First post, by brostenen
- Rank
- l33t++
Re: Nominations for the best all-rounder graphics card for a 486
wrote:Hi, I'm building a 486 based system. Have been shopping around in ebay for a while now. Now if anyone can share their personal experience with regard to a VLB or an ISA based card. My targets are 1) Best compatibility with all Dos classics. 2) Won't be playing much of FPS that much since I have 2 other dedicated machines. Anyway, The most graphics demanding games I'll be playing in this 486 are Terminator Future Shock, Eradicator, Skynet, and of course, the classics Doom 1,2, Heretic 1 etc.
Thanks!
The best VL-Bus card that I have tried so far, is an S3-805. I can not remember the exact model from the top of my head. Yet it is the one that are named something with Spea Mirage - something - something, and I have it pictured here in a blogpost that I made about my Dx2-80 machine.
http://to9xct.blogspot.com/2018/09/dextor-tal … 2-80-build.html
Regarding ISA cards, then my biggest complaint, is that they often make these horrible veritcal spaghetti lines or grey'ish jailcell bar's across the screen on a TFT/LCD monitor. You will not see that on a real CRT monitor, and some flatscreen monitors have been reported to display the image correctly. On VLB cards, I have seen these spaghetti lines on all Cirrus Logic cards that I have tried. That is CL5424/26/28/29/30-VLB cards. And on PCI cards, I have seen it on one card. That was an CL-5430-PCI. All other PCI cards that I have seen on a 486-PCI system, have not shown that. That S3 card that I have used in my 486 machine, does make them, yet it is so fainth that it is nearly not visible. When I play a game, then I do not see the lines. And to see the lines, the background need to be dark grey. And it is only in a select few games that I see it. Actually... When thinking closer, I only see it in Lotus3, and only on the sky when I am driving. And somewere in the intro. Yeah... That S3 is a great card, and is fast enough to play Doom fluid on a Dx2-80.
Regarding the absolute best 486-Vga card, then you need to go for a PCI card. Yet ISA or VLB, then go for VLB. As most of them ARE faster and they produce a better image quality than any ISA card out there. On the other hand, you can come across motherboards with only ISA slots on it. So to answer your question. Then I recommend an S3-805-VLB card. That is the quality versus price situation on todays eBay offerings, that I am thinking of.
Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....
My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen
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