First post, by feipoa
- Rank
- l33t++
I have finally jumped on the 486 VLB bandwagon and am in the process of maximising my "new" Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4. It will replace a setup in one of my cases (Biostar MB-8433UUD, Am5x86-160 w/GeForce2) and also use an Am5x86-160 w/1024K and 64 or 128 MB of RAM. I was going to buy another case, but shipping costs have become way high.
I have the following two VLB cards which I bought on eBay in 1999 and 2000 for next to nothing (are they valuable now?),
ATI Mach64 VLB wih 2 MB RAM
Diamond Stealth64 VRAM (aka Stealth Video 3000 series) VLB with S3 Vision968 and 4 MB RAM (it came with the memory add-on module)
I will be using the VLB graphics in combination with an Adpatec AHA-2842A SCSI controller. I also plan to run Windows 95 OSR 2.5.
Which card is preferred? Faster? Better? More glory?
Some good threads which cover VLB graphics are,
VLB Graphics recommendation
Fastest DOS VLB Graphics card ever?
I noticed that DOOM will not even begin on the Vision968 card if I leave LOCAL BUS READY set to TRANSPARENT in the BIOS. The transparent setting works fine on the Mach64 card and results in improved benchmark scores. Transparent option works fine on the Vision968 card, but only with the FSB set to 33 MHz; I am running the FSB at 40 MHz now. Anyone noticed this and discovered a means to correct for it?
DOS
DOOM(timedemo 3, realtics)
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 1135
Mach64 (synchronize) = 1278
Mach64 (transparent) = 1195
3DBench
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 90.9 fps
Mach64 (synchronize) = 83.3
Mach64 (transparent) = 90.9
PCPBench
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 11.3 fps
Mach64 (synchronize) = 11.4
Mach64 (transparent) = 11.6
PCPBench - VGA mode
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 25.8 fps
Mach64 (synchronize) = 25.9
Mach64 (transparent) = 26.2
Quake
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 17.7 fps
Mach64 (synchronize) = 17.7
Mach64 (transparent) = 17.8
Landmark v2
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 16,384 char/s
Mach64 (synchronize) = 11,045
Mach64 (transparent) = 12,288
Vspeed
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 19.91 million bytes/s
Mach64 (synchronize) = 17.33
Mach64 (transparent) = 19.54
Vidspeed (from mvspeed; 32-bit data transfer)
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 316.5 fps
Mach64 (synchronize) = 342.6
Mach64 (transparent) = 395.2
Windows 3.11
Wintune 2.0 (graphics)
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 14,144 Kpixels/s
Mach64 (transparent) = 8,406 Kpixels/s
Windows Speed (graphics)
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 999
Mach64 (transparent) = 698
Speedy (Hercules Computer Tech)
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 93.30
Mach64 (transparent) = 26.86
WinBench96 (custom selection of graphics winmark - because test 12 of 13 incompatible with Vision968)
Stealth64 (synchronize) = 13.52
Mach64 (transparent) = 6.91 (7.69 is the typical "graphics winmark" score)
From these results, the Mach64 and Vision968 seem fairly well matched, with benchmarks sometimes favouring one card over the other. Aside from DOS, the Vision968 has the benefit of running 1280x1024x24-bit due to the extra 2 MB of RAM. The Mach64 can do 1152x864x16-bit max. I will likely run the system at 1024x768x16-bit in Windows, so this difference is inconsequential.
Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.