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choice of dos extenders

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First post, by noshutdown

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there were many dos extenders, the best known is probably dos/4gw which was used by many games, and included with watcom. and there is cwsdpmi, used by quake and included in djgpp.
but there are many other choices: phar lap(used by autodesk), 386max(required but not included by microsoft c), qdpmi, pmode, and more to mention.
do they make any difference, especially in performance? and which one would you suggest?

Reply 1 of 4, by Falcosoft

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Not so long ago I have discovered a performance related problem with programs using DOS4GW under v86 mode. Programs using CWSDPMI seem to be not affected. However it's a video performance related problem so it's not directly related to how fast the mentioned extenders themselves are. But this problem is definitely one you should consider if you use/write applications or games that use SVGA graphics and because of some drivers you are forced to use EMM386/JEMM385 etc. memory managers that switch your CPU into protected/v86 mode.
https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=15770

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Reply 2 of 4, by Stiletto

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We used to suggest DOS32A around here all the time as it came with a way to stub out other extenders and replace them with its own. This came in handy when DOSBox experienced issues with other extenders like DOS4GW but didnt with DOS32A.
http://dos32a.narechk.net/index_en.html

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Reply 3 of 4, by BloodyCactus

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wdosx will stub out others as well. I think wdosx > dos32a personally.

cwsdpmi isnt an extender, its a DPMI server. Same for HDPMI32, same for QDPMI (QEMM DPMI server), DPMIONE (buggy piece of useless shit) from 386max.

extenders would be;

dos32 (adam seychell), dos4gw, pmode/w, wdosx, causeway etc.

Are you talking pure extender or are you talking DPMI Server, VCPI Server?

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Reply 4 of 4, by Marco

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The mentioned benchmark can be found here:

https://www.javiergutierrezchamorro.com/wp-co … ml/gnrl/13.html

I mostly ran into nogos with dos32a eg with doom or Qfg4.

I also couldn’t proof improvements in fps while running pcpbench with most extenders. Ok I have to add that I am crouching at 2,1fps anyway with me 386. anyway no improvements here.
I would recommend to use the latest Dos4gw and that’s it.

1) VLSI SCAMP 311 / 386SX25@30 / 16MB / CL-GD5434 / CT2830/ SCC-1&MT32 / Fast-SCSI AHA 1542CF + BlueSCSI v2/15k U320
2) SIS486 / 486DX/2 66(@80) / 32MB / TGUI9440 / LAPC-I

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