how about an orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Plus
Number Nine GXE 2MB

The Orchid seems like it would be about ideal, if I can manage to find one, but the ISA version is not nearly as easy to come by as the VLB one. I dunno about that Number Nine card... that one appears to be a VRAM board, which I understand to be quite lacking for DOS use.

I use a Diamond Speedstar Pro (1MB, CL GD5426 Chipset):

http://www.imagebam.com/image/cb235215843244

So far it has the best image quality (with my 20" TFT) of all my ISA VGA cards. Its faster than a Tseng ET4000AX.

I had a Diamond Speedstar Pro back in the day. The Cirrus Logic chips were very popular back then and they are about as fast as ISA can go.

So I guess my initial thoughts of the Cirrus and S3 chips were right on point. Good to know, now it's just a matter of finding one.

So how about my other question, where does my Paradise card fit in the food chain? I can find any meaningful benchmark information on it, only some comparisons to other chipsets I'm equally unfamiliar with.

My favourite ISA VGA card to date is the ATi Mach64. I have the 4mb VRAM model. Despite being a VRAM card it seems no slower than DRAM based cards in DOS. ISA was such a huge bottleneck for graphics cards anyway that they're all pretty much slow.

I actually got myself a nice 2mb Tseng ET4000W32i ISA card a few months back thinking it would be faster than the Mach64 in DOS, but they seem to be equally slow.

Some ISA cards actually have both VRAM and DRAM. The ATi Ultra for example has 1mb VRAM for use in Windows, and 512kb DRAM when in DOS. I recently sold an S3 928 Number Nine card that had 2mb VRAM and 1mb DRAM.

The late model Cirrus Logic CL5434 cