The difference in DOS will be negligible. The VRAM version is faster in Windows at high resolution.

I once made a comparison between S3-968 and Trio64 on VLB. I believe the Trio64 was the fastest VLB card I tested in DOS (but all VLB cards are fairly close). The 968 was about 5% slower in DOS, but in Windows it could be quite a bit faster if you ran resolutions higher than 800x600x64k. I would easily recommend either of them though. The Trio64 (764) is supposed to be an 864 with integrated clockgen and RAMDAC, so I suppose performance of the 864 and Trio64 should be almost identical.

Thank you for the answers !

968 has better GUI performance and should be faster at high resolutions in DOS, but 486 obviously can't utilize that.

There is no difference in DOS and 96x is faster in Windows at any resolution/color depth. But then again many other cards are just as fast or only slightly slower in DOS.

864 is based on DRAM FPM memory and supports EGA, CGA while 964 does not and uses VRAM.

Cheers,

From my experiments with 868 and 968 I remember that the VRAM benefit is really only at high-res/depts in Windows (Graphics Winmark score) and high refresh rates. That means 1024x768 65k up

In fact, at low res, the 868 was a bit faster and even in DOS (by a tiny margin). Presumably due to a much faster stock clock on my card.

But it could be different than on 864/964 series, as most S3 868 (or Trio64) cards use EDO DRAM (and some 968 cards EDO VRAM) while most 864 cards use FPM DRAM or normal VRAM (like the one above) The EDO shifts the bottleneck up a bit and cards with EDO tend to be clocked higher.

Often VRAM cards have faster RAMDAC but in this case, I think it is a wash as I believe both S3 SDAC and the Bt485 are 135 MHz parts.

Do you know of any VLB cards that use EDO DRAM? I don't. There might be one or two, but they must be pretty darned rare.
One advantage of going with a 96x card is that more care was likely taken designing the output section. There are good quality 86x cards, but some of them were low spec too.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-08-02, 01:56:

Do you know of any VLB cards that use EDO DRAM? I don't. There might be one or two, but they must be pretty darned rare.
One advantage of going with a 96x card is that more care was likely taken designing the output section. There are good quality 86x cards, but some of them were low spec too.

My Stealth 64 DRAM T VLB came with a mix of FPM and EDO:

Looks like it was produced around 96-97, which is fairly late for a VLB card, so the EDO support at that point in time makes sense.

mpe wrote on 2020-08-01, 22:34:

From my experiments with 868 and 968 I remember that the VRAM benefit is really only at high-res/depts in Windows (Graphics Winm […]
Show full quote

From my experiments with 868 and 968 I remember that the VRAM benefit is really only at high-res/depts in Windows (Graphics Winmark score) and high refresh rates. That means 1024x768 65k up

In fact, at low res, the 868 was a bit faster and even in DOS (by a tiny margin). Presumably due to a much faster stock clock on my card.

But it could be different than on 864/964 series, as most S3 868 (or Trio64) cards use EDO DRAM (and some 968 cards EDO VRAM) while most 864 cards use FPM DRAM or normal VRAM (like the one above) The EDO shifts the bottleneck up a bit and cards with EDO tend to be clocked higher.

Often VRAM cards have faster RAMDAC but in this case, I think it is a wash as I believe both S3 SDAC and the Bt485 are 135 MHz parts.

In my tests VRAM cards are always faster in any Windows resolution & colour depth. And the difference isn't small either. I've tested VLB cards with these chipstes 864, 868, 964, 968 and Trio32, Trio64. I wish I had all versions from one brand...

I've only tested at 640x480 in Windows as the differences would be the same at higher ones - albeit lower overall.

Impressive how bad the Trio32 performs in Windows, even at low resolutions and color depths.

Impressive how bad the Trio32 performs in Windows

More or less bandwidth issue. Just by switching Trio 32 to Trio 64 you can improve performance in high color Windows games (Forsaken, Unreal, C&C: Tiberian Sun, etc) about 50%. That's also true for DOS games in high resolution modes (1024x768 or more) or late games with high color support.

It's per design. If you remove 1MB from the other cards they will also perform much slower.

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-08-02, 03:13:

My Stealth 64 DRAM T VLB came with a mix of FPM and EDO: CARD.JPG Looks like it was produced around 96-97, which is fairly late […]
Show full quote

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-08-02, 01:56:

Do you know of any VLB cards that use EDO DRAM? I don't. There might be one or two, but they must be pretty darned rare.
One advantage of going with a 96x card is that more care was likely taken designing the output section. There are good quality 86x cards, but some of them were low spec too.

My Stealth 64 DRAM T VLB came with a mix of FPM and EDO:
CARD.JPG
Looks like it was produced around 96-97, which is fairly late for a VLB card, so the EDO support at that point in time makes sense.

Just because somebody stuck some EDO RAM modules in there doesn't mean the card is actually using it, especially if it's mixed with FPM RAM.
I thought EDO DRAM was first supported in Trio64V+, but I double checked the datasheets and the original Trio64 does indeed support it...but all of the Trio64 VLB cards I've seen so far use FPM DRAM, and I suspect jumpers or registers would need to be set to coax the card into EDO mode. Further examination of the datasheets is required.

Yep. My Trio64 VLB cards are all FPM (at least the soldered chips in the first bank). Checked 2x Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM and Spea Mirage P64.

But I have PCI Trio64 (86C764X) and even PCI Trio32 with stock EDO.

EDO operation can be checked/changed by running MCLK.EXE. But is usually programmed to BIOS on cards with EDO from the factory.

Did anyone expect to see slightly better DOS performance on the DRAM cards over the VRAM cards?

I was checking Mach 32 cards recently and saw a similar, slight improvement for the DRAM card vs the VRAM card..

if Memory-clock is same on DRAM and VRAM-based Vision, then is no DOS performacne difference. Vision96x Card run in letter/VGA Mode same as DRAM card, no using of VRAM-bus to DAC.
Side notice: letter/VGA Mode, only lower 16bit memory bus is using. Not full 32/64bit bus !

Trio64 and Trio64V+ is faster, because this card has higher memory-clock and faster DRAM.

Madao wrote on 2020-11-27, 06:06:

if Memory-clock is same on DRAM and VRAM-based Vision, then is no DOS performacne difference. Vision96x Card run in letter/VGA Mode same as DRAM card, no using of VRAM-bus to DAC.
Side notice: letter/VGA Mode, only lower 16bit memory bus is using. Not full 32/64bit bus !

Trio64 and Trio64V+ is faster, because this card has higher memory-clock and faster DRAM.

OK, thanks for that info. I appreciate it. You also explained why the Trio32 is at the top of the pack in DOS but so far behind in windows.