Basically Oak, Realtek and Trident are known as slow ISA graphics cards.
If you need framebuffer performance, go for an ET4000.
If you need windows acceleration, go for a S3 or ATI Mach.
A Cirrus Logic would be a compromise.

Well, an ISA ET4000/W32 is a pinnacle, however, mine cannot take 2 MB RAM.

Disruptor wrote on 2023-01-14, 03:14:

Basically Oak, Realtek and Trident are known as slow ISA graphics cards. If you need framebuffer performance, go for an ET4000. […]
Show full quote

Basically Oak, Realtek and Trident are known as slow ISA graphics cards.
If you need framebuffer performance, go for an ET4000.
If you need windows acceleration, go for a S3 or ATI Mach.
A Cirrus Logic would be a compromise.

Well, an ISA ET4000/W32 is a pinnacle, however, mine cannot take 2 MB RAM.

Thank you, clear and concise. Out of curiosity, regarding Tseng, is the ET4000 worse than the ET4000AX or is it the other way around? Would you recommend any particular Cirrus Logic cards?

Why do you think a 6-bit RAMDAC is bad for a 486/DOS build? Palette entries only use 6 bits for R/G/B so that's all it needs.

jmarsh wrote on 2023-01-14, 03:56:

Why do you think a 6-bit RAMDAC is bad for a 486/DOS build? Palette entries only use 6 bits for R/G/B so that's all it needs.

I don't, I was just caught off guard by that as a beginner and was worried of other things that I may have to be on the lookout for. But as for the Trident's jail bars in certain games on LCD displays that was a problem for me, yes

andre_6 wrote on 2023-01-14, 03:40:

Disruptor wrote on 2023-01-14, 03:14:

Basically Oak, Realtek and Trident are known as slow ISA graphics cards. If you need framebuffer performance, go for an ET4000. […]
Show full quote

Basically Oak, Realtek and Trident are known as slow ISA graphics cards.
If you need framebuffer performance, go for an ET4000.
If you need windows acceleration, go for a S3 or ATI Mach.
A Cirrus Logic would be a compromise.

Well, an ISA ET4000/W32 is a pinnacle, however, mine cannot take 2 MB RAM.

Thank you, clear and concise. Out of curiosity, regarding Tseng, is the ET4000 worse than the ET4000AX or is it the other way around? Would you recommend any particular Cirrus Logic cards?

ET4000 == ET4000AX

Disruptor wrote on 2023-01-14, 03:14:

Basically Oak, Realtek and Trident are known as slow ISA graphics cards.

That's true. Nevertheless, Trident improved over time, but they were bad at marketing. Trident has two notable non-accelerated series of SVGA graphics chips: The original TVGA8900 and the cost-reduced TVGA9000 series directly derived from the TVGA8900. The latest member of the TVGA8900 series is called TVGA8900D, at that one provides decent framebuffer performance. Cards with the 8900D are not very common, and getting one specifically is either expensive or requires a lot of patience, so take this comment more as a recommendation to keep a TVGA8900D instead of spending money on an ET4000 board (which would not be a notable speed-up), than as a recommendation to actively look for TVGA8900D cards.

Just for completeness: Trident also had the 8800 series, but that one is way older and not competitive with "modern" 1MB ISA graphics cards at all.

Being fast is not the only factor that should be considered when choosing ISA VGA card.

Trident 8900C (not to be confused with CL) is a decent card and period correct for a 386 system. Its performance is limited by 16-bit internal bus (or even 8-bit with just 256KiB RAM on it). The 8900C seems to works well with 286 mobos that have broken ALE signal - this might depend on a particular card though, but a mod should be possible. Should also be faster on a true 286 system due to dual BIOS chips.

8900D is faster but only with the memory fully upgraded to 1MiB, it will switch to 32-bit internal bus. If a particular card can't be upgraded then it's not much better than 8900C, although it is an improved design and these often offer a jumper for 0WS ISA operation as well. Mine uses ALE (at least in 0WS mode), and also has some issues detecing 8-bit slots on some mobos. It's generally meant to be plugged into 16-bit one I guess.

