For Pentium system any S3 will be fine - from Vision to Virge...

For ISA only system... the best for DOS is CL 5434 which is also very good in Windows. Best for Windows is ATi Mach64 VRAM but it's not that fast in DOS.

kixs wrote:

For Pentium system any S3 will be fine - from Vision to Virge...

For ISA only system... the best for DOS is CL 5434 which is also very good in Windows. Best for Windows is ATi Mach64 VRAM but it's not that fast in DOS.

Wow thanks!

S3 Vision968

- Good S3 Virge DX will be almost 50% faster in highres modes (Blood, Duke3D).
- Somewhat picky with modern monitors (image distortion).
- Slightly better image quality compared to Trio/Virge. Provided if your monitor won't go crazy with this card.
- Hard to expand memory due to rarity. 2mb usually is default.

Cool to have, not practical to use.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

- Good S3 Virge DX will be almost 50% faster in highres modes (Blood, Duke3D). - Somewhat picky with modern monitors (image dis […]
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S3 Vision968

- Good S3 Virge DX will be almost 50% faster in highres modes (Blood, Duke3D).
- Somewhat picky with modern monitors (image distortion).
- Slightly better image quality compared to Trio/Virge. Provided if your monitor won't go crazy with this card.
- Hard to expand memory due to rarity. 2mb usually is default.

Cool to have, not practical to use.

great, thanks.

What about backwards compatibility of Virge DX?
I mean, playing an older software (say Sim City 2000 or Doom or whatever) that doesn't list Virge in the list of video cards, and selecting an older "S3" card, will it work?

Also (already replied here above ↑ but I forgot to ask this):

Monitors incompatibility with S3 Vision968... 19" LCDs apply too?

Thanks!

aries-mu wrote:

Also (already replied here above ↑ but I forgot to ask this):

Monitors incompatibility with S3 Vision968... 19" LCDs apply too?

Thanks!

For the most part, yes. On an incompatible monitor, you may notice lines on the screen. This is going by what I've heard about people using old ISA video cards with newer LCD monitors. It might depend on the brand and model of the monitor as I've also heard that not all LCD monitors suffer from this issue.

If anyone has more experience about this than I do, feel free to correct my understanding of this theory.

That's not what I meant. Image can be very unstable with noticeable waviness, I blame external IBM DAC.

I don't know. I think IBM made pretty good quality DACs. Maybe the problem is the filters.

I know for fact that two cards based on CL GD5434 (Nitro64 and Speedstar64) have very different image quality despite the DAC being integrated. The Nitro64 produces a clean image, whereas the Speedstar64 has those annoying lines.

I have both Nitro64 and Speedstar64 (several) and all have good picture quality.

Wow guys, you have everything! Thanks for sharing experiences...

The Number Nine cards use Cirrus Logic CL-GD5424 chips for DOS. You can check the performance of these chips in Phil's VGA Benchmark Database: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

GL1zdA wrote:

The Number Nine cards use Cirrus Logic CL-GD5424 chips for DOS. You can check the performance of these chips in Phil's VGA Benchmark Database: Phil's Ultimate VGA Benchmark Database Project

Oh thank you!
That's smart, so they didn't have to re-write drivers for all DOS apps/games. But it's also a waste, not taking advantage of the at-that-time-monster GPU in DOS environment! Too bad.

Necroposting as usual.

aries-mu wrote on 2018-09-07, 20:49:

That's smart, so they didn't have to re-write drivers for all DOS apps/games. But it's also a waste, not taking advantage of the at-that-time-monster GPU in DOS environment! Too bad.

It was designed for business, probably Windows 3.1 and Windows NT oriented with CAD and Photoshop in mind, that's why DOS part was not that important.

I have a question, btw, may be somebody knows. There is a socket on my board that looks just like ordinary VRAM SOJ on 512Kb. On some boards they have chip instead. Does it meant there were two versions of the card, one with 512Kb for DOS and possible extension and another one with 1MB already installed? It's located quite far from Cirrus Logic chip.