There are no gains going from good VLB to good PCI graphics card on a 486/5x86/Overdrive. Even from bad VLB to good PCI isn't much difference - unless you have a Weitek Power 9000 VLB/PCI card 😉

Well, the worst PCI cards are equal in performance to the best VLB cards. And now look what you pay for the higher-performance VLB cards... If you can choose, always go for PCI, since you get the same or even better performance for way less money.

If you have a good VLB card already, just stick with it.

Firstly the options you mention are not integrated but onboard graphics. The only 486-class CPU with integrated graphics is the Cyrix MediaGX. That difference matters for your question. Integrated graphics does not have its own memory, the video core shares system memory bandwidth with the CPU. That not only gives lousy video performance, it also castrates the CPU. Onboard graphics are just the same chips as may be on a card, but stuck onto a motherboard/SBC, with their own RAM also onboard. Their performance will be the same as the same chips on a discrete card, and CPU performance is not affected.

So your question then becomes: what is faster, VLB or PCI?

That's a simpler question that has been discussed at length. Bottom line IMHO: the difference in buses is smaller than the difference in chips. Also, it depends on OS. DOS performance is almost entirely dependent on the raw speed of moving pixels from system RAM to screen, WIndows performance (even 3.1) depends on acceleration functions. As you don't specify which chips you're comparing exactly and don't say which OS you intend to run, it's impossible to give a definitive answer, but assuming DOS, basically the difference between PCI and VLB is irrelevant and the difference between PCI and VLB-grade chips is minimal too.

As for your second question, what do you mean by "variable power"? That sounds like different voltage options, which is pretty irrelevant to sound, so long as you have -5V available. Choose the card based on the software you want to run. Both will work fine on any 386-class system, even an SX-16.

I seem to get better performance on older vlb/isa motherboards compared to pci/isa motherboards with same cpu and pci/vlb/isa motherboards seem to be even slower. That does of course not mean that it is because difference in video cards because I don't think neither card is fully utilized in dos.

This is just based on the limited amount of different motherboards I have tried.

first of all thanks for the answers.

My question was to know if an SBC with a good onboard card (for example the ET4000 / W32P) did not mortify the performance of the cpu that I have indicated. I do not plan to use a backplane so the onboard video card at the SBC will be the definitive one.

About the soundblaster 2.0. I made that request because I know that some games that use the latest sound card (PRO 2) would not run in my cpu anyway (386 from 16 to 40mhz) so it is not worth leaving the soundblaster 2.0 and not spending money on a PRO 2 that does not would be used for lack of cpu power.

AlessandroB wrote on 2020-03-19, 10:59:

first of all thanks for the answers.

My question was to know if an SBC with a good onboard card (for example the ET4000 / W32P) did not mortify the performance of the cpu that I have indicated. I do not plan to use a backplane so the onboard video card at the SBC will be the definitive one.

An ET4000/W32P isn't an integrated chipset, so it has its own memory and doesn't negatively influence the CPU. It's also one of the faster DOS chipsets, so a perfectly good option for DOS and Win3.1 for that matter.

About the soundblaster 2.0. I made that request because I know that some games that use the latest sound card (PRO 2) would not run in my cpu anyway (386 from 16 to 40mhz) so it is not worth leaving the soundblaster 2.0 and not spending money on a PRO 2 that does not would be used for lack of cpu power.

SBPro 2.0 is from 1992. 486 CPUs existed, new PCs had 386DX CPUs, but 386SX was still being sold and a lot of people has slower systems. SBPro2 games would generally run on a 386SX.

Question should be the other way round: what can the SB2.0 do that the SBPro2 can't do. Three letters: CMS. If you can get the two SAA chips and can program a GAL for the third one, you can run Game Blaster/CMS stuff on the SB2.0. So you need to look and compare how many things you might want to run use CMS vs how many use SBPro(2) stereo.

That said, your answer implies you don't have either card yet. I'd say both are bad value for money. Early non-PnP Aztech cards would offer good compatibility at a lower price. NXPro has SBPro2 and Coxov/DSS, anything with 2316A has SBPro2, WSS and a bug-free MPU-401 implementation.

dionb wrote on 2020-03-19, 18:29:

An ET4000/W32P isn't an integrated chipset, so it has its own memory and doesn't negatively influence the CPU. It's also one of […]
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AlessandroB wrote on 2020-03-19, 10:59:

first of all thanks for the answers.

My question was to know if an SBC with a good onboard card (for example the ET4000 / W32P) did not mortify the performance of the cpu that I have indicated. I do not plan to use a backplane so the onboard video card at the SBC will be the definitive one.