Realtek VGA cards should be avoided, always, unless it's a cheap card for early testing of unknown mobos. These are slow, seem to have 8-bit internal bus no matter how much memory is installed, and picture quality is pretty bad, sometimes even PSU ripple affects the output noise. On the plus side these don't use ALE signal.

In all of these the jailbars are mostly due to RAMDAC and this can't be fixed (but might improve) by replacing old capacitors on the card. Socketed RAMDACs can be swapped around, I've seen a thread here about this but I don't remember what the conclusions were. It's a moot point for most people as it requires a donor card anyway, and if you have a donor card with better RAMDAC why not use that one instead - unless it's a 8900D which is in many cases as fast as the ET4000.

VLB cards are the way to go for a 486 system (though SX25 barely qualifies as 486). Cirrus Logic VGAs tend to exhibit both jailbars and also RAMDAC pixel clock/bank switching noise. The GD5424 I have seem to be a bit worse in that regard than GD5429 - so there are some improvements. You would not see that noise on CRT monitor because of the nature of the tube, it flickers anyway so the eye doesn't pick that up even if there were some tiny differences in pixel brightness. Modern LCD will scan entire frame and lock the pixels to the digitized value it picked until next full frame. So now it's possible to spot that noise.

In general I would not expect 8-bit RAMDAC even on VLB cards, much less ISA ones, and while the 6-bit one is VGA standard (and in theory good for anything below 24/32-bit color modes) you might see the noise/jailbars on modern 8-bit capable monitors. For 286 systems a VGA with dual ROMs will be usually a better match than a newer card that expects 386+ shadowing options in BIOS, although that doesn't matter much in games because those use their own code anyway.

Thanks for the input everyone, just to refresh, it's an ISA only board with a DX-2 66.

mkarcher wrote on 2023-01-14, 10:24:

That's true. Nevertheless, Trident improved over time, but they were bad at marketing. Trident has two notable non-accelerated series of SVGA graphics chips: The original TVGA8900 and the cost-reduced TVGA9000 series directly derived from the TVGA8900. The latest member of the TVGA8900 series is called TVGA8900D, at that one provides decent framebuffer performance. Cards with the 8900D are not very common, and getting one specifically is either expensive or requires a lot of patience, so take this comment more as a recommendation to keep a TVGA8900D instead of spending money on an ET4000 board (which would not be a notable speed-up), than as a recommendation to actively look for TVGA8900D cards.

Just for completeness: Trident also had the 8800 series, but that one is way older and not competitive with "modern" 1MB ISA graphics cards at all.

Deunan wrote on 2023-01-14, 15:14:

Being fast is not the only factor that should be considered when choosing ISA VGA card. […]
Show full quote

Being fast is not the only factor that should be considered when choosing ISA VGA card.

Trident 8900C (not to be confused with CL) is a decent card and period correct for a 386 system. Its performance is limited by 16-bit internal bus (or even 8-bit with just 256KiB RAM on it). The 8900C seems to works well with 286 mobos that have broken ALE signal - this might depend on a particular card though, but a mod should be possible. Should also be faster on a true 286 system due to dual BIOS chips.

8900D is faster but only with the memory fully upgraded to 1MiB, it will switch to 32-bit internal bus. If a particular card can't be upgraded then it's not much better than 8900C, although it is an improved design and these often offer a jumper for 0WS ISA operation as well. Mine uses ALE (at least in 0WS mode), and also has some issues detecing 8-bit slots on some mobos. It's generally meant to be plugged into 16-bit one I guess.

Realtek VGA cards should be avoided, always, unless it's a cheap card for early testing of unknown mobos. These are slow, seem to have 8-bit internal bus no matter how much memory is installed, and picture quality is pretty bad, sometimes even PSU ripple affects the output noise. On the plus side these don't use ALE signal.

