Is there are chance you changed anything else? Do you still have the old cards to test?

I did a ISA VGA roundup a while ago:

I changed nothing at all. Every jumper, every component is the same as the other one. The one that scored more has an marker (by me) dot near the bracket.
Here is an image: Clicky-click

From ISA VGA cards that i have are:
Sigma VGA Legend - Tseng ET4000AX
Western Digital WD90C31 (two)
ATi VGA Wonder 16
Some OAK and Cirrus logic trash somewhere

I also have one more Tseng Labs ET4000AX, but thats packed for shipping for an buyer from Amibay which i didnt manage to send due to floods. I could open the package again.

[Edit]

Here are scores from PCPBench Player Bench with the WD90C31 that scored 43.0 FPS : Player Bench VESA Mode 100, 640x400 8bpp , 7.7 FPS

[Edit]

Player Bench VGA Mode , 320x200 8bpp , 22.3 FPS

[Edit]

Sigma VGA Legend
Player Bench VESA Mode 100, 640x400 8bpp - Not possible
Player Bench VGA Mode , 320x200 8bpp , 20.3 FPS

Western Digital , non special, WD90C31
Player Bench VESA Mode 100, 640x400 8bpp , 6.8 FPS
Player Bench VGA Mode , 320x200 8bpp , 20.3 FPS

I have found that my WDC ISA vga is faster than the other ISA vgas I have kept - but they are all CL ones: 5424/5428/5429 , don't own anything else atm.
All cards are 1MB , making the WDC one 512kb has a performance hit on it.
I've tested in both 386 and 486 environments.

As i am informed, Tseng Labs 4000 should be faster, but with this one special case its not. Strange stuff 😀
Needs more testing.

Hi guys,

Not to dig up an old thread but I found I had received a WD90C31 as part of some lot I purchased a while back but never got to using it. Seeing Stojke's for sale ad for one of these cards, it reminded me I should go test mine. Did my test on a 386DX/40 and found it performed about the same as the ET4000's. So if the CL54xx and WD90C31's are the same speed as ET4000's, why were the ET4000's considered so legendary? Is this just a myth?

dacow wrote:

So if the CL54xx and WD90C31's are the same speed as ET4000's, why were the ET4000's considered so legendary? Is this just a myth?

Not a Myth! The ET4000 was mentioned in all magazines as being very fast in DOS. I purchased this Wing Commander book and it also recommended it 😀

Maybe timing has to do with it? Not sure who came out first. I do remember CL was popular with 486DX2 machines and it was found in many machines but I never heard of WD until much much later here on VOGONS.

This was all in the 386 era. When machines got faster (Pentium) I remember that computer gaming magazines recommended the PCI S3 Trio 64 V+ so I got one and it was very good because everything worked with it, even higher resolutions.

philscomputerlab wrote:

dacow wrote:

So if the CL54xx and WD90C31's are the same speed as ET4000's, why were the ET4000's considered so legendary? Is this just a myth?

Not a Myth! The ET4000 was mentioned in all magazines as being very fast in DOS. I purchased this Wing Commander book and it also recommended it 😀

I just bought a couple of ET4000's because I thought they would be good to have in all my machines, and now I'm wondering whether there was any point (aside from being cheap), if they are the same speed as the more generic CL54xx cards. I suppose the WD90C31's are kinda generic too.

Someone call Mythbusters!!!

Most of the ET4000 praise came from back in the days when they were cheaper than other cards and delivered the same (or even better) DOS game performance than competitors who costs much more. They didn't beat the other cards in terms Windows performance or features, but it was a quick way to save some money when buying for a new (gaming) system. Normally someone who required high Windows features and performance had another type of budget. Nowadays its turned around, you'll more often than not find the competing cards which cost two to three times as much back in the 90s for cheaper prices than the ET4000. This is especially true when it comes to the VLB versions.

vetz wrote:

Most of the ET4000 praise came from back in the days when they were cheaper than other cards and delivered the same (or even better) DOS game performance than competitors who costs much more. They didn't beat the other cards in terms Windows performance or features, but it was a quick way to save some money when buying for a new (gaming) system. Normally someone who required high Windows features and performance had another type of budget. Nowadays its turned around, you'll more often than not find the competing cards which cost two to three times as much back in the 90s for cheaper prices than the ET4000. This is especially true when it comes to the VLB versions.

