VOGONS


First post, by fsmith2003

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Has anyone benchmarked these two cards on their machines? I want to put something in my 1993 era rig but do not have VLB slots. Just ISA or PCI. I would like to use something equivalent in performance to a Gd5428 which is from 1993. I have a Trio64 pci card and wonder if it would fit the bill?

Reply 1 of 11, by cyclone3d

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Not finding any specific benchmarks.. but from this page, it looks like the S3 Trio 64 should be faster.

See here:
Benchmarks for high-end VLB graphic cards - ET4000W32P/ARK1000VL/Trio64/S3 Vision968/Mach64

I've got a VLB GD5428 and a VLB Trio64v+ card so I could test those.

I don't have a PCI 486 board or else I could do a comparison with a Trio64V2 PCI card as well.

What CPU are you using?

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Reply 3 of 11, by The Serpent Rider

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Cirrus Logis is 32-bit card (memory bus) and more old chipset in general. S3 Trio64 will be much faster in high-res modes and probably even in 320x200.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 4 of 11, by fsmith2003

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The Serpent Rider wrote:

Cirrus Logis is 32-bit card (memory bus) and more old chipset in general. S3 Trio64 will be much faster in high-res modes and probably even in 320x200.

Got ya. SO I guess my goal is to find a "slower" pci card that would be equivalent to the GD5428 VLB. I want it to be as close to 1993 speeds and capability as possible. My current card I am using is the Weitek P9000 which kind of blows for dos games but it was the only 1993 era specific PCI card I could find. So just seeing what other PCI options, form 1994 possibly, that I can cheat with but receive the same performance as I would have in 1993?

Reply 6 of 11, by BeginnerGuy

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I'm guessing this is for pure dos, since you mention 1993. If benches are needed I have quite a few benchmarks on a VLB 5428 done between DX2-66 @ 33mhz bus up to DX4-120 @40mhz bus I can dig up tomorrow. If you compare that to the youtube video (mentioned below) you'll get some answers. I would use that trio card though.

Another user from Vogons (i think he is) put up a long video on youtube comparing the S3 Trio 64 VLB vs PCI and found the PCI version was a bit slower than VLB. I'll have to find that. Though different manufacturers may have used faster or slower memory.
update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSf2tetGek4 (if you have spare time)

Second, from what I understand, a Tseng ET4000 W32p will outperform the trio 64 VLB in DOS games, it's certainly not "too fast". Trio 64 will benefit in 2d acceleration (I BELIEVE - due to it being 64 bit) which will give it a nice edge in windows 3.x or win95 over a GD 5428 but you're not looking at much if any difference in DOS, and certainly not going to make any pronounced difference in DOS games. CL GD5432 are 64 bit as well, and only a little faster in DOS AFAIK.

Personal thoughts - Back in the DOS days, there was nothing really special about graphics cards, they were mostly just digital to analog converters with local memory and graphics were driven by the CPU. Your performance will be the CPU and the latency of the video memory basically. The only difference between the cards is how fast you could blast memory to it. MOST DOS games will only write 8 bits at a time, or 16 if the programmer used assembly or inline assembly. DOS4GW games like doom may be capable of more, I don't remember. I highly doubt any DOS games prior to 1993 were programmed to do quad WORD writes to the video memory (64 bits).

For good compatibility, most of us use S3 virge PCI cards in our PCI dos machines, which came after the trio64v+. Hence, I think the trio is just fine for what you're looking to do

If you really want an earlier card.. There are S3 Trio 32 PCI, ATi Mach 32 PCI, some Avance brand cards. Other than that, I don't often see other 1994 PCI cards. 1995 seems to be the big year for them.

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Reply 7 of 11, by The Serpent Rider

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and found the PCI version was a bit slower than VLB

Most likely UMC PCI-VLB limitation, not card limitation.

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Reply 8 of 11, by fsmith2003

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Thanks for all the info guys! I have ordered a S3 Trio32 and will do some testing with it. For those who have a GD5428 VLB let me know what results you get with the faster Doom speedtest. I get 3515 realtics with the Weitek P9000. With a S3 Trio64 I get 2539. Hoping to find a good middle ground for it to be top end 1993-ish speeds.

Reply 9 of 11, by vlask

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Done it with 486DX4 100, but with Virge instead of Trio....

http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/benchmarks/486-tests

Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info

Reply 10 of 11, by kixs

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Tested on Cyrix 5x86-100 VLB system.

S3 Trio32 VLB ... 1709 DOOM realtics
CL 5428 VLB ... 1853

In DOS S3 Trio64 PCI should be around the same speed as Trio32 (or any other better S3 card).

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 11 of 11, by Anonymous Coward

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The ET4000W32P was also another very early chipset for the PCI bus. You have to be careful with these cards though, because many of the early revisions had buggy interfaces. If I recall correctly, revision A and B was bad, but C and D were okay.

Trident 9440 was another early popular choice.

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