Not sure if ET4000 ever used VRAM chips. But it would make sense in this case. Some of Trident cards are as fast but never faster then ET4000 - in my experience. Also check if ET4000 has 1WS enabled - some cards have jumpers.

kixs wrote:

Not sure if ET4000 ever used VRAM chips. But it would make sense in this case. Some of Trident cards are as fast but never faster then ET4000 - in my experience. Also check if ET4000 has 1WS enabled - some cards have jumpers.

the card is named "viewpoint vram".
however, satson's info says it can be equipped with either dram or vram.
there is a jumper switching between dram and vram, which is currently set to vram, and its ram chips are all vertically plugged with all pins on one side.
i guess the best solution is to look up for the ram chips model but, in no way should such a well built et4000 be slower than a trident.

As it uses VRAM it would make sense it's slower then fast Trident. VRAM cards are usually a bit slower in DOS.

Can you post a picture of your card?

Really, the et4000 chip can use VRAM?

I have no idea the hell's up with Tseng ET4000 in general. Every time I found one and tried it I hoped it would finally live up to the hype but it was slow. 8900D, on the other hand, proved to be a nice fast chip, much faster than any other 8900 or 9000 variant.
How can I find a fast ISA ET4000? (Preferably with VESA BIOS.) I never had luck with them, my faith in them is worn thin.

to your curiosity i have taken a photo:

and i swapped in another et4000 with dram, but its the same 13.8fps.
tonight i am going to try the cirrus5434 and see if it can kick the trident's ass to hell.

alvaro84 wrote:

I have no idea the hell's up with Tseng ET4000 in general. Every time I found one and tried it I hoped it would finally live up to the hype but it was slow. 8900D, on the other hand, proved to be a nice fast chip, much faster than any other 8900 or 9000 variant.
How can I find a fast ISA ET4000? (Preferably with VESA BIOS.) I never had luck with them, my faith in them is worn thin.

not sure... et4000 was released in 1990 but remained in production until at least 1994, maybe later cards with true color ramdac is faster.

Looks like an early ET4000 which are generally a bit slower.
Since yours has VRAM it would be interesting to know what the maximum refresh rate is if you go to e.g. 1024x768 at 256 colors?

i tested my stb cirrus5434 and its still the same 13.8fps!
but i noticed a jumper on the cirrus which says 0wait and is set to off, maybe the trident is the only one set to 0wait and thereby got away with the advantage.
the problem is, how do i calculate if 0wait can be used safely without going wrong? especially that cirrus5434 is a graphics accelerator, would it access ram much more frequently in windows?

Just set it to 0 WS and try if it still works reliably.

elianda wrote:

Just set it to 0 WS and try if it still works reliably.

well i set it to 0wait and it got the same 14.5fps, it seems that 0wait is the only thing that makes a difference between these cards.
however i can't push it to the limit on a 386, and i havn't even installed win95 on the rig yet, just tried a few vga games in dos like doom and simcity2000, so i am not sure if it would work reliably in 0WS.
still i can't believe that the trident is as fast as the et4000 and cirrus5434...