Got to love the power of hype

Just to add to the whole discussion, the card i have was not special, the other one was lacking a jumper on what i think is Wait State (0, 1). Once jumpered it performed the same as the other card.
I have tried a lot of Tseng Labs cards from different manufacturers but they all had the same score in 3Dbench2 and pcpbench. But WD90C31 still had better results (Intel Pentium 133 MHz, 430NX).

Do you remember which jumper it was, would love to re-test to see if I get the same results. But bleh at the hype and my collection of ET4000's heheh

The only jumper block on the PCB 🤣 (Below the VGA microprocessor)

I didn't test the card with JP set to 2-3 ("Never ever mess with a PCB jumper you don't understand, even if it's labeled "SEX AND FREE BEER")

In the old days there was ~99% of Tridents in my area, Tseng was light speed faster 😉 Never even heard of WD making graphics card in those days (1990-1993). After the VLB everything changed and differences weren't that obvious in normal DOS/Windows usage.

PS:
I have only one WD card with WD90C30 chip and 512KB of memory that I received a few month ago. It is as fast(slow) as my Tseng in DOS with 386DX-40. Will do some benchmarks with a faster machine.

My guess is that Tseng cards were more common than Paradise/WD. I remember seeing several DOS programs having options for Tseng video modes, but I don't remember the same about Paradise, and I did use a 90C31 card at the time (WfW 3.11) so I think I should remember.
According to http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/stories/doc/historysm.png the ET4000AX was introduced in 1989, when there was the 90C00 and maybe the 90C01. If those were slower than Tseng at the time that would explain a lot.

Oh I just checked my card and it has two jumpers. It also isn't the same model 😵 It's a WD90C31A-LR 🙁

My experience is somewhat different. Privately the PC users were using more affordable cards like Paradise PVGA1A (WDC 90C00), Oak OTI-067 or Trident TVGA 8900. Later I also sources a few ET4000s but they were all from former pcs used in companies. The speed can not be that argument, because the first ET4000s were also rather slow (TC6068AF vs. TC6100AF).
The later upgrade cards were usually Cirrus Logic based cards (e.g. SPEA-V7 VEGA) or S3 based cards (SPEA-V7 Mercury). I think this was mainly due to Windows 3.1 getting popular.

dacow wrote:

Oh I just checked my card and it has two jumpers. It also isn't the same model :dead: It's a WD90C31A-LR :( […]
Show full quote

Oh I just checked my card and it has two jumpers. It also isn't the same model 😵 It's a WD90C31A-LR 🙁

Interesting, it seems that the A version has the buffer thingy (Chip above Video BIOS), where the non A version does not have it.
Everything else seems the same.

Is that what that chip is? It doesn't seem to make much of a difference with performance however 😀

re: the previous comments, all my cards from what I remember were OAK and Trident cards (in Aus). I vaguely recall some guy at school mentioning that he had an ET4000 and that it was pretty fast but video cards weren't on the top of young teenagers shopping list. By the time upgrading video cards came around it was all about the Trident 9440 VLB 😜 Slowish compared to the rest of them but hell of a lot faster than ISA cards!

Stojke wrote:

Just to add to the whole discussion, the card i have was not special, the other one was lacking a jumper on what i think is Wait State (0, 1). Once jumpered it performed the same as the other card.
I have tried a lot of Tseng Labs cards from different manufacturers but they all had the same score in 3Dbench2 and pcpbench. But WD90C31 still had better results (Intel Pentium 133 MHz, 430NX).

I did some testing on my P-133 with FX chipset.

Paradise WC90C30 512KB
3DBench 1.0c...52.3
PCPBench...25.8

Tseng ET4000AX 1MB
3DBench 1.0c...52.3
PCPBench...25.8

Tseng ET4000 1MB
3DBench 1.0c...52.3
PCPBench...25.8

CL-5429 2MB
3DBench 1.0c...52.3
PCPBench...25.8

CL-5422 1MB
3DBench 1.0c...44.9
PCPBench...23.3

Trident 9000 512KB
3DBench 1.0c...32.3
PCPBench...18.6

OAK OTI-077 512KB
3DBench 1.0c...34.1
PCPBench...19.3

OAK OTI-037C 256KB 8-bit
3DBench 1.0c...13.6
PCPBench...8.8