keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-03-31, 20:28:

Well, I'm talking "bottleneck" in terms of "upgrading won't gain you any performance", which is the effect of the advice people tend to give about 286 video cards - "don't bother with the fast ones, the 286 isn't worth it!" - but what I'm finding is you can gain significant performance benefits anyway, even though it's a 286.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-04-01, 21:44:

that you shouldn't knock putting a faster VGA card in your 286 just because "it's a 286, it's already pushing pixels as fast as it can" or something like that.

All I'm reading here is a clear case of regurgitating (and responding to) old biases towards 286s that people still believe is gospel for some reason.

My favourite one is that Windows is slow on a 286 - which is weird, because I find Windows 3.0a to be relatively fast and responsive on a Turbo XT.

My favourite one is that Windows is slow on a 286 - which is weird, because I find Windows 3.0a to be relatively fast and responsive on a Turbo XT.

It's just a theory, but I think it had to do with how existing PC/XTs had been upgraded.
The simplest/cheapest upgrade was a motherboard swap. IBM 5160 style motherboard out, new no-name 80286 board in.
That would also explain horrible performance reports of the time.
If 8-Bit cards were kept, if old MFM/RLL fixed-disk drives remained set at bad interleave factor..
Then the 286 was essentially being turned into an 8086/V30 machine.
The RAM was being stuck at 1MB at best, too, of course.

Edit: What also comes to mind: RAM speed, waistates and 8-Bit bus speed.
It could have been that Turbo XTs had fast RAM, zero waistates and a higher clocked bus speed - which affected ordinary 8-Bit cards.

On an AT motherboard, the situation might have been different.
System had used waitstates and 8-Bit slots locked at 4,77 MHz for compatibility reasons.
Thus, it was slower than a native 8-Bit platform, such as an Turbo XT at 8 or ~10 MHz.

Also, Turbo XT owners maybe had changed interleave factor of their HDD.
Especially if the system was freshly assembled or if no HDD was in the system before the upgrade.