For 2D stuff, how much can the choice of video cards help? I've heard about some cards being slow, such as the Rendition Verite.
So for VGA, VESA, and DirectDraw rendering, which cards are best?
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In my experience the S3 Virge and Trio64 have excellent compatibility and are pretty quick. I also like the Matrox Millennium (and Mystique, G200 PCI) cards as they have much better signal quality for Windows usage (I like to run in 1280x1024 in Windows), but I've read they don't have the same compatibility in DOS as the S3 (though they should be abit quicker). I've never experienced any problems myself with the Matrox cards though, but then again, I'm not the biggest DOS gamer.
It also depends on what games you're gonna play and the type of system. If it's 2D games from the 2000's like Simcity 4, Civ 3, then I would not recommend getting a 90's card.
Personally I just grab a NVIDIA card like Riva TNT. Extremely fast 2D all around and they have good compatibility. Some games are troublesome though and then the S3 Virge comes out.
wrote:I've heard about some cards being slow, such as the Rendition Verite.
For the time, all Verite cards were fast at VESA modes and DirectDraw. They are ok at GUI too. It's when you need ModeX that you're in trouble because they are terribly slow at it. VGA Mode 13h 320x200 is slow too but it can be remapped to VESA with renutil.
My favorite 2D card is 3dfx Banshee or Voodoo3. Relatively easy to find in AGP and PCI version. I'm mostly using CRT for real dos boxes though.
There is also this handy reference that you may find useful (compiled by a vogons fellow Gona):
http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/
To be more period specific I would grab a Virge variant but the Voodoo3 is a great all around card.
For VGA/Vesa can help you this mine little benchmark.
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/benchmark … tware-rendering
Won't help you with directdraw, havent found good ddraw benchmark.
Maybe test Unreal in SW mode can be little helpfull....
Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info
don't forget the riva128(zx) cards... speedy 2D and compatible...
and those ARK chipset PCI cards, they seem to be the fastest IIRC
That's odd. I was just testing my Mach 64 and S3 Virge this weekend. According to Winbench the S3 is about half as good as the Mach 64, but the Quake 1 benchmarks posted put Mach 64 around 100 and Virge around 130. I wonder what the deal is.
Surely CPU power makes a far greater difference for these 2D games than the video card?
*remembers the turbo button and games running at ridiculous speeds* 😁
wrote:and those ARK chipset PCI cards, they seem to be the fastest IIRC
+1 for the ARK chipset for pure 2D:
wrote:That's odd. I was just testing my Mach 64 and S3 Virge this weekend. According to Winbench the S3 is about half as good as the Mach 64, but the Quake 1 benchmarks posted put Mach 64 around 100 and Virge around 130. I wonder what the deal is.
Quake is tested in DOS, not in windows. So drivers can make difference, higher resolution and colors (quake run in 256 color mode i think) and also virge cards have very different clocking - there are cards with 45Mhz to 60Mhz - that is big difference (also they have fpm or edo memory with different timing).
Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info
wrote:For VGA/Vesa can help you this mine little benchmark. […]
For VGA/Vesa can help you this mine little benchmark.
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/benchmark … tware-rendering
Won't help you with directdraw, havent found good ddraw benchmark.
Maybe test Unreal in SW mode can be little helpfull....
Nice. Good to see that the Voodoo cards are up there.
Do not refrain from refusing to stop hindering yourself from the opposite of watching nothing other than that which is by no means porn.
wrote:For VGA/Vesa can help you this mine little benchmark. […]
For VGA/Vesa can help you this mine little benchmark.
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/benchmark … tware-rendering
Won't help you with directdraw, havent found good ddraw benchmark.
Maybe test Unreal in SW mode can be little helpfull....
Hm, sometime I need to cross-reference this against Gona's compatibility list and try to get the fastest AND most compatible 😁
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wrote:Hm, sometime I need to cross-reference this against Gona's compatibility list and try to get the fastest AND most compatible 😁
Please separate between PCI and AGP then 😉
I'm surprised there's a RTG3105iEH among the results.
I have ISA Trident 9000i-3 512Kb, 8900D 1Mb and VLB CL GD5428. Never experienced any difference 😀
Hmmmm. I once upgraded from a ISA 8900C to a ISA GD5426 and it was dramatically faster. TIE Fighter SVGA became playable. It is SVGA that really displays the difference because of the higher bandwidth requirement. GD5426 is also one of the first budget GUI accelerator chips so there's also that speed benefit.
Another interesting experience I had was with a midrange Hercules Dynamite Power VLB (ET4000/W32p 2MB) vs. a high-end Number Nine Motion 771 VLB (S3 968 2MB VRAM). The 968 was a fast GUI chip but I couldn't tell the difference between it and the ET4000, and in DOS and Windows 95 games, the ET4000 was faster. I had Am5x86 160 at this time.
I'd take a Voodoo variation if you don't need Windows 3.1 compatibility. It had great speed, VESA compatibility and 2D (signal) quality in DOS. 'Almost as good as a Matrox.
I could never get past the crappy ramdac on most of the early NVidia cards, like the RIVA 128.
wrote:I could never get past the crappy ramdac on most of the early NVidia cards, like the RIVA 128.
It's not the DAC. The quality of the analog circuitry varies between card makers.
