Here is another report on a VESA compliant video adapter which functions the same under DOS **and** WinXP for all the VESA mode applications that the VBE 3.0 compliant video supports. It is the on-board VGA/Graphics accelerator included on some models of the new Intel 82915G/GV/910 GL Express Chipset, also know as the Intel 900 Graphic Media Accelerator. The particular motherboard in question is the AOpen i915Gm-I populated with 512mb of PC3200 DDR RAM and an Intel 2.8gHz LGA 775 Pentium IV processor. It also had built-in Intel 10/100 Ethernet and built-in RealTek 7.1 HD sound. It is a microATX board with only four slots, two "legacy" 32-bit PCI slots, one PCI-e 1x slot, one PCI-e 16x (for video upgrades) slot. The on-board video used 8mb of the main system RAM for starters and up to 128mb of system RAM for 3D games if required. Not bad for $100 motherboard as an upgrade for a relatives PC...

The video quality in DOS/VESA fullscreen graphics mode is great, however with Windows text applications such as Web browsers the text on the analog VGA output is not as visibly sharp as Matrox video adapters. If the Matrox G450/550s are a "10" for Windows text readibility, then the Intel 900 Windows text readibility is around an "8.8" in my opinion. Very good, just not quick as defined and sharp as Matrox video adapters.

The Intel driver developers wrote the video driver properly, combined with the latest Intel video driver version release 6.14.10.3943 which includes the Video BIOS version 3329. They allowed the Intel VGA BIOS to 'touch' the proprietary SVGA extention registers to enable VESA support in the WinXP DOS emulation fullsceen mode, which many other video card companies neglect to do, leading to those video adapters not functioning in VESA modes under WinXP.

Here are the results from the VGATEST.EXE program which show that the Intel graphics driver developers allowed the Intel 900 proprietary SVGA registers to be modified under WinXP, because the BIOS supported VESA modes work. Would make an ideal DOS gaming platform under the WinXP DOS emulation, very good with VESA compliant DOS games. For Windows XP use, does excellent work with DVD viewing with its video acceleration (DVD viewing requires only 3-5% CPU resources), probably just fair (comparable to GeForce 4 MX440) for modern 3D Windows games, very good color correction (RGB gamma, brightness, contrast) for the Desktop and seperate color correction for the video overlay.

Results of VGATEST.EXE:

1Intel 900 
2Graphic Media Accelerator    DOS           WinXP (SP2)
3------------------------------------------------------ 
4mode 0                    OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
5mode 1                    OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
6mode 2                    OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
7mode 2 scroll             OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
8mode 3                    OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
9mode 3 scroll             OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
10mode 3 extend             OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
11mode 7                    OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
12mode 7 scroll             OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
13320x200/4c (mode4)        OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
14320x200/4c (mode5)        OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
15640x200 B/W (mode6)       OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
16320x200 16c (mode D)      OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
17640x200/16c (mode E)      OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
18640x350 (mode F)          OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
19640x350/16c (mode 10)     OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
20640x200/2c (mode 11)      OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
21640x480/16c (mode12)      OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
22320x200/256c (mode 13)    OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
23VESA 100 640x400/256c     OK 70Hz          OK 70Hz 
24VESA 101 640x480/256c     OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
25VESA 103 800x600/256c     OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
26VESA 105 1024x768/256c    OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
27VESA 107 1280x1024/256c   OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
28VESA 111 640x480/64kc     OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
29VESA 114 800x600/64kc     OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
30VESA 117 1024x768/64kc    OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
31VESA 11A 1280x1024/64kc   OK 60Hz          OK 60Hz 
32VESA 112 640x480/16.8mc   OK 60Hz *        OK 60Hz *
33VESA 115 800x600/16.8mc   OK 60Hz *        OK 60Hz *
34VESA 118 1024x768/16.8mc  OK 60Hz *        OK 60Hz *
35VESA 11B 1280x1024/16.8mc OK 60Hz *        OK 60Hz *
36(next modes failed) 

* test picture was only in the left part of the screen
- refresh rates changes are possible in VESA mode under
WinXP with VBEhz.

dvwjr

edit: updated with SVGATEST.EXE

Thanks for posting!

Reminded me that I really need to go through the forum, gather all this info together, and do a writeup.

Didn't I say the same thing in the EMS thread like 2 years ago but never did?

*sigh*

Now that someone has resurrected this interesting thread, I will do some testing later (when I arrive home), now that I have ditched my 64MB GeForce4 Ti4200 (LOTS of VESA problems) for a 256MB ATi Radeon 9600.

😎

Above information has been copied and is currently being implemented into a guide. Anyone can post if they want. Just posting this here so I know I don't miss any info.

All tests completed succesfully for my ATi Radeon 9600 AGP (256MB) under Windows XP SP2 😎

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

I have ditched my 64MB GeForce4 Ti4200 (LOTS of VESA problems) for a 256MB ATi Radeon 9600.... All tests completed succesfully for my ATi Radeon 9600 AGP (256MB) under Windows XP SP2.

Thanks for testing. I think that ATI cards are better choice for VESA compatibility (they have more working VESA modes, at least ATI9200/9600 in comparison with GeForce2MX/Ti4200/FX5200), but many of them still seem to have only VBE 2.0. I would like to know if there are some ATI cards on the market with VBE 3.0 and work with UniRefresh or VBEHz. It would be nice to have more tests here, especially with the newest ATI and NVIDIA cards. BTW, some interesting info regarding VESA is also here.
UniRefresh no longer works on nVidia's latest

Bleh. BLEH. I will NEVER buy an ATi card, purely on the basis of their crappy drivers. I've seen the horrors firsthand. I'll keep my nVidia cards, which have given me exactly 1 bluescreen my entire life (that happened to be a beta driver, though none of their other beta drivers (including the ones my entire system is running on right now) have caused me any problems before), thanks.

Snover wrote:

Bleh. BLEH. I will NEVER buy an ATi card, purely on the basis of their crappy drivers.

Latest Catalyst drivers are quite good in my humble opinion. I've had not a single problem since I purchased my Radeon 9600.
anyway, I agree with you that older drivers just sucked. I still remember when I had OS/2 installed and had a crappy ATi Rage card. Ah, what a crappy "ATi Ring0 OS/2 driver". 😁