I have never tested the 9440, but, in my opinion, Tridents have never been good performers. Pretty much any Tseng labs, S3 or Cirrus Logic VLB board would have probably been a better choice. But when it comes down to getting a VLB card nowadays, i am personally happy to get ANY if it goes for reasonable money. So i really do doubt that you are going to be disappointed.

I see there are a few Diamond Viper cards available as well. Would those be good options?

Also is it possible since there is three vlb slots to have two video cards at once or will driver conflicts make it impossible,

cj_reha wrote:

I'm currently building a 486 PC and over the course of the summer acquired all of the parts I am planning to use. The controller card is dead and I need to replace it but that's a different story.

I was able to pick up a Trident TGUI9440 VLB 1mb card new in the box with drivers and everything for about 20 dollars. My question is: for casual DOS and Windows 3.1 gaming is this a good card? If not what is a good VLB video card to replace it with?

I would use PCI but the only two 486 motherboards I own are VLB and ISA only. 🤣

The 9440 is a very good performer compared to other VLB video cards. Literally just a couple percent slower than the fastest cards. I think it's a good choice! 😀

edit: forgot to include the source of those benchmark results. I compiled the numbers into a spreadsheet from various charts taken from the bottom of this page:
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/benchmarks

Phil's video of 486 graphics card comparisons has charts that shows a VLB Trident as respectable
(one chart around 30 seconds into the video and another chart around 50 seconds in)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ha8Q_oLUr8

Phil tested a Trident TGUI9400CXi, not a TGUI9440, but his results and the chart clueless1 quoted suggest it's the ISA Trident cards that are slow, while the VLB Tridents are among the faster cards for a 486.

cj_reha wrote:

I would use PCI but the only two 486 motherboards I own are VLB and ISA only.

I've read/heard on YouTube that PCI was somewhat buggy in 486's and didn't really come into its own until Pentium.
So you're probably better off using a VLB board.

Also I will gladly image the driver disks for the card as well as some other driver disks I've got for vogonsdrivers if anyone wants since most of the hardware I bought for the 486 came with some driver disks.

iirc I've got DOS, win31, and win95 drivers for the tgui9440, software for a winradio fm Isa card, some encore Isa network drivers, etc. Will check when I have time

This Trident is suprisingly fast in DOS. But in Windows it's pretty average. Overall it's ok 😉

VLB cards aren't expensive, they are just not common. Anything from ATI, Cirrus, S3/Diamond, and Tseng tend to be decent cards, although S3 tends to be on the higher end of that spectrum.

I managed to pick up a very nice Diamond Stealth SE VLB with a Trio32 chip on it. It's not the fastest VLB cards, Trio64 cards can be much greater, but for the 40 bucks I paid, it performs BRILLIANTLY.

You also will want to upgrade the memory in most cards. It's piss easy and dirt cheap (Piss and dirt, eh?) some cards use DIN style memory, while some use JLead, it's just a matter of figuring out what type of memory, what speed, and what package. Mine was: http://www.ebay.com/itm/172225519657 shipped from Israel (Not fast, took longer than the motherboard from Russia) and as you can see it's a few bucks for an, in my opinion, REQUIRED upgrade. Now I can go up to 1280x1024 resolution (256 colours only and only on a monitor that supports the strange video mode it uses) and 32 bit full colour is available at 640x480 allowing for dazzling graphics on newer 2D titles.

One thing to note, if you buy a VLB system, it will never do 3D to my knowledge. Even though VLB (Using the right CPU) is faster than PCI, there was never a card made to take advantage of it for 3D because it died within a year.

And if you want an I/O card, get something from DTC. They are great boards, but if you REALLY want to do pro, get a SCSI controller and use converters for either modern IDE or SATA drives (Or even use an Ultra320 drive, they are being pawned off for pennies). My M/I/O card was this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/252600035007 which he is still selling here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Data-Technology-Corp- … D-/252679447019?

Happy 486ing!

The chart clueless1 pasted leaves off all the high-end VLB graphic cards. Please refer to the graphs in the following post. If you can find one of these, go for it. Re: Benchmarks for high-end VLB graphic cards - ET4000W32P/ARK1000VL/Trio64/S3 Vision968/Mach64

Note that people usually quote the chipset that the graphic card uses rather than the manufacturer of the PCB that the chipset resides on. The trouble in finding graphic cards on eBay, though, are that sellers usually quote the PCB manufacturer, and it can be difficult to know all the manufacturers and models to search for.

skitters wrote:

I've read/heard on YouTube that PCI was somewhat buggy in 486's and didn't really come into its own until Pentium. So you're probably better off using a VLB board.

I am not sure how this rumour got started, but it would be interesting to track down. I personally have not had issues with the majority of PCI cards on later PCI 486 boards (mid 1995 to 1997). I suspect that buggy PCI 486 boards occured very early on, like boards from 1993-1994, perhaps those based around the 420TX. I had an early pentium board based on the 430LX and found it buggy with PCI. If someone has examples of PCI 486 boards from 1995-1997 being buggy with PCI cards of a similar era, it would be interesting to see a list or report.

