If I had to guess, I'd say that 3 of the 4 cards are PCI. Is that correct?

douglar wrote on 2024-05-22, 12:32:

If I had to guess, I'd say that 3 of the 4 cards are PCI. Is that correct?

All are PCI of course.

fsinan wrote on 2024-05-22, 12:53:

All are PCI of course.

You have a PCI version of a trident 8900? Fascinating. I thought the oldest trident on PCI was the 94xx series.

Can you share a picture?

fsinan wrote on 2024-05-22, 09:00:

System: Cyrix 5x86-100 LS-486E Sis Chipset 16MB EDO […]
Show full quote

System:
Cyrix 5x86-100
LS-486E Sis Chipset
16MB EDO

Cards:
S3VirgeDX-2MB
CL GD5540-1MB
Trident8900-1MB
S3Trio64V2-2MB

Quake Demo 640x480 Result:
S3 Virge/DX 11.5 fps
CL GD5540 11.1 fps
Trident 8900 11.2 fps
S3Trio64V2 12.5 fps

Thats all.

No PCI 8900 for sure

What test did you do? timedemo X? screen size, etc i dont remember now, but in my cx586 120 i get maybe 4-5fps in 640

10+ fps on 640x480 resolution? Yeah, seems a bit too unrealistic for such setup.

Looks like standard 320x200 Cyrix framerate https://thandor.net/object/170

douglar wrote on 2024-05-22, 20:28:

fsinan wrote on 2024-05-22, 12:53:

All are PCI of course.

You have a PCI version of a trident 8900? Fascinating. I thought the oldest trident on PCI was the 94xx series.

Can you share a picture?

Sorry my mind played a game to me it is 9680.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-05-23, 05:06:

10+ fps on 640x480 resolution? Yeah, seems a bit too unrealistic for such setup.

It is 320x240. Sorry, I was tired.

theelf wrote on 2024-05-22, 21:24:

fsinan wrote on 2024-05-22, 09:00:

System: Cyrix 5x86-100 LS-486E Sis Chipset 16MB EDO […]
Show full quote

System:
Cyrix 5x86-100
LS-486E Sis Chipset
16MB EDO

Cards:
S3VirgeDX-2MB
CL GD5540-1MB
Trident8900-1MB
S3Trio64V2-2MB

Quake Demo 640x480 Result:
S3 Virge/DX 11.5 fps
CL GD5540 11.1 fps
Trident 8900 11.2 fps
S3Trio64V2 12.5 fps

Thats all.

No PCI 8900 for sure

What test did you do? timedemo X? screen size, etc i dont remember now, but in my cx586 120 i get maybe 4-5fps in 640

320x240, timedemo. I made a mistake.

ISA trident would make no difference here, CPU is heavily bottlenecking.

fsinan wrote on 2024-05-23, 06:54:

theelf wrote on 2024-05-22, 21:24:

fsinan wrote on 2024-05-22, 09:00:

System: Cyrix 5x86-100 LS-486E Sis Chipset 16MB EDO […]
Show full quote

System:
Cyrix 5x86-100
LS-486E Sis Chipset
16MB EDO

Cards:
S3VirgeDX-2MB
CL GD5540-1MB
Trident8900-1MB
S3Trio64V2-2MB

Quake Demo 640x480 Result:
S3 Virge/DX 11.5 fps
CL GD5540 11.1 fps
Trident 8900 11.2 fps
S3Trio64V2 12.5 fps

Thats all.

No PCI 8900 for sure

What test did you do? timedemo X? screen size, etc i dont remember now, but in my cx586 120 i get maybe 4-5fps in 640

320x240, timedemo. I made a mistake.

Hi! i have a cx586 100mhz, overlclock to 120mhz, virge DX, and i get 14.6 at 320x240 timedemo, more or less same as you

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-05-23, 08:56:

ISA trident would make no difference here, CPU is heavily bottlenecking.

Oh yes, Quake benchmark with ISA card is like one digit frame in 5x86 even with ISA at 10+mhz, PCI/VLB make a BIG difference!

theelf wrote on 2024-05-23, 09:11:

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-05-23, 08:56:

ISA trident would make no difference here, CPU is heavily bottlenecking.

Oh yes, Quake benchmark with ISA card is like one digit frame in 5x86 even with ISA at 10+mhz, PCI/VLB make a BIG difference!

Probably because the CPU can’t do game math when it is pushing pixels, so a slow video card reduces available CPU time, making the CPU bottleneck worse.

10fps at 320x200 is only 640KB to be transferred every second

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-05-23, 10:31:

10fps at 320x200 is only 640KB to be transferred every second

OK, lets go with 640KB second, assuming no pixels get written more than once.

• An ISA Trident 8900C card will accept data at about 1.4MB/s, so pixel pushing is going to take up almost 45% of that second.
• The fastest ISA VGA cards of can received data at maybe 3MB/s, so pixel pushing is going to take a little more that 20% of that second.
• The average 33MHz PCI video card at the time could receive data > 10MB/s with efficient coding (not VESA BIOS calls) , so you are looking at ~5% of each second spent by the CPU moving data over the PCI bus.

So the simple calculation suggests that switching to the ISA bus from PCI bus is going to cause a 15% to 30% drop in available CPU cycles which would explain why those 11-14 FPS values for PCI video cards change into the single digit range with ISA cards. I'm doing my percentages wrong by a little bit, but you get the idea. If we were going for full accuracy, this is to be a differential equation, because as the frame rates fall, less data needs to get moved, but I'm not up for that this morning.

isnt 8900C the fast one? https://thandor.net/benchmark/33 hmm no, that would be 8900D. Still the difference to PCI is only ~30%

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-05-23, 14:45:

isnt 8900C the fast one? https://thandor.net/benchmark/33 hmm no, that would be 8900D. Still the difference to PCI is only ~30%

30% difference at 10FPS. It gets worse as the FPS increases.

On a slow ISA card, 100% of your CPU is consumed pushing pixels at about 25FPS.
On a fast ISA card, 100% of your CPU is consumed at about 45FPS, regardless of your CPU, if you are drawing a full screen.

Doom and Wolf3d do some tricks to not redraw unmoving borders, so the actual amount of data getting moved is a little lower, and it's why frame rates increase when the borders get wider.