An ET4000/W32P isn't an integrated chipset, so it has its own memory and doesn't negatively influence the CPU. It's also one of the faster DOS chipsets, so a perfectly good option for DOS and Win3.1 for that matter.

About the soundblaster 2.0. I made that request because I know that some games that use the latest sound card (PRO 2) would not run in my cpu anyway (386 from 16 to 40mhz) so it is not worth leaving the soundblaster 2.0 and not spending money on a PRO 2 that does not would be used for lack of cpu power.

SBPro 2.0 is from 1992. 486 CPUs existed, new PCs had 386DX CPUs, but 386SX was still being sold and a lot of people has slower systems. SBPro2 games would generally run on a 386SX.

Question should be the other way round: what can the SB2.0 do that the SBPro2 can't do. Three letters: CMS. If you can get the two SAA chips and can program a GAL for the third one, you can run Game Blaster/CMS stuff on the SB2.0. So you need to look and compare how many things you might want to run use CMS vs how many use SBPro(2) stereo.

That said, your answer implies you don't have either card yet. I'd say both are bad value for money. Early non-PnP Aztech cards would offer good compatibility at a lower price. NXPro has SBPro2 and Coxov/DSS, anything with 2316A has SBPro2, WSS and a bug-free MPU-401 implementation.

thanks for the precise answer. Actually I have 3 cards:

1) Sound Blaster 2.0 (The version called Sound Machine)
2) Sound Blaster Pro 2
3) Sound Blaster 16

The project is to allocate each one to a computer permanently so as not to have to disassemble and reassemble it every time and I thought to follow the progression "Power CPU-Games-sound card" to this:

1) Sound Blaster 2.0 -> Amiga 4000 Bridgeboard 386SX
2) Sound Blaster Pro 2 -> Pentium1 (75Mhz to 200Mhz)
3) Sound Blaster 16 -> Slot1

I know there is a link between CPU power - games released in the period when the CPU was current - compatibility of the sound card with those games related to that CPU. I have some knowledge up to Sound Blaster Pro because it is the card I had in my first PC, but I don't know in detail the SB 2.0 and I don't know in detail the limits and the exact meaning of the two CMS chips.

AlessandroB wrote on 2020-03-20, 08:13:

[...] […]
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[...]

The project is to allocate each one to a computer permanently so as not to have to disassemble and reassemble it every time and I thought to follow the progression "Power CPU-Games-sound card" to this:

1) Sound Blaster 2.0 -> Amiga 4000 Bridgeboard 386SX
2) Sound Blaster Pro 2 -> Pentium1 (75Mhz to 200Mhz)
3) Sound Blaster 16 -> Slot1

I know there is a link between CPU power - games released in the period when the CPU was current - compatibility of the sound card with those games related to that CPU. I have some knowledge up to Sound Blaster Pro because it is the card I had in my first PC, but I don't know in detail the SB 2.0 and I don't know in detail the limits and the exact meaning of the two CMS chips.

With those three, this would be the logical allocation, but the cards are significantly older than those systems, so it wouldn't hurt to bump them down and get something fancier for the Slot1.

As a rule of thumb:
Soundblaster 1/2 XT-286 (it's not an 8b card for nothing...)
Soundblaster Pro 1/2 286-386
Soundblaster 16 386-486
Soundblaster AWE32/64 486/Pentium

Of course that's no hard rule - an AWE64 would technically work in a 386 (maybe even 286- but possibly you hit driver CPU instruction requirements there), but looking at the games actually using the cards this is an indication. Some early PPro games might run very fast on a Pentium. Note that everything is backwards compatible with the original Soundblaster. SB16 is mostly backwards compatible with SBPro, but stereo can get mixed up/flattened to mono.

CMS is a different kettle of fish, it's a completely different sound standard, based on square-wave synthesis. If anything it sounds a bit like Atari ST sound on a PC (although the Covox Sound Master was closer to that). Support is very limited, as unlike its offspring the Sound Blaster, the Creative Game Blaster did not sell well so few games used it. The original SB1.0 was fully CMS-compatible, by the SB1.5 there were sockets for a CMS (actually: 2x Philips SAA1099) upgrade. On the 2.0 even the logic to hook up the CMS chips was left out, so there was a third socket for a PAL or GAL to do that, along with sockets for the CMS. Finally, as of the SBPro, CMS support was left out completely.

