Slower then Tseng and on par with Cirrus Logic 5426/28.

kixs wrote:

Slower then Tseng and on par with Cirrus Logic 5426/28.

"Slower" is relative, it depends a lot on who made the 805 card and what RAMDAC is on the card.

The 805 is a very slow card, probably one of S3's slowest. It was absolutely low-end and cut down to a 16-bit interface. Even the fastest 805, the 805i with interleaved memory at 2 MB, fails to beat a Trident TGUI9400. It's still faster than any ISA card, but not a very good VLB card.

I only have one vlb video card and I was thinking if I should get that S3 one as a spare for my 486, but if it is that bad it is probably not worth it.

If it's for a good price, then get it. It was one of the most used card in VLB era.

derSammler wrote:

The 805 is a very slow card, probably one of S3's slowest. It was absolutely low-end and cut down to a 16-bit interface. Even the fastest 805, the 805i with interleaved memory at 2 MB, fails to beat a Trident TGUI9400. It's still faster than any ISA card, but not a very good VLB card.

Some versions of the Trident TGUI9400 and 9440 are really fast cards, but the S3 805 is nowhere as slow as you depict it here. It was faster then alot of Cirrus Logic and nearly all older Trident cards. Mine was faster then my Tseng 4000AX card too. That S3 made faster cards is a fact I won't deny, if I look at the Trio32, 928 and 864 cards I also use 🤣

Biggest plus for the 805 is that it is very compatible, and even on LCD's most of the versions made look good.

Nvm1 wrote:

Some versions of the Trident TGUI9400 and 9440 are really fast cards, but the S3 805 is nowhere as slow as you depict it here. It was faster then alot of Cirrus Logic and nearly all older Trident cards. Mine was faster then my Tseng 4000AX card too.

The card was tested by me and others and it barely reaches 10 mb/s. TGUI9400 is a bit faster and has 2d acceleration, which the 805 lacks.

Also, as already written, the 805 was lowest-end with the host interface even cut down to 16-bit, despite being a VLB card. It *is* slow (only 911 and 924 from S3 were slower), if you accept it or not.

I did not say that there weren't slower cards made by others, but that was not the question anyway. I even wrote that it's still faster than any ISA card, so I don't see how I depicted it slower than it is.

derSammler wrote:

The card was tested by me and others and it barely reaches 10 mb/s. TGUI9400 is a bit faster and has 2d acceleration, which the […]
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Nvm1 wrote:

Some versions of the Trident TGUI9400 and 9440 are really fast cards, but the S3 805 is nowhere as slow as you depict it here. It was faster then alot of Cirrus Logic and nearly all older Trident cards. Mine was faster then my Tseng 4000AX card too.

The card was tested by me and others and it barely reaches 10 mb/s. TGUI9400 is a bit faster and has 2d acceleration, which the 805 lacks.

Also, as already written, the 805 was lowest-end with the host interface even cut down to 16-bit, despite being a VLB card. It *is* slow (only 911 and 924 were slower), if you accept it or not.

I did not say that there weren't slower cards made by others, but that was not the question anyway. I even wrote that it's still faster than any ISA card, so I don't see how I depicted it slower than it is.

Well, you literally write that it is a "very slow card", "absolutely low-end" and "not a very good VLB card". Only plus you give it is that it is faster then ISA cards (which is clearly correct).
That summed up it seems like the Oak card under the VLB cards, while it actually isn't that rock bottom in performance, and it is very good compatibility wise. It might be my way of interpretation but for somebody who is now searching for a VLB card and you can get a 805 for a decent price it certainly is a good choice. It will run with everything, albeit not the fastest.
And there aren't that many other choices anymore in the market with mainly Cirrus Logic cards and S3 805 cards going around here for decent prices if I look around on all websites.

805/i/p cards tend to vary widely in speed and picture quality, depending on memory speed, BIOS and RAMDAC. The speed also varies depending on whether you are running it under DOS or Windows. DOS/Mode 13h performance isn't stellar by any means, but is often improved by switching it into zero-waitstate mode. It edges out the best ISA cards with a 'good' implementation. Lesser implementations can be pretty sluggish. I owned a number of 805 cards and they seemed to do alright, though one with 80ns memory was a dog.
Windows performance is usually visibly better than Cirrus GD5426/5428 cards though, drivers and board permitting.