Conversely, I find VLB SCSI cards to be somewhat buggy if you are trying to run your CPU's L1 cache in WB mode. I haven't come across a similar problem with PCI SCSI cards. In my opinion, the main reason to go with a VLB 486 motherbard is for nostalgia. VLB was made for the 486. It was often touted that VLB 486 cards were faster than PCI 486 cards due to the direct link with VLB and the CPU, however I did not witness this in my tests. Performance comparison of 486 motherboards with VLB-only, PCI-only, and PCI+VLB

Ampera wrote:

One thing to note, if you buy a VLB system, it will never do 3D to my knowledge. Even though VLB (Using the right CPU) is faster than PCI, there was never a card made to take advantage of it for 3D because it died within a year.

What about the Creative 3D Blaster VLB? That card worked pretty well in my opinion. Refer to the following links. I'm not sure how it stacks up against the other high-end VLB cards in 2D though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7tTYwNDWlU
Re: Fun with CGL (Creative Graphics Library) on 3D Blaster

Ampera wrote:

Or even use an Ultra320 drive, they are being pawned off for pennies

Really? Where? Much of the issues with buying used Ultra320 drives on eBay is that they are loud. They have been run 24/7 for more than 10 years and have become noisy. If you can find some NOS for cheap, that is the way to go. There are some used ones on eBay which aren't noisy, but it is hit or miss. I tried to get eBay sellers to test the drive and report the noise level in dB but that was unsuccessful.

feipoa wrote:

The chart clueless1 pasted leaves off all the high-end VLB graphic cards. Please refer to the graphs in the following post. If […]
Show full quote

The chart clueless1 pasted leaves off all the high-end VLB graphic cards. Please refer to the graphs in the following post. If you can find one of these, go for it. Re: Benchmarks for high-end VLB graphic cards - ET4000W32P/ARK1000VL/Trio64/S3 Vision968/Mach64

Note that people usually quote the chipset that the graphic card uses rather than the manufacturer of the PCB that the chipset resides on. The trouble in finding graphic cards on eBay, though, are that sellers usually quote the PCB manufacturer, and it can be difficult to know all the manufacturers and models to search for.

skitters wrote:

I've read/heard on YouTube that PCI was somewhat buggy in 486's and didn't really come into its own until Pentium. So you're probably better off using a VLB board.

I am not sure how this rumour got started, but it would be interesting to track down. I personally have not had issues with the majority of PCI cards on later PCI 486 boards (mid 1995 to 1997). I suspect that buggy PCI 486 boards occured very early on, like boards from 1993-1994, perhaps those based around the 420TX. I had an early pentium board based on the 430LX and found it buggy with PCI. If someone has examples of PCI 486 boards from 1995-1997 being buggy with PCI cards of a similar era, it would be interesting to see a list or report.

Conversely, I find VLB SCSI cards to be somewhat buggy if you are trying to run your CPU's L1 cache in WB mode. I haven't come across a similar problem with PCI SCSI cards. In my opinion, the main reason to go with a VLB 486 motherbard is for nostalgia. VLB was made for the 486. It was often touted that VLB 486 cards were faster than PCI 486 cards due to the direct link with VLB and the CPU, however I did not witness this in my tests. Performance comparison of 486 motherboards with VLB-only, PCI-only, and PCI+VLB

Ampera wrote:

One thing to note, if you buy a VLB system, it will never do 3D to my knowledge. Even though VLB (Using the right CPU) is faster than PCI, there was never a card made to take advantage of it for 3D because it died within a year.

What about the Creative 3D Blaster VLB? That card worked pretty well in my opinion. Refer to the following links. I'm not sure how it stacks up against the other high-end VLB cards in 2D though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7tTYwNDWlU
Re: Fun with CGL (Creative Graphics Library) on 3D Blaster

Ampera wrote:

Or even use an Ultra320 drive, they are being pawned off for pennies

Really? Where? Much of the issues with buying used Ultra320 drives on eBay is that they are loud. They have been run 24/7 for more than 10 years and have become noisy. If you can find some NOS for cheap, that is the way to go. There are some used ones on eBay which aren't noisy, but it is hit or miss. I tried to get eBay sellers to test the drive and report the noise level in dB but that was unsuccessful.

http://www.pricewatch.com/price/hard_removabl … rives/scsi_73gb

Whole metric arse ton of SCSI Ultra320 drives. You would need converters, but they are faster than EIDE.

feipoa wrote:

The chart clueless1 pasted leaves off all the high-end VLB graphic cards. Please refer to the graphs in the following post. If you can find one of these, go for it. Re: Benchmarks for high-end VLB graphic cards - ET4000W32P/ARK1000VL/Trio64/S3 Vision968/Mach64

It's too bad there's not at least one common card between vgamuseum's chart and the one you linked to. Then some guesses could be made about how they would all perform on the same system. But I was just answering the OP's question on whether the 9440 is a good choice. Based on the fact that it is about equal to the fastest VLB cards in the group it was tested with, I think it is a solid choice with good compatibility. Probably not the fastest, but at 486 speeds, the cpu will be the limiting factor anyway. The results from your link were on a much faster Am5x86-160 and the results I linked were run on a DX4-100. Depending on what cpu the OP uses, the separation between the cards could end up being much less.

^The Mach64 and Mach32 give some sense of scale. The 64 is faster than the 32 with the same type of memory.

There's another big comparison, using an even slower system: http://i.imgur.com/6dVqWWt.jpg