Please define your criteria for "best".

Best all-round would be CL-GD5434. Otherwise good DOS = Tseng ET4000. Best for Windows = ATI Mach64.

But it pretty much depends on what will you do with your 386DX-40.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Please define your criteria for "best".

I suppose I'd leave that open ended, Phil, and allow for varying opinions. I don't know that I have a definition of "best" in mind -- hence my being open to suggestion and asking people what *they* think is best. My only rough guideline is that I'd like to be fairly period correct for a 386/40.

I know some cards may be faster, some cards may have better standard color depth (higher max memory), some may be more universally supported than others, etc. I think all is fair game, and perhaps the fairer question is, "What card from that era is your favorite and why?"

If it helps, I'm building this PC mostly for DOS games, but also plan on having Windows (WFW) 3.11 for SMB sharing and whatever other old Win3.x apps that float my boat.

kixs wrote:

Best all-round would be CL-GD5434. Otherwise good DOS = Tseng ET4000. Best for Windows = ATI Mach64.
But it pretty much depends on what will you do with your 386DX-40.

Don't you think CL-5434 and/or Mach64 are a tad bit too new for a ISA based 386/40, kixs?

Based on your original list, for a 386 DX-40, you can't go wrong with either an ET4000 or the CL-GD5424.
I favour the ET4000 a bit more.

ET4000 is fast but has issues in some games - who doesn't want to play Commander Keen on a 386DX anyways? 🤣
Equally fast and trouble-free are the WDC90C31 based cards - you can't go wrong with one.

"best card" is vague in this case... Speed-wise, most post '91 isa cards are more then fast enough for a 386, even a fast one. If output quality is what you mean, then I'd have to suggest Cirrus Logic cards (but that can be subjective). In my opinion they display the warmest colors and black look great even on modern LCD screens. If you want to use windows and high resolutions (why tough?), I suggest ATi cards. 1MB Tseng cards aren't bad either. Some high-end Cirrus cards also deliver very clear output at high resolutions.

Compatibility-wise you don't really have to worry much when using ISA cards. Tseng VGA cards tend to have some issues in games like keen, but you can tick "super VGA compatibility mode" in the game's menu and it will work great. ATi cards have similar issues, especially the M64 with newer video BIOS. S3, Cirrus and Trident cards have no compatibility issues as far as I know.

keropi wrote:

Equally fast and trouble-free are the WDC90C31 based cards - you can't go wrong with one.

^This. Western Digital Paradise cards offer best of all worlds. They are generally faster then Tseng cards, have great output quality (apart from some "banding" on select models in low color low-res graphic modes), colours are great, and output is crisp at high resolutions. They can be hard to come by tough.

I have a 1mb STB-branded Cirrus Logic 5426 and it works great in my DX-40 build. Zero issues and it's fast enough for everything I play on it.

I have a generic GD5429 ISA card with 1MB DRAM and it run quiet well, not to mention on Win. From a speed point of view I've seen a bit boost compared to the ATI Wonderl XL 28800-5 but if I consider the build quality I'd prefer the ATi for much better pcb quality,soldering,components.

kanecvr wrote:

keropi wrote:

Equally fast and trouble-free are the WDC90C31 based cards - you can't go wrong with one.

^This. Western Digital Paradise cards offer best of all worlds. They are generally faster then Tseng cards, have great output quality (apart from some "banding" on select models in low color low-res graphic modes), colours are great, and output is crisp at high resolutions. They can be hard to come by tough.

I agree with both of you - the WDC90C31 really is a fine VGA chip!
It does have some basic accelleration features and is to some degree compatible to the original PVGA1A, as well.
When I did some testing, I was able to use a Windows 2.x driver from the 80s with that chip (written for the first PVGA).
No idea if it's worth to mention, but Wonderland (Magnetic Scrolls) also worked with the WDC90C31 in SVGA mode.
Well, at least with the card(s) I tried. Maybe I was just lucky and the VGA BIOS in question supported that mode.
A *very* old Paradise card w/ Olivetti firmware didn't support the Paradise modes.

I personally use a Tseng Labs ET4000AX 1MB card in my 386DX-40 build. It outperformed my Diamond Stealth VRAM 1MB, and Trident TVGA8900C 1MB cards, in DOS, but it appears to be a bit sluggish in WFW 3.11.

Sorry for entering the conversation late.

But I just got an ATI Mach64 ISA 2MB. Is it worth keeping or just selling on eBay (price seems rather high there). What makes this card so special? I don't see any real point in getting an ISA card for Windows, seeing as PCI cards seem a much better option.

Depends on the model. I might be interested 😉

Otherwise it's the best card for ISA bus. Best Windows performance and pretty good in DOS. Well suited for 386 or early ISA only 486.

dexvx wrote:

Sorry for entering the conversation late.

But I just got an ATI Mach64 ISA 2MB. Is it worth keeping or just selling on eBay (price seems rather high there). What makes this card so special? I don't see any real point in getting an ISA card for Windows, seeing as PCI cards seem a much better option.

It's one of the last and most powerful/advanced ISA cards produced.
Sure, VLB/PCI cards are generally better, but that's not very relevant for systems that only have ISA slots (such as 386 or older).

Interesting... 486 was before my time (although I did play with a 286 as a small kid), so I'm not too familiar with stuff older than a Socket 5 Pentium.

dexvx wrote:

Interesting... 486 was before my time

486 is where it all happened, quite literally.
The original PC introduced the 8-bit ISA slot. This was expanded to 16-bit ISA with the AT. Then nothing happened for a long time (well, PS/2 got MCA, but that was proprietary, and there was EISA, which was only found on high-end workstations and servers).
Early 486 systems still had only 8-bit and 16-bit ISA slots, and it became ever more of a bottleneck.
So later 486 systems were fitted with localbus interfaces. There were a few odd incarnations here and there, but the VESA localbus quickly became the de-facto standard.
Then the Pentium was introduced, along with the shiny new PCI interface (VLB was tied directly to the 486 bus, and was difficult to retro-fit to any other CPU, although Pentium boards with VLB do exist). You will find post-Pentium 486 systems with PCI.

So the 486 is the 'linking pin' here between the old-world ISA and the new-world PCI. You'll find the widest variety of buses on 486 systems: ISA, EISA, MCA, VLB, PCI and a number of proprietary solutions.

So if VLB is tied directly to the 486 bus, what would happen if someone put in a Pentium Overdrive on the board? VLB will no longer be usable and you'd be forced to use ISA?

Also, why didn't EISA take off? It would seem ideal (albeit lower bandwidth), as it is supposedly backwards compatible with ISA.

keropi wrote:

ET4000 is fast but has issues in some games - who doesn't want to play Commander Keen on a 386DX anyways? 🤣
Equally fast and trouble-free are the WDC90C31 based cards - you can't go wrong with one.

mine does not work with TFT 😒

dexvx wrote:

So if VLB is tied directly to the 486 bus, what would happen if someone put in a Pentium Overdrive on the board? VLB will no longer be usable and you'd be forced to use ISA?

A Pentium Overdrive is a Pentium on a 486 bus, so it works just as well as a real 486.

dexvx wrote:

Also, why didn't EISA take off? It would seem ideal (albeit lower bandwidth), as it is supposedly backwards compatible with ISA.

EISA was quite advanced at the time, and quite expensive to implement. When EISA first arrived, the cost was too high compared to the gains for mainstream users.
In the 486 era, things went very quickly. Not only did ISA become a big bottleneck, but 486 performance jumped ahead so far that EISA would still be way too slow, hence localbus solutions arrived.