I think unless you want the accelerated windows graphics, there is very little reason to need a better card to play games on a system with a 386 CPU and ISA bus. I've played just about every single game that will run on a 386, and I am hard pressed to think of any that could use more than basic 256kb VGA.

Hmmm it looks like a some people still don't know about mine site, i have to do more marketing 😉 Ok for speed i did some benchmarking at little faster cpu (XP2200+) 😁, but still limited by ISA bus, so check this.

Cant answer about compatibility, but for speed you'd rather choose some cirrus logic or acumos avga2 (thats same as cirrus 5402).

More benchmarking at
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php?option=co … id=55&Itemid=37

First of all respect for the work.

The CPU is probably fast enough that especially on the low end cards the score resembles the fill rate.
I wonder about the following: How was you card setup, did you use the S3 tools for the S3 cards f.e. or were the cards benched 'as is'? This might not resemble real world performance...
Maybe the clock rates of the S3 cards as additional information would be handy, because they were sold with different hardware setups (or maybe the ns of the chips of the cards at last).
There are alot of Trident card, I can't find a ET4000 anywhere?!?
Is there any 8 Bit VGA card?

Oh noooo.... 😳

Now I have to swap my V5 5500 for a Banshee. 😵

Benched without any tools, later i found this site, so i did some more benching at cards tested in last 6 months with fastvid utility - but it work only with pci/agp cards and seen results only at higher resolutions - 640x480...No effect at 320x240.

Some cards are with 8bit ISA, mostly those at the end of chart 😉 Ill try later add some mark into text to separate 8bit isa cards.

Tsengs aren't there cause its hard for me to get any of them in working state. Lastly i got ET4000W32P - which is PCI, but no picture. They're pretty rare compared to tridents/cirrus or WD.

I would certainly hope you make notes of which VGA cards are running in 8-bit mode, because it has a pretty significant impact on performance. Looking at your chart, I can pretty much guess which ones are 8-bit. A Trident 8900CL for example is twice as fast as a Trident 8900D. I would expect those to be about the same.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I would certainly hope you make notes of which VGA cards are running in 8-bit mode, because it has a pretty significant impact on performance. Looking at your chart, I can pretty much guess which ones are 8-bit. A Trident 8900CL for example is twice as fast as a Trident 8900D. I would expect those to be about the same.

Any SW way how to check 8-16bit mode? Cause jumpers arent properly marked usualy. Biggest difference between 8/16bit isa is at Diag benchmark. Limit for 16bit ISA is at 3,13MB/s. Think that limit of 8bit isa is at 1,13MB. Some cards have poor results because of memory size - if you look at Macronix MX86010FC - i have there cards with 256kb and 512kb and card with 512kb is almost twice fast - think its because lower memory bandwith, some cards needs certain number of memory chips to get full 16bit acces to memory. ofc they could be only wrong jumpered and using only 8bit isa, im usualy happy when card is working, and have no time for googling jumpers - googling only when card looks dead.

That trident 8900D is typical example - only 256kb in two memory modules. You can check photos of card and tell me if its jumpered to 16bit isa or 8bit. All tested cards are on mine site jumpered in same state as they were tested.
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php?option=co … ident&Itemid=27

These articles were my references back in the day for video cards for games. They cover 1994-1995 era ISA, VLB and PCI cards. (links from my mag post in sig)

I picked up a Speedstar Pro based off of the first article, to replace a Trident 8900C.

vlask wrote:

Any SW way how to check 8-16bit mode?

Well thats quite easy. If memory access of the graphics card is 8 bit only vidspeed will show same fillrate results for 8 bit and 16 bit access.

The length of the card could be a hint too...

ux-3 wrote:

The length of the card could be a hint too...

No it cant, believe me or not, i still can see diference between 8bit and 16bit isa card 😉
We are talking about 16bit isa cards, which some of them could have jumpers to set isa mode for 8bit, so you can use them in 8bit isa slots.

Here's another potential candidate:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Diamond-Stealth-24-16-Bit … d-/370387283932

Personally, I'd rather have the CL5434.

Who in his right mind would pay that much money?

You'd be really surprised.

I ended up going for a GD5422 card, an STB Evolution 1MB. Nothing fancy, but I think it should fit the purpose pretty well. It was $10 + shipping, and I was buying some other stuff from the guy anyway, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Oh, and I determined that I needed to replace the video card, regardless of performance, as both the Trident cards I have turned out to be half-dead, and my Paradise seems to be missing its memory. On a related note, any idea what sort of memory a "Paradise VGA 16 Professional" would take? I'm hoping 256k x 4 chips would work, as I have a bunch of those. It's a bit weird, though... it has eight 4164's soldered on it, I'm guessing perhaps dedicated for the old MDA/CGA/EGA modes, but it additionally has eight sockets for other memory chips, which were stolen somewhere along the lines.

Half dead = displaying black and white now and then? In that case your CPU is too fast for its video BIOS.

Do you have a photo of the card? 4164 chips sound odd for a VGA card unless of course there were at least 32 of them.

Half dead = displaying black and white now and then? In that case your CPU is too fast for its video BIOS.

No, half dead = distorted picture and interference on one of 'em (with some pretty obviously smoked components on the board, now that I look closer at it), and the other one is hard to describe... it's like... black and white for the most part, but with patches of shimmering color here and there. Besides, both cards were made well after the system itself, so I doubt the CPU is too fast for 'em.

As for the Paradise, actually... I took another look at it, with a magnifying glass this time, and they're 41464's not 4164's. That makes a little more sense... makes it a 256K card. So I think it's still missing chips, as the "Pro" model should've been a 512K card, but I guess it'll work without 'em.

Hmm...I think I have that same card.

edit: On second inspection, it's a Paradise VGA Plus 16. Seems pretty much the same though.

Ah, the Plus model on TH99 was a different layout, so I assumed it was a slightly different card. I think the Pluses came standard with 256K, so maybe mine's a Plus as well.

I noticed I might not've properly conveyed my thoughts above though... what I mean to say is that, the card still doesn't work, but I was thinking it was due to the missing memory chips. Apparently it's not quite so simple, as it should be ok without them.