VOGONS


First post, by Señor Ventura

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Hello.

I have an integrated graphic system in the motherboard of an ibm aptiva 2144, with no dedicated ram, so it takes from the system ram.
There is no problem cause it seems to have compability with VESA 2.0, but possibly it would be too slow, and may be is better to improve that.

I interested in:
-Avoid stuttering with the scrolling of the bitplanes in games like "Day of the tentacle" (i'm sure all we know what i mean).
-2MB of dedicated RAM for 800x600 or 1024x768.
-At least VESA 2.0
-Do ISA cards are better than PCI for compatibility with MS DOS?

P.D: I've read that the TSENG LAB 4000 and 6000 are not the best option for compatibility.

Thank you.

Reply 4 of 14, by Señor Ventura

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Apparently one of the best choices could be the s3 trio64v+, but it is VESA 1.2

And then, there is the s3 trio64v2, that is VESA 2.0

I'm reading about the s3 trio64v+ like the best S3 option for ms-dos, but, Why not the s3 trio64v2 if it is VESA 2.0 and you don't need to load extra drivers?, Do it has less compatibility?.

thank you.

P.D: I'm starting to see that a pci 2D card could be better for a voodoo 1 than a ISA card.

Reply 5 of 14, by leileilol

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For many S3 cards like the Trio64V+, you can load S3VBE20 to get those 2.0 modes. Vesa 2.0's not that big of a deal though, there's only a handful of games that really demand it (i.e. Quake, Stargunner, Duke3D and friends). The only big major problem with S3 is the brightness gain being very obvious on LCD screens and that's only been just recently figured out.

ISA video cards don't necessarily mean more compatibility (unless it's Tseng) and performance. It's not like the matter with PCI vs ISA sound cards, and if it's hi-res you want, you'll NOT want ISA performance. Also ISA cards are old and likely won't satisfy your VESA 2.0 needs.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 6 of 14, by dionb

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90% of the problem here is the shared memory architecture of the SiS5511+6205 chipsets. That loses you half of its already not stellar memory bandwidth, dropping you down to performance levels of 32b memory controllers (i.e. total crap). Even a PCI 6205 with 1 or 2MB of its own RAM would almost double performance on graphics-intensive tasks (i.e. games / benchmarks).

The 6205 itself is also crap, but the difference between a PCI 6205 and say an ET6000 or Trio64/Virge is smaller than than the difference between UMA and discrete, regardless of VGA core.

Reply 7 of 14, by jaZz_KCS

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Also when it comes to compatibility, the slightly older Trio64V+ is better out of the box compared to the Trio64V2/DX for example.

Games like GTA1 come with a version of UniVBE/Scitech that will successfully detect and work with a Trio64V+, but NOT with a Virge DX or Trio64V2/DX for example (you will have a black screen after menu, in-game.)

For these cards you need to substitute the UVconfig.exe for a newer version that successfully detects these cards, as even manually changing the options did not work for me.

The Trio64V+ is the most compatible, and exactly as fast as the Trio64V2/DX and Virge (even a few FPS faster than the later ones in pure 2D)

Reply 9 of 14, by jaZz_KCS

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lvader wrote:

Most S3’s seem to have the wrong black level set so look bad, but it can be fixed with either a bios update or utility.

This is only true for a minority of cards, and not every model. That being said it can easily be fixed by either loading a newer BIOS into shadow memory or by loading up the s3vbe fix utility.

I actually have the problem of one of my S3 Trio64V+ being too dark.

Reply 11 of 14, by jaZz_KCS

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The "86c765" refers to the Trio64V+ chipset. These have been used on all Trio64V+ cards, not only on the Diamond Stealth series
The Diamond Stealth 64V+ is as good as all the other variants. There are miniscule differences due to memory timings and type, but overall they all perform the same.

Reply 12 of 14, by Señor Ventura

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jaZz_KCS wrote:

The "86c765" refers to the Trio64V+ chipset. These have been used on all Trio64V+ cards, not only on the Diamond Stealth series
The Diamond Stealth 64V+ is as good as all the other variants. There are miniscule differences due to memory timings and type, but overall they all perform the same.

Ok... and better a pci card for a voodoo 1, right?.

And with a bios update i could convert it to an vesa 2.0 card permanently, if i didn't read bad.
The 11th hour asks for a vesa 2.0 i think, and i don't want to depend of shareware univbe drivers.

Thank you 😀

Reply 13 of 14, by jaZz_KCS

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You can use the official s3vbe318 and s3spd311 tools to get the card up to VESA 2.0 and speeden up (add them to the launch scripts of the machine for example), if they do not have 2.0 VBE out of the box, which some very late cards do have. But it's only really necessary for some games as you mentioned. The Trion64V(+) cards are very good Voodoo companions, yes.

Reply 14 of 14, by Jasin Natael

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dionb wrote:

90% of the problem here is the shared memory architecture of the SiS5511+6205 chipsets. That loses you half of its already not stellar memory bandwidth, dropping you down to performance levels of 32b memory controllers (i.e. total crap). Even a PCI 6205 with 1 or 2MB of its own RAM would almost double performance on graphics-intensive tasks (i.e. games / benchmarks).

The 6205 itself is also crap, but the difference between a PCI 6205 and say an ET6000 or Trio64/Virge is smaller than than the difference between UMA and discrete, regardless of VGA core.

This is correct.

My original K6-2 system with a PC Chips m598LMR had the integrated SiS530 (6326) AGP video,

I actually in my teenage ignorance, purchased a "upgrade" PCI video card.

It was a Jaton 6236 8MB, but being discreet with it's own RAM it was still a decent upgrade....