In all of these the jailbars are mostly due to RAMDAC and this can't be fixed (but might improve) by replacing old capacitors on the card. Socketed RAMDACs can be swapped around, I've seen a thread here about this but I don't remember what the conclusions were. It's a moot point for most people as it requires a donor card anyway, and if you have a donor card with better RAMDAC why not use that one instead - unless it's a 8900D which is in many cases as fast as the ET4000.

VLB cards are the way to go for a 486 system (though SX25 barely qualifies as 486). Cirrus Logic VGAs tend to exhibit both jailbars and also RAMDAC pixel clock/bank switching noise. The GD5424 I have seem to be a bit worse in that regard than GD5429 - so there are some improvements. You would not see that noise on CRT monitor because of the nature of the tube, it flickers anyway so the eye doesn't pick that up even if there were some tiny differences in pixel brightness. Modern LCD will scan entire frame and lock the pixels to the digitized value it picked until next full frame. So now it's possible to spot that noise.

In general I would not expect 8-bit RAMDAC even on VLB cards, much less ISA ones, and while the 6-bit one is VGA standard (and in theory good for anything below 24/32-bit color modes) you might see the noise/jailbars on modern 8-bit capable monitors. For 286 systems a VGA with dual ROMs will be usually a better match than a newer card that expects 386+ shadowing options in BIOS, although that doesn't matter much in games because those use their own code anyway.

So jail bars wise I suppose that Trident and Cirrus Logic are out of the question... Given the current state of prices all around I would prefer to just go for for a "top tier" ISA card for an extra 20/30 euros, even Cirrus Logic cards are going up... What is your opinion on Ati Mach and Diamond Speedstar?

Just FYI there is a theory that modern monitors might display some sort of jailbar effect on any old analog card, including 8-bit RAMDAC ones where care was taken to minimize any such noise, due to incorrect mode detection and upscaling. Not sure how much truth there is to that but apparently 320x200 modes that a lot of games use are mis-detected as 80x25 text mode. Reason for that is 320x200 is actually pixel-doubled (and line-doubled) 640x400, whereas 80x25 test is 720x400 pixels. Timings are very similar and if the monitor sets its input filer/scaler to wrong line width it will sample the pixels at wrong times. So before you start your hunt for the best and most expensive card there is you should probably try to borrow one and see if it plays nice with your monitor. Certain card-monitor pairings might work better than others.

And if you really can't have jailbars whatsoever then the only option to make sure they never appear is to get yourself a CRT monitor in decent shape. This way you avoid the problem of translating the analog VGA output to digital domain entirely and you even no longer care about having 8-bit RAMDAC. Well unless you want SVGA modes with 24/32 bit truecolor, which is pretty much Win95+ thing. One could argue even Win98+.

debs3759 wrote on 2023-01-14, 04:40:

andre_6 wrote on 2023-01-14, 03:40:

Disruptor wrote on 2023-01-14, 03:14:

Basically Oak, Realtek and Trident are known as slow ISA graphics cards. If you need framebuffer performance, go for an ET4000. […]
Show full quote

Basically Oak, Realtek and Trident are known as slow ISA graphics cards.
If you need framebuffer performance, go for an ET4000.
If you need windows acceleration, go for a S3 or ATI Mach.
A Cirrus Logic would be a compromise.

Well, an ISA ET4000/W32 is a pinnacle, however, mine cannot take 2 MB RAM.

Thank you, clear and concise. Out of curiosity, regarding Tseng, is the ET4000 worse than the ET4000AX or is it the other way around? Would you recommend any particular Cirrus Logic cards?

ET4000 == ET4000AX

For a long time, I thought the same, but apparently, there's also an ET-4000C.

Re: ET4000AX variants

Deunan wrote on 2023-01-14, 17:22:

Just FYI there is a theory that modern monitors might display some sort of jailbar effect on any old analog card, including 8-bit RAMDAC ones where care was taken to minimize any such noise, due to incorrect mode detection and upscaling. Not sure how much truth there is to that but apparently 320x200 modes that a lot of games use are mis-detected as 80x25 text mode. Reason for that is 320x200 is actually pixel-doubled (and line-doubled) 640x400, whereas 80x25 test is 720x400 pixels. Timings are very similar and if the monitor sets its input filer/scaler to wrong line width it will sample the pixels at wrong times. So before you start your hunt for the best and most expensive card there is you should probably try to borrow one and see if it plays nice with your monitor. Certain card-monitor pairings might work better than others.

