Precise results:

Speedsys:

CPU speed index: 9.26
Memory speed index: 45.11
VESA video memory: 1185 KB/s
Cache Level 1: Read 25.55MB/s Write 30.24MB/s Move 37.44MB/s Average 31.07MB/s
Memory: Read 15.58 MB/s Write 30.24 MB/s Move 18.72 MB/s Average 21.51 MB/s

OAK are known as Video Decelerators.

Stojke wrote:

OAK are known as Video Decelerators.

Ah ah but I have to admit I admire them to be my very first computer video card (probably the same one I found now, but this one has a dual bios and also a sort of serial port near the vga one.

You want a Tseng Labs ET4000 ISA card.
Both Trident and Oak are notoriously slow cards. Problem is, they are ubiquitous because they were so cheap. So they went into every no-name clone.
Also stay away from Realtek. Not quite as common as Trident or Oak, but every bit as bad, possibly even worse.

Thank! But compared to the S3 805 VLB card I tested on a 486, is it much slower? Did VLB vs ISA both 1 or 2MB cards differed that much?

386SX wrote:

Thank! But compared to the S3 805 VLB card I tested on a 486, is it much slower? Did VLB vs ISA both 1 or 2MB cards differed that much?

The ET4000 is the fastest ISA card ever made, and at least in 320x200 mode there is very little difference in performance with a decent VLB card (it's fast enough for supersmooth Doom action on a 486DX2-66 for example), and there are actually VLB cards (again Trident) which are slower.
A bad ISA card such as a Trident can be 3 to 4 times slower than a good ISA/VLB card in a fast machine like a 486. In a 386 you will notice less of a difference, but still you don't want a Trident, Oak or anything like that in a 386DX-40. Even an 'average' ISA card like a WD Paradise could give noticeable improvements in framerate over a Trident in a fast 386 system.

Thank you! I am going to look for that card but prices nowdays are just ridicolous for hardware that often need also repair.

Just a technical question: the huge speed gap of the ET4000 is cause higher internal clock/memory speed or different architectur? it's interesting to see that no other pushed isa bus that far.

386SX wrote:

Or in dos with dos games it's hard to see any difference? (maybe I think to see some smoother framerate on Stunts)

You'd better to use Doom to measure the performance in games as it gives concrete numbers.
Games intended for 386 should work good on it anyway as it's highest 386. 1994 year and later games, many of wich recommended to use 486, may work bad. Some games may to work better in SVGA modes with better video card, Gravis Ultrasound may improve performance in some games too. I doubt you may do something other for gaming on 386.

386SX wrote:

Just a technical question: the huge speed gap of the ET4000 is cause higher internal clock/memory speed or different architectur? it's interesting to see that no other pushed isa bus that far.

It's a combination of fast memory and a really clever memory controller. The problem with video ram is that you want the CPU to be able to write to it, and the RAMDAC to read from it, without one slowing the other down.
The cheap way is to use wait-states, so the CPU will have to wait for the RAMDAC to complete its access. The expensive way is to use 'dual-ported RAM' aka 'VRAM', where the memory can be accessed from two ports at once, allowing CPU and RAMDAC to work together.
Then there are graphics cards with a good compromise between the two.

386SX wrote:

Precise results: […]
Show full quote

Precise results:

Speedsys:

CPU speed index: 9.26
Memory speed index: 45.11
VESA video memory: 1185 KB/s
Cache Level 1: Read 25.55MB/s Write 30.24MB/s Move 37.44MB/s Average 31.07MB/s
Memory: Read 15.58 MB/s Write 30.24 MB/s Move 18.72 MB/s Average 21.51 MB/s

Cache upgrade won't be noticeable/visible in some benchmarks. Use real apps/games for comparisons (like 3dbench, pcpbench, doom, quake). Going from 64kb to 256kb should speed up from 5 to 10%.

You should also check the ISA bus clock/speed. In advanced bios setup you can change ISA speed and that way you get better vga and hdd performance. VESA speed of 1185KB/s is really slow. I'm sure even Trident can get better results with proper ISA bus clock - usually you can set it to 1/4 or even 1/3.

Trident's are notoriously know for bad performance, but I have a couple of Trident 8900D cards that perform to the point as good as Tseng ET4000AX in DOS benchmarks.

kixs wrote:

Going from 64kb to 256kb should speed up from 5 to 10%.

In 486 era games like Doom and later - maybe, but they are hard for 386. In 386 era games it's doubtful the cache on MB may change something. He may get practical boost in archivers.

Scali wrote:

The ET4000 is the fastest ISA card ever made, and at least in 320x200 mode there is very little difference in performance with a decent VLB card (it's fast enough for supersmooth Doom action on a 486DX2-66 for example), and there are actually VLB cards (again Trident) which are slower. [...]

Don't forget the WD90C31 vgas, these are really great too - they score the same (or more!) as the ET4000 cards. Plus they have a program that switches MDA/CGA/etc modes that are reboot-resistant and actually work better after a reboot AFAIR in order to have better compatibility or something...
Some numbers here: Re: WDC WD90C31 strange benchmark results

I actually have a realtek vga, just by looking at it you can see it's a slow card 🤣 - it does work though at an 8bit ISA slot so it has some value after all 🤣

With 386 I found that having ANY cache is the important thing. As for size, it doesn't matter than much 😀

Scali wrote:

386SX wrote:

Thank! But compared to the S3 805 VLB card I tested on a 486, is it much slower? Did VLB vs ISA both 1 or 2MB cards differed that much?

