VOGONS


First post, by noshutdown

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well we know that et4000 was known for superb performance in dos(without 2d acceleration), but who is the isa speed king in windows with 2d acceleration?
ati mach64 was known for its large 4mb vram and high resolution support for an isa card, but its probably not the fastest. i remember cirrus and s3 cards being pretty fast also, and do they have any isa cards with at least 2mb of ram?

Reply 2 of 47, by elianda

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I use a TIGA card which is pretty fast as it uses a dedicated DSP to emulate the WinGDI acceleration:
http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/pics/n9_gxitc_front.jpg

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Reply 3 of 47, by noshutdown

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elianda wrote:

I use a TIGA card which is pretty fast as it uses a dedicated DSP to emulate the WinGDI acceleration:
http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/pics/n9_gxitc_front.jpg

oh man, obvious that card has too many chips, and we are talking about the usual single core solutions. 🤣

Reply 4 of 47, by Mau1wurf1977

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From Wikipedia:

In the early 1990s, Cirrus Logic was a supplier of low-cost PC graphics chips. Cirrus's Microsoft Windows 2D GUI accelerators (GDI) were among the fastest in the low-end market-segment, outperforming competing VGA-chips from Oak Technologies, Trident Microsystems, and Paradise (Western Digital). For example, the Cirrus GD5422 (1992) supported hardware acceleration for both 8-bit color and 16-bit color. It was one of the lowest-priced SVGA controllers to support both.

By the mid-1990s, when PC's had migrated to the PCI bus, Cirrus had fallen behind S3 and Trident Microsystems. When the announced release date of the GD5470 "Mondello" came and went, Cirrus's reputation in desktop PC-graphics suffered. (Mondello would have been the company's first 3D-accelerator, but instead became vaporware.)

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Reply 5 of 47, by sliderider

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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

From Wikipedia:

In the early 1990s, Cirrus Logic was a supplier of low-cost PC graphics chips. Cirrus's Microsoft Windows 2D GUI accelerators (GDI) were among the fastest in the low-end market-segment, outperforming competing VGA-chips from Oak Technologies, Trident Microsystems, and Paradise (Western Digital). For example, the Cirrus GD5422 (1992) supported hardware acceleration for both 8-bit color and 16-bit color. It was one of the lowest-priced SVGA controllers to support both.

By the mid-1990s, when PC's had migrated to the PCI bus, Cirrus had fallen behind S3 and Trident Microsystems. When the announced release date of the GD5470 "Mondello" came and went, Cirrus's reputation in desktop PC-graphics suffered. (Mondello would have been the company's first 3D-accelerator, but instead became vaporware.)

Yeah, but the fastest of the slowest is still slow. For what you pay for VL and ISA video cards today, Cirrus isn't a good value at all. Faster cards can be had for the same price if you look for deals.

Reply 6 of 47, by misterjones

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Maybe the Matrox Impression Plus? It even had some 3D features.

Reply 7 of 47, by kixs

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I have a Cirrus Logic 5429 2MB on ISA and it performs quite good in W31/W95. Speed also depends on the CPU used. I've done some benchmarks awhile ago with Winbench 3.11. Tseng Labs ET4000/w32 also had Win GUI accelerator, but I only have an VLB board so I can't do a direct comparison. I also have a CL 5422 1MB but haven't benchmarked it yet.

386DX-40, CL5429 2MB ISA, Win 3.11:
VGA driver: 3.833.328
640x480/8bit: 10.663.156
640x480/16bit: 8.010.081

486DX2-66, CL5429 2MB ISA, Win 3.11
:
VGA driver: 3.847.625
640x480/8bit: 24.619.976
640x480/16bit: 20.666.488
800x600/8bit: 21.861.948
800x600/16bit: 8.060.700

486DLC-40, ET4000/w32i 1MB VLB, Win 3.11
:
VGA driver: 6.001.725
640x480/8bit: 16.794.357
640x480/16bit: 10.676.952

486DLC-40, CL5429 2MB ISA, Win 3.11:
VGA driver: 5.078.321
Missing 8 and 16-bit color mode because of the wrong drivers at the time. Didn't come around to do it again.

Edit:
Changed the Winbench 3.11 mirror to an anonymous FTP.

Last edited by kixs on 2014-01-17, 20:18. Edited 1 time in total.

Requests here!

Reply 9 of 47, by kixs

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Googled it high and low... and finally found it here

Usually I also use the WinTach 1.0.

Requests here!

Reply 10 of 47, by elianda

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Ti486DLC-40, TigaTC driver Truecolor 2.01, 4+1 MB ISA, WfW 3.11
1280x1024/16Bit
Winbench: 1.379.809 pixels/sec
Wintach: RPM Overall 49.49 / D16
51.33 on a second run

Lowres 800x600/16bit for comparison
Winbench:
winbench99_800x600x16.png

Wintach:
wintach_800x600x16.png
This score seems to be much lower compared to the higher resolution, which is a bit odd.

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Reply 14 of 47, by elianda

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You should better ask, what about Win NT or NT4, since 2D is implemented there much faster than in Win9x. Typically a factor of 5 to 10.

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Reply 16 of 47, by Mau1wurf1977

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vetz wrote:
Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Could you guys upload any W3.1 benchmarks you find?

I've added some more to my posts in your benchmark thread (more WinBench versions), also versions of WinTune for 3.x and NT.

Cool!

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Reply 17 of 47, by swaaye

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elianda wrote:

You should better ask, what about Win NT or NT4, since 2D is implemented there much faster than in Win9x. Typically a factor of 5 to 10.

This is an important point. Win 9x relies on the CPU more for rendering the UI. Thus, CPU performance is very influential over UI performance, meaning a 486 platform is a significant bottleneck and the graphics card acceleration can only help so much. You can see this even with fast processors like a K6-3 compared to a faster Pentium 3 or Athlon with the same video card.

Of course ISA is a performance problem as well.

Reply 18 of 47, by kixs

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I have installed Win95 OSR2.1 on 386DX-40, 32MB ram, 1GB CF and CL-5429 ISA. It actually runs quite smoothly - it loads quite fast and there is no slow window drawing. But this is kinda expected (CF card, 32MB ram and GUI accelerator helps a lot). I was thinking of making a video... but I don't have a dedicated video capture card, would have to use some camera.

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Reply 19 of 47, by Marco

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elianda wrote on 2014-01-18, 12:15:

You should better ask, what about Win NT or NT4, since 2D is implemented there much faster than in Win9x. Typically a factor of 5 to 10.

Hi,
could someone provide a proof or at least a hint of this thesis ?

I’m really interested.
Thanks

1) VLSI SCAMP 311 | 386SX25@30 | 16MB | CL-GD5428 | CT2830| SCC-1 | MT32 | Fast-SCSI AHA 1542CF + BlueSCSI v2/15k U320
2) SIS486 | 486DX/2 66(@80) | 32MB | TGUI9440 | LAPC-I