And yes, the 805 indeed has 2D acceleration. It's a Windows 3.x-era GUI accelerator. Provided the board's design doesn't hold it back, it usually visibly outpaces Tridents and Cirruses (not including better 5429 boards and later 64-bit chips) under Windows 95 with proper drivers (even though it wasn't really designed for Windows 95).
The TGUI9400 despite the name is NOT really an accelerator, it's a slightly improved TVGA9200CXr with a hardware cursor sprite, but no actual acceleration hardware beyond that. It's very similar in spirit to the OTI087X in that regard. The TGUI9420/9440 were the first 'real' 2D/GUI accelerators from Trident.

There's also 86C805-Q.

I didn't get the card with S3 805 86C805-P chip. Instead of that I found a really cheap diamond stealth pro vlb card that has S3 P86C928 chips as a spare for my 486.

Yup,

Chalk up another thumbs down for the performance from S3-805, I had higher hopes for way back when... even in DOS using DRAM.

For vga it is ok, for vesa one of the slowest. Here is a comparison:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pOO9D … UBxpEiQHPfTl4Xs

I can share some testing in DOOM:
ISA:
Trident TVHA9000B 7,65FPS
Trident TVHA8900D 12,07FPS
VLB
Trident TGUI9420Gi 23,42FPS
S3 86X805-P 28,01FPS
Cirus Logic CL-GD5429 27,99FPS

Btw good VLB test in Quake is there, 805 also included:
https://youtu.be/hxwRh6-kI8U?si=yUlcJzLs7fm9CbRo

Yeah, the S3 805 really isn't as bad as it's often made out to be. It's one of those cards that don't like to benchmark well, but performs reasonably in-person.
It's unfortunate though that it tends to be a little bit dependent on the motherboard chipset used.

The TGUI9420 isn't doing that bad either despite it scoring a few obvious FPS lower. Could be tunable with a little strapping resistor twiddle work.

I've tested all my VLB cards, including 805-P and 805-Q. Not bad at all from my point of view.
There are DOS tests and some Windows testing as well. Tested on average DX2 system these cards are most often used I suppose.
https://martesretrotech.substack.com/p/vlb-gr … ards-comparison

its an old thread but i guess the slowest vesa card would be the trident9200, its not only older than the pretty slow 9400(9440 is better) but also lacks acceleration, and still using 3-clock dram while others are all 2-clock, s3 868/968 even had 1-clock.
another candidate is... vesa cards of et4000ax exist. while a fast isa card and vesa compatible, i doubt if it would have either 32bit date bus or 33mhz full speed.
the cirrus 542x vesa cards are also notorious for having only 16bit data pins, but at least they have official vesa support to run at full speed, and 5426 and later have acceleration, so they are likely to avoid the worst position.

noshutdown wrote on 2026-02-25, 02:40:

its an old thread but i guess the slowest vesa card would be the trident9200, its not only older than the pretty slow 9400/9440 but also lacks acceleration, and still using 3-clock dram while others are all 2-clock, s3 968 even has 1-clock.
another candidate is... vesa cards of et4000ax exist. while a fast isa card and vesa compatible, i doubt if it would have either 32bit date bus or 33mhz full speed.
the cirrus 542x vesa cards are also notorious for having only 16bit data pins, but at least they have official vesa support to run at full speed, and 5426 and later have acceleration, so they are likely to avoid the worst position.

I agree with you. There are some slower cards like Trident 9400 and would include also 9420 based on my testing. Them there are some fast er like S3 Vision or Trio 64. And rest is somewhere in the middle and differences are not really so significant. And this is maybe the reason why the discussion is to tight, because there is not big difference between cards like Cirrus 542x and S3 805. Maybe you can see some difference on AMD 5x86 P75 but honestly, who would use such CPU with S3 805 if there are so many options for PCI with much better performance? And if used with more realistic DX/DX2, it is equal, 0,1FPS in Quake does not matter 😉

What is also important and often missed in discussion is support for VBE. This is also good on both, Cirrus 542x and S3 805 but e. g. S3 928 miss it (maybe some newer BIOS include it), so not really good choice for DOS I think.