Hi all !!!
I had this graphics card in a retro PC, ATI Rage II+ DVD 2 megas PCI, and I changed it for this one, SIS 6326 PCI 8 megas, since it has 8 megas video ram, I think the SIS is better, for DOS games right?
Eh... no.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
also no.
That SIS card is an early 3d card, just not a particularly good one:
https://vintage3d.org/sis.php#sthash.XltBtHXt.dpbs
The whole 8 MB is probably rather rare.
But for dos games, no use at all - you'll be hard pressed to find a DOS game that requires more than a megabyte and runs smoothly, without 3d acceleration.
(someone here will correct me, there always is an exception)
13h resolution of 320x200 at 256 colors will be 64 kB, SVGA als in Warcraft 2 needs 300. Not that many dos games beyond that. CnC Red Alert asked for Windows if you wanted SVGA.
I like jumpers.
2 megabytes is enough for 1600x1200 resolution in 256 colors. Some DOS games had high-color support, but most of them were 640x480 tops.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
Rage II+ would be better if it had 4MB even, but 2MB *long sucking teeth noise* it's gonna struggle.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Ah, here we have a direct comparison in the middle with a 4MB, and it looks like SiS6326 has it, unless you really, really, really like Grim Fandango.
https://vintage3d.org/rage2.php
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Both are horrible choices for 3D.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
This card's capabilities depends a lot on its revision and frequency. There are PCI versions with 4mb EDO running at 60Mhz and there are AGP versions with 8mb SG or SD-RAM running at 100MHz.
Also, revision matters a lot in speed, compatibility and graphical quality.
New blending modes, better perspective correction are among things that have been corrected.
A post C3 revision (which is likely the case if you have a 8mb card) with decent memory and frequency 6326 is better than a RageII, no doubt.
It won't ever be fast though.
Maybe in msdos it doesn't matter but I suppose the SiS would be better at least in accelerated games, considering how bad the supposed fast Rage Pro PCI 4MB SGRAM I'm testing right now is NOT as fast as expected and not that far from the cheaper Rage IIc AGP 8MB. Also if the SiS has the chip revision with the IDCT support at least it might help with mpeg2 hardware acceleration. The Rage II+DVD should only have Motion Compensation but like the Rage Pro PCI I suppose it will be difficult to even see differences on the platforms they were oriented to.
ok, now I have an idea, thanks to all for the answers
For DOS the performance hardly matters, bus speed is far more relevant. What does matter is compatibility. Neither SiS 6326 or ATi Rage II+ are great, but they have different strengths and weaknesses:
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/
The amount of video RAM over 1MB is utterly irrelevant for DOS.
That chart needs going through and desubjectivising. Some worse problems "handwaved away" in dull green than there are in some reds. Red should only be complete fail rather than conditional fail.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Hello everyone. I happen to have a K6_2 400Mhz machine, a Compaq, that has this SiS GPU integrated on an AGP bus. I think it is 2X AGP. I have 8MB of my main memory shared with the GPU.
For 2D games, this GPU works GREAT in DOS. For 3D, it is not amazing. I am hooked up to a 640x480 monitor (27"), so I do not game on this PC in higher resolutions than that. Anything mode 13h runs fantastic. I can get BUILD Engine games to run quite well on this machine! Duke Nukem 3D runs at a constant high framerate at 640x480 with High detail and shadows enabled and the full screen. Great in DOS and Windows. Redneck Rampage is a bit more resource hungry, but it runs quite well on this PC. I wouldn't try to play Quake III! There's no way that this machine will handle that! And Capcom games sometimes boot to a black screen. Mega Man X3 works though. Jazz 1 and 2 run just fine. Alien Rampage works great. Commander Keen Episode 4 works great. DOS compatibility so far is fantastic. It has run every DOS game that I have thrown at it except for Battle Chess.
I do not have an ATI Rage II+, but if you check the compatibility list, that card clearly sucks for DOS. It just cannot play so many of the treasured staples. The SiS has very few problems. It performs great for anything up to and including BUILD Engine games. If you want to go newer than Quake 2, I would look to Geforce and Radeon.
The SiS is a good DOS card.
Glad you got a good one, the onboard implementations can be all over the place; Downclocked to 66Mhz with system shared memory, or howling along at 90 with fast dedicated SGRAM. Plus then there's the revision thing whether it's an early sucky one or a later tuned up version, and whether you're running the marginally faster "High Angle" driver or not.
They can be tweaked a little with powerstrip I think.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
I have no idea what the clock speed on my GPU is. I have the FSB running at 100MHz, which is faster than the 90 at which it was running when I received the system. That is the highest that the limited BIOS would allow me to set. The BIOS offers no real information, and CPU-Z just confirms the fact that a GPU is installed, but offers no information on it. The review of Vintage3D makes this GPU seem quite serviceable for a certain type of gaming build.
It probably runs at 66MHz (100MHz is the absolute maximum for this chip and the 3:2 ratio is common in AGP).
As stated in my first post here, revision matters a lot for both speed an compatibility. Decent chip revisions are post-C3.
