How slow was the original IBM VGA card? Was it even slower than Oak, Trident etc. stuff? And how big a handicap would that be in games, I mean, we had an ancient Trident card in our 386 yet most VGA games that run on a 386 were not slow, not even Wolfenstein 3D.
Actually it is no card, but an onboard solution. The memory is mapped through an 8 bit width interface.
If you look for benchmarks there are scores included with Vidspeed 4.
But let me quote it:
IBM VGA-------7729 Bytes per millisecond Normal Ram990 Bytes per millisecond 27.99KHz 70.09Hz 40x25 (text)610 Bytes per millisecond 27.99KHz 70.09Hz 80x25 (text)611 Bytes per millisecond 27.99KHz 70.09Hz 80x50 (text)990 Bytes per millisecond 27.99KHz 70.09Hz 320x200x4 (CGA)611 Bytes per millisecond 27.99KHz 70.09Hz 640x200x2 (CGA)611 Bytes per millisecond 27.99KHz 70.09Hz 640x200x16 (EGA)676 Bytes per millisecond 24.49KHz 70.09Hz 640x350x16 (EGA)990 Bytes per millisecond 27.99KHz 70.09Hz 320x200x16 (EGA)611 Bytes per millisecond 27.99KHz 70.09Hz 320x200x256 (VGA/MCGA)597 Bytes per millisecond 28.73KHz 59.93Hz 640x480x16 (VGA)597 Bytes per millisecond 28.73KHz 59.93Hz 640x480x2 (VGA/MCGA)677 Bytes per millisecond 28.74KHz 59.97Hz 360x480x256 (VGA)Card and bus 320x200 320x200 360x480 360x48016-bit 32-bit 16-bit R 8-bit ScoreHerc. Stingray Pro (ARK) PCI 1Mb P100 26340 48907 23530 2207 46.98Hercules Dynamite Power 2MB VLB DX2/66 22200 44401 16000 3700 41.18Genoa Phantom 64 2M (S3-864) PCI P90 19835 36571 17924 1563 35.26Genoa Phantom 64 2M (S3-864) VLB DX2/66 22230 33032 16300 2086 35.15ET4000/W32p (2Mb) VLB DX2/66 16650 33300 16408 3780 33.65Diamond Stealth 32 2MB VLB DX2/66 16667 33368 15128 3657 33.05Mercury X1/VL 2Mb (S3-805i) VLB DX2/80 19980 29204 15445 2488 32.33D. Stealth 64 DRAM (Trio64) PCI P90 19835 30739 15149 1525 31.78Spea Mirage P64 (S3-864) 2Mb PCI P100 22051 27863 13806 1754 31.65Cirrus Logic 5434 2Mb VLB SX/40 18024 35929 9460 2655 31.62Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM PCI P90 19859 29879 14804 1699 31.48Cirrus Logic 5434 2Mb VLB SX/33 16318 32572 9064 2406 28.85Diamond Stealth Pro 2Mb (928) VLB DX/50 24380 16667 8333 2767 27.39Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM 2Mb VLB DX2/66 19073 22629 10081 2039 26.56Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM 1Mb PCI P90 18575 22914 10146 1519 25.88ATI Mach32 2Mb VLB DX2/66 13298 26597 8579 2886 24.93S3-805 VLB DX2/66 20634 12064 6030 2316 21.93Cirrus Logic 5426 VLB SX/33 12497 12497 9839 2534 18.96Diamond Stealth 24 (S3-805) VLB 15922 11077 5546 2391 18.59Cirrus Logic 5434 1Mb PCI P90 (1) 10045 17264 8090 1740 17.90LightSpeed W32p (1Mb) PCI DX2/66 7396 14800 7397 2655 15.97Cirrus Logic 5428 VLB DX2/66 9508 9508 9223 2383 15.58Orchid Fahrenheit 1280+ 1Mb VLB DX2/66 10126 9002 5177 1943 13.69Trident 9200Cxr 1Mb VLB SX/25 6619 7386 4859 1303 10.17ET4000 ISA DX/33 5259 6311 5261 1255 9.03Diamond SpeedStar Pro ISA DX/40 5191 5191 5192 1409 8.67Diamond Viper PCI 2Mb (Oak VGA) P100 4517 4608 2956 1223 6.95Number 9 Imagine 128 PCI P60 3211 4044 3211 557 5.38ET4000 ISA 3145 3145 3146 944 5.34Diamond Viper SE PCI P90 2716 3173 2183 845 4.61Trident 8900 ISA 2941 3006 1167 904 4.33
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It exists as a stand alone ISA card too. Used to upgrade model 20s and 30s equipped with MCGA. It was also used for a short time in 5170s sold in France in late 1987 (along with matching PS/2 VGA monitor)
"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
I have one, its an 8-bit card and its a bit ornery when run in a non-IBM system. I ran a timedemo of it in DOOM, the result can be found here : Benchmarking DOOM with sound cards
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/ - Nerdly Pleasures - My Retro Gaming, Computing & Tech Blog
Let me know if you ever find an extra. I've been meaning to add one to an AT of mine.
"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
wrote:I have one, its an 8-bit card and its a bit ornery when run in a non-IBM system. I ran a timedemo of it in DOOM, the result can be found here : Benchmarking DOOM with sound cards
Any chance to see photo of that card anywhere? Didnt know that it even exist and wanna see it....
Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info
"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
Elianda, thanks a lot, but I don't understand the results, as the IBM VGA is not listed with the other cards.
Sorry to ressurect an old thread, but I still don't know just how slow it was compared to other cards... anyone masochistic enough to try Quake or 3DBENCH on one 😀 ?
Full length ISA cards with lots of chips like this are really cool. 😀
