though, at least for the VRAM version.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Mach32 is great in Windows. DOS performance is said to not be great though, at least for the VRAM version.

Going by the charts from the old issue of Computer Gaming World that was linked at some point, it suggests the exact opposite; that the Mach32 has great DOS performance, and very poor Windows performance, while the Mach64 on the other hand, has great performance in both.
I've got my eyes on a couple of cards at the moment, one being that Trio 32, which is probably only "alright" in terms of performance, seeing as it is a crippled Trio 64, the other is something a bit nicer, but probably also going to be too expensive. We shall see, as I've contacted the sellers.
Wish me luck 😉

Good luck!

The chart shows the budget DRAM version of the Mach32, the premium VRAM version should score differently for both DOS and Windows. Most VRAM cards had a bad reputation for sub par DOS performance.

Mach32 and S3 928 were the fastest things around when they were released in 1992. This roundup is from late 1994, so it's not really fair to compare them to 64-bit chips is it?