I built myself a Snark Barker (SB1.0 replica) and added the CMS chips. It's sort of interesting, but hardly essential unless you're competely into one of the handful of games that supports it. It is however the one feature your SB2.0 offers (if you get the additional chips) that your newer cards don't - which is why I mentioned it.

Ok, you have been very thorough in your explanations, as far as the association of the sound cards to the respective CPUs is concerned, I was going to use the Pentium1 as a pure DOS machine so I thought the Sound Blaster PRO 2 was the best choice, even if not perfectly aligned as historical period. if I put the awe64 on Pentium1 as you suggested most of the time it would work as "emulation" PRO so it wouldn't make much sense in my opinion, right?

Speaking of SB2.0 I understood the CMS standard and I understood that I am not interested, but I saw that there is an OPL2 on the card, it is not compatible as the soundblaster PRO but in mono? Is it not more or less compatible as the SB16 would be?

AlessandroB wrote on 2020-03-20, 13:27:

Ok, you have been very thorough in your explanations, as far as the association of the sound cards to the respective CPUs is concerned, I was going to use the Pentium1 as a pure DOS machine so I thought the Sound Blaster PRO 2 was the best choice, even if not perfectly aligned as historical period. if I put the awe64 on Pentium1 as you suggested most of the time it would work as "emulation" PRO so it wouldn't make much sense in my opinion, right?

AWE64 is a 1994-era DOS-focused card released when a 486DX4 was 'high-end' and entry level was still something like a 486DX-33. It would already have been 2 years old when your Pentium 200 was produced. Most 1994 or later DOS games have native support for AWE and at the very least SB16, so it would hardly be spending its time pretending it's a Pro. Once again, you are seriously overestimating the specs of PCs that these cards were typically paired with.

Speaking of SB2.0 I understood the CMS standard and I understood that I am not interested, but I saw that there is an OPL2 on the card, it is not compatible as the soundblaster PRO but in mono? Is it not more or less compatible as the SB16 would be?

OPL2 is mono, OPL3 is stereo. But every single game out there with sound support can run on the (mono) Sound Blaster, both for FM-synth (OPL) and digital audio. SB16 is fully compatible with the Sound Blaster for FM-synth and DA (although many SB16 have CQM instead of OPL3, which sounds slightly different). So both are fully compatible with everything out there, the SB16 just has more options. The only compatibility issue is between SBPro2 and SB16, and it's pretty minor - just messed up stereo in some cases when running SBPro2-supporting games on SB16.

Ok, I confused you and we lost sight of the focus. Forget the 3 CPU-Sound card configurations.

The Pentium1 will have to work as a DOS machine that will have to run the games from the early 90s (slowed down to 75Mhz plus other slowdowns where necessary) up to those that the pentium 200 manages to start so I thought that the PRO2 was the most suitable, I read which is the most chosen in this forum. Pentium1 must cover the vast majority of DOS games.

Having a bridgeboard on the class 386 Amiga I wondered if the SB2.0 (which is a card I already have and wanted to recycle in some way) was compatible with some minor shortcomings with the games that this machine can use. I don't know the compatibility of SB2.0 on SBPRO and not the other way round, compatibility in the future if we want ...

I don't see a significant difference in performance between PCI ET4000/W32's and VLB ET4000/W32's.

You can use any of your sound cards in your 486 project, but I recommend to use either the SB Pro or the SB 16.

I think my main 486 has a PCI Cirrus Logic card of some kind, made by STB. I've debated upgrading to an ATI Mach32 or 64 but I dunno if it would even be worthwhile.

It's important if you have a M919 and an AM5x86 and intend to use the good clockspeeds. 😉
I've had VLB cards go nuts with that board a 1996 ago, either burning out (Cirrus) or having severe palette issues (Tseng). It only finally reached fast stable equilibrium with a PCI S3 Trio64...

leileilol wrote on 2020-03-21, 01:11:

if you have a M919 and an AM5x86 and... I've had VLB cards go nuts with that board...

I experienced the same.

Of course, OP doesn't have an M919, so not that applicable here.

ok ok, i know the difference between SBpro and SB16, but between SB2.0 and SBpro? apart from the cms...

AlessandroB wrote on 2020-03-24, 13:56:

ok ok, i know the difference between SBpro and SB16, but between SB2.0 and SBpro? apart from the cms...

Stereo, mixer, faster sampling rate, dual Opl2 or OPL3, CDROM, more IRQ/DMA choices, ...

Ok, but in a "real world"? speaking about practical gaming difference between 2.0 ans PRO2? 386 gaming period.