The ET4000 is the fastest ISA card ever made, and at least in 320x200 mode there is very little difference in performance with a decent VLB card (it's fast enough for supersmooth Doom action on a 486DX2-66 for example), and there are actually VLB cards (again Trident) which are slower.
A bad ISA card such as a Trident can be 3 to 4 times slower than a good ISA/VLB card in a fast machine like a 486. In a 386 you will notice less of a difference, but still you don't want a Trident, Oak or anything like that in a 386DX-40. Even an 'average' ISA card like a WD Paradise could give noticeable improvements in framerate over a Trident in a fast 386 system.

I remember a PC World article about a new Western Digital (WD90C31 I think) video cards that edged out the ET4000AX and was quite a bit cheaper. The ET4000 was Tseng's best video card. After that they lost their edge, while other companies made faster chips for the VLB and PCI buses (and some like Trident and S3 made ISA implementations as well).

I own two Tseng ET4000AX cards, and I have to say they are not the best ISA card you can get. Late Western Digital, S3 (ISA) and Cirrus Logic models are at least on par with the ET4000. I've also seen a rare ISA implementation of the S3 Trio witch is quite a bit faster then the ET4000. Western Digital 90C3 something, S3 805i with EDO vram (my ELSA card has 2MB - 1 soldered and 1 socketed) and even a UMC card with EDO - they launched later then the ET4000 and performed similar or better - especially since some come with faster EDO memory. As for trident - they may be budget cards, but some of the earlier PCI trident cards also come in ISA flavor, they use EDO vram and are faster then the ET4000 (but not by much) - but be careful - most ISA trident cards are the cheap slow variety. The fast ones are made '92 or later, and have EDO VRAM. Generally TVGA93xx and 94xx cards are pretty fast if you can find ISA + EDO versions. Most of them are VLB / PCI tough.

All that said, the ET4000AX is a great card IF you can get one for a good price. If you can't, late Western Digital and S3 chipsets are a great alternative. Cirrus Logic cards are not bad either - they also have ISA implementations of their fast VLB and PCI cards, and you can usually get them cheap.

For period correctness defiantly get a Tseng card.

Personally I was VERY disappointing in my ET4000/W32 PCI card. Imagine I spent a couple of years tracking one down and it wasn't cheap (56$ for card + shipping) - It's slower than say a Trio64, and has weird bugs in games like Commander Keen and Jazz Jackrabbit.

I found the Western Digital and ET4000 to be exactly the same, fastest speed of the ISA cards I have. The Cirrus Logic wasn't far behind, a great value card.

keropi wrote:

Don't forget the WD90C31 vgas, these are really great too - they score the same (or more!) as the ET4000 cards. Plus they have a program that switches MDA/CGA/etc modes that are reboot-resistant and actually work better after a reboot AFAIR in order to have better compatibility or something...
Some numbers here: Re: WDC WD90C31 strange benchmark results

I am talking about pure ISA-bus to video memory transfer speed, as in the only thing that matters in DOS gaming. And afaik the ET4000 is pretty much unbeatable there.
I'm not sure what 3DBench2 does exactly. Does it make use of any extra features? Or perhaps it is too math-heavy to really stress the limits of the bandwidth?
Perhaps Doom is a better benchmark than 3DBench for VGA speed.

WD's are good though... I had a WD card in my Commodore 386SX-16, and I used it for a while when I upgraded to a 486DX2-66, before I could afford a decent VLB card. It played Doom quite smoothly, although not as well as a VLB card or ET4000.
I'm not sure which type of WD it was exactly.

Maybe this ISA VGA roundup gives a good impression: ftp://78.46.141.148/docs/eliandas_isa_vga_roundup.pdf

elianda wrote:

Maybe this ISA VGA roundup gives a good impression: ftp://78.46.141.148/docs/eliandas_isa_vga_roundup.pdf

Very nice work!

elianda wrote:

Maybe this ISA VGA roundup gives a good impression: ftp://78.46.141.148/docs/eliandas_isa_vga_roundup.pdf

Excellent!
This also shows what I meant: The vspeed benchmark's top score is 4.79MB/s, scored by an ET4000AX card, and the CL-5422 (note that not all ET4000AX cards score as well, I wonder if that is due to BIOS settings, some cards having different clock/waitstate settings).
Both cards also are the top performers in Doom.

The Trident 9000i only scores 1.11 MB/s, so the ET4000 is more than four times as fast when it comes to vram speed.

That is why Tridents are so notorious. Note though that the Trident 8900D isn't nearly that bad, but still not exactly top-of-class.

Also fun to see how bad ATi was back then. They had big OEM deals, offering them relatively cheap and relatively feature-rich cards of decent quality, but they were never all that competitive. Their first 3d accelerators were a total joke as well.

Anyway, if you were to do the math...
Most games run in 320x200 or 320x240 256 colour mode.
Let's take 320x240. For 256 colours you need 1 byte per pixel, and 320*240 = 76800 bytes for a frame.
If you were to redraw the entire screen, like a game such as Doom does, at 1.1 MB/s, you can only get about 1100000/76800 = 14 fps max. The card just can't go faster than that.
At 4.79 MB/s you get 4790000/76800 = 62 fps, so pretty close to the ideal 70 fps framerate. And with vsync enabled, it should easily run 35 fps sustained, which is good enough for a very smooth experience.
Since Doom doesn't actually redraw the whole screen, but leaves some room at the bottom for the status bar, it might even be possible to reach 70 fps on an ISA card 😀