I might do a more comprehensive test with Et4000 & Cirrus Logic 5434 cards in a 5x86 120 system to find bottlenecks?

As far as im concerned ISA cards are for 386 systems and early 486's like DX33 or DX40 as VLB came out soon after, a 486DX4/100 overdrive is likely the most powerful CPU you'd run in an ISA only 486 so Im thinking that makes the most sense to test these ISA cards, just got to think of some benchmarks.

Quake
Doom
Pcpbench
3Dbench
Speedsys

How did you use DNRATE with duke nukem 3d?

dirkmirk wrote:

[...]
How did you use DNRATE with duke nukem 3d?

when in game just type DNRATE fast, the fps will show on top

keropi wrote:

dirkmirk wrote:

[...]
How did you use DNRATE with duke nukem 3d?

when in game just type DNRATE fast, the fps will show on top

Yes but how do you get repeatable results like in the doom timedemo test? can you run a demo and get it to the spit out the average frame rate?

dirkmirk, I agree with you on the systems that should use an ISA VGA card.

About the benchmarks: My strategy when comparing ISA VGA cards is to measure linear throughput when sending data (writing) to the card. Most fast-paced games calculate the image in system RAM and then copy it to the card so this would be the relevant metric.
The tool I prefer for this purpose ist c't magazine's ctcm http://www.heise.de/download/ctcm-111825.html ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/ctcm17a.zip (Unfortunately it doesn't run in virtual mode.)
The documentation is in German but with ctcm7 /Vid you can measure video throughput. You can use /C=US to get english output. This works also for the integrated help screen: ctcm7 /? /C=US.

I just checked out Speedsys. The number after "VESA memory" given in KB/s should represent the same value. I just can't find an option to set the video mode used, I know that this can make a big difference on PCI/AGP cards.

When I first upgraded from a 486 to Socket 7 (K5 PR133) before I bought a PCI video card (S3 Trio64V+, good choice in retrospect) I noticed that the actual transfer rate went down, ie. it was slower than on the 386 even though actual game performance was of course faster. This is why I think 3Dbench or game benchmarks are not very well suited for comparing the raw performance of different video cards when they are not tested in an identical system. Quake would be CPU limited on any 486, according to the mentioned benchmark a sufficiently fast Athlon is able to push 36,2 fps on the fastest ISA cards which is more than any 486 can do under circumstances (except maybe overclocking to 500 MHz using liquid nitrogen 😉 ).

Think I'll leaning towards the Et4000 from what I've read :3

Here's another question. Have any of you encountered....strange bugs possibly related to a GPU?
I ask because of this; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPaQGaqBgPw

In Hocus Pocus, when the player sprite overlaps certain level geometry (background objects), he'll pick them up as if they were collectibles.
I have NEVER had this happen before, and it's only happened on the 486 I've been talking about in this thread.

To get repeatable results with Duke3D the level 1-1 was started (Hollywood Holocaust) and dnrate was entered, the shown fps stabilizes as soon as the plane is crashed. The view is not moved by entering dnrate.

ctcm7 is incompatible with older systems and will freeze there, in most cases with a Parity Error. ctcm15 runs though. I already mentioned vidspeed which is a tool specifically designed to measure raw throughput. It is probably just a preference to use ctcm15 or vidspeed.

about this hocus pocus error, try and check your RAM, I had weird things happening with bad ram, like the alone in the dark guy walking on background:

also I never really liked the Tseng cards, I had a couple of them and gave me trouble in the usual games (keen4, jazz jackrabbit) , I stick with cirus or s3 cards

The advantage the ET4000AX chipset over the rest (including the ET4000 chipset, W32, etc), is that it looks the best. If speed was an issue then you wouldn't want ISA anyway; I've tried a stack of different cards recently in my 386 / 486 builds and couldn't go past the ET4000AX in either.

GPU I have here is the Trident TVGA 8900C (Just pulled it out)

I am currently re-benching some of my ISA VGA cards and it looks like some cards that have the same chipset have different performance.
I am benching on a Pentium III 800 MHz, so this is no bottleneck.

It might depend on how the VGA BIOS is configured. You also need to ensure they are operating in 16-bit ISA mode. Some drop to 8 bit by default.

I know and I can see the mode also in benchmarks. Still, if there is no jumper to change f.e. settings like 0 WS or 1 WS I have to take the result as it is for the specific card. And I have f.e. fast and slow ET4000AXs.

Ordered a TSENG Labs ET4000AX the other day, should be here soon.
Also, the Hocus Pocus issue I posted about, wasn't a memory, or GPU issue.
Seems like some of the data was corrupted during it's move from a CDROM, to the HDD.
Working fine now 🤣

data corruption from moving/copying is usually because of ram faults (unless the data on the cd was damaged somehow), it would not hurt to check it while you wait for your new vga

idspispopd wrote:

Real Magic: I doubt that this is a VGA card, might be a special purpose card for MPEG, at least that's what I associate with the name.

Sigma Design: Again I suspect an MPEG card or similar.

I've got a card called Sigma REALMagic 64/GX. It's a very common PCI S3Trio64V+. First strings of inf file are:

;****************************************************************************** ; INF file for Win 95 SigmaDesigns REALmagic64/G […]
Show full quote

;******************************************************************************
; INF file for Win 95 SigmaDesigns REALmagic64/GX Mpeg/Graphics Accelerator
; Copyright 1996, Sigma Designs Corporation. All Rights Reserved
;Version: 2.xx
; Copyright 1996 Sigma Designs Inc.
;******************************************************************************

It does not accept ANY driver other than this, and beleive me, I tried dozens 😀

I did test the memory, and had no errors.
However, with programs like Memtest86(+), they wouldn't loud.

ET4000AX came in today, plugged it in, and I'm getting a full screen of garbled text/symbols. Currently looking for a way to reset the BIOS (battery is fused to the board), and see if that solves the problem.

sounds like a dead vga to me... 🙁

This is what I'm getting;
http://imageshack.us/a/img221/5922/dsc01481kk.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img9/2888/dsc01482kv.jpg

obviously the bios message you see, check if some pins of the main chip or memory chips are connected (or not).