And if you really can't have jailbars whatsoever then the only option to make sure they never appear is to get yourself a CRT monitor in decent shape. This way you avoid the problem of translating the analog VGA output to digital domain entirely and you even no longer care about having 8-bit RAMDAC. Well unless you want SVGA modes with 24/32 bit truecolor, which is pretty much Win95+ thing. One could argue even Win98+.

The jail bars I've experienced with my LCD display appeared in DOS Games of course, maybe 65% of the ones I've played so far. I have the original CRT that came with this build, but I have no space for it and probably won't for quite some time. It's a big AT Tower that doesn't fit along with the other builds that share a CRT.

Even with the ISA limitations, and due to the prices of Trident or Cirrus Logic cards rising in comparison to the top ones, I wouldn't mind going for the latter, either trading the Trident in and paying the difference or selling the Trident afterwards. If it doesn't solve the jail bars issue it will at least alleviate it, from what I've read Trident cards are the worse in that regard, while getting a faster card in the process, even with those ISA limitations. Might even keep the Trident depending on the price I end up getting a new card. The jail bars aren't a huge issue but since it exists and the card isn't that fast I thought I might as well solve it all at once and close this 486 for good

Tseng cards are overrated IMHO
sure they are speedy but there is a reason some games have "TSENG" in their setup options - it's a compatibility setting
When I discovered the WD90C30/31 cards I never looked back: in my testing a tad more faster than ET4000 cards without the issues (when having 1mb on WDC cards because they interleave the memory)
Win3x GUI acceleration on ISA bus is also a joke in my experience, anything above a CS2424 will be fine as the bottlenecks will lie elsewhere and not in GUI functions

as always these are just my 2 cents 😀

keropi wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:27:

Tseng cards are overrated IMHO sure they are speedy but there is a reason some games have "TSENG" in their setup options - it's […]
Show full quote

Tseng cards are overrated IMHO
sure they are speedy but there is a reason some games have "TSENG" in their setup options - it's a compatibility setting
When I discovered the WD90C30/31 cards I never looked back: in my testing a tad more faster than ET4000 cards without the issues (when having 1mb on WDC cards because they interleave the memory)
Win3x GUI acceleration on ISA bus is also a joke in my experience, anything above a CS2424 will be fine as the bottlenecks will lie elsewhere and not in GUI functions

as always these are just my 2 cents 😀

Thank you Keropi for the advice and everyone above as well, what a nice alternative, wish I knew about it before I got the Trident. As a beginner, should I be aware of any aspects regarding card variations with the WD90C30, or can I just go for it if I see one at an affordable price with 1MB RAM for example?

By the way regarding the jail bars issue, did you test that card with an LCD display by any chance?

the jail bars are not that bad on my CL 5429 VLB... they are only really noticeable, at least to me, when you have a static solid colored image (like in msdos editor)

this site has a good comparison of VLB cards. but there are a bunch of different sites, just google
https://dependency-injection.com/vlb-vga-group-test/

drosse1meyer wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:34:

the jail bars are not that bad on my CL 5429 VLB... they are only really noticeable, at least to me, when you have a static solid colored image (like in msdos editor)

this site has a good comparison of VLB cards. but there are a bunch of different sites, just google
https://dependency-injection.com/vlb-vga-group-test/

Thank you but I have an ISA only 486 board, or does it make no difference regarding the jail bar issue?

drosse1meyer wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:34:

the jail bars are not that bad on my CL 5429 VLB... they are only really noticeable, at least to me, when you have a static solid colored image (like in msdos editor)

I too think 5429 is a step-up from 5424 output quality wise. And my go-to test is the intro from Monkey Island VGA version. Even though it's for VGA it uses limited number of colors that it dithers to get more shades. That, and the purple clouds in the intro really bring out any color banding/jailbars. One of these days I need to do a proper comparison of all the ISA/VLB cards I have, including OSSC pass-through to see how much of the problem is the monitor itself.

Most of the times the RAMDAC on random WD90C30 cards is only capable of displaying a max of 256 colors - which in my book is not an issue on ISA bus and the speed gains are more than enough to make up for higher-color depths lacking

I never noticed jailbars on the random WD90C30 cards I had in the past - eventually I replaced all random ones with "Diamond Speedstar 24x" ones (I am a sucker for old Diamond-branded stuff)
I remember having this variant: https://www.ebay.ie/itm/325293032950 - image quality was great but keep in mind that it's 256colors max depth

also notice that these WDC cards need a full 1mb populated to achieve their max speed

edit:
image quality differences between 5424 and 5429 is easily explained as 5429 integrated the ramdac inside the chip (among the bazillion other improvements)

edit2:
also in my experiments with the 542x series of cards I found that the 2D DOS performance does not really change that much between the chips - what changed drastically is the GUI accelerator functions. You can see some benchmarks on the 5420->5428 onboard vga upgrade I did on an amstrad system: Re: Amstrad Mega PC
So if one finds a nice 5424 card for example he is not really missing much in terms of DOS performance plus the Cirrus compatibility in DOS games is stellar.

andre_6 wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:39:

drosse1meyer wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:34:

the jail bars are not that bad on my CL 5429 VLB... they are only really noticeable, at least to me, when you have a static solid colored image (like in msdos editor)

this site has a good comparison of VLB cards. but there are a bunch of different sites, just google
https://dependency-injection.com/vlb-vga-group-test/

Thank you but I have an ISA only 486 board, or does it make no difference regarding the jail bar issue?

afaik its more a consequence of the components (e.g. ramdac) rather than the interface

some members have worked on improving their cards to minimize - Re: Let's improve video output quality of VGA ISA/VLB cards

keropi wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:52:

Most of the times the RAMDAC on random WD90C30 cards is only capable of displaying a max of 256 colors - which in my book is not […]
Show full quote

Most of the times the RAMDAC on random WD90C30 cards is only capable of displaying a max of 256 colors - which in my book is not an issue on ISA bus and the speed gains are more than enough to make up for higher-color depths

I never noticed jailbars on the random WD90C30 cards I had in the past - eventually I replaced all random ones with "Diamond Speedstar 24x" ones (I am a sucker for old Diamond-branded stuff)
I remember having this variant: https://www.ebay.ie/itm/325293032950 - image quality was great but keep in mind that it's 256colors max depth

keep in mind that these WDC cards need a full 1mb populated to achieve their max speed

I suppose for DOS games and the occasional incursion into Win 3.1 256 colors is more than enough. I wondered about the Diamond Speedstar but the WD90C30 seems overall way more affordable for an ISA only board like mine, will be on the lookout for the 1MB ones. I did see the WD90C30 on top above the Tseng on many benchmarks around the forums, but given that I didn't see a lot of mentions about that I thought it was just a rare card or a very specific one for dedicated ends. Thank you for the suggestion, I think I'm sold

drosse1meyer wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:59:

afaik its more a consequence of the components (e.g. ramdac) rather than the interface
some members have worked on improving their cards to minimize - Re: Let's improve video output quality of VGA ISA/VLB cards

Deunan wrote on 2023-01-14, 18:51:

I too think 5429 is a step-up from 5424 output quality wise. And my go-to test is the intro from Monkey Island VGA version. Even though it's for VGA it uses limited number of colors that it dithers to get more shades. That, and the purple clouds in the intro really bring out any color banding/jailbars. One of these days I need to do a proper comparison of all the ISA/VLB cards I have, including OSSC pass-through to see how much of the problem is the monitor itself.

I imagine that with the slowly inceasing scarcity of CRTs these type of jail bar/ signal tests with LCDs will be more and more in vogue, it's not really a deal breaker but in some games it really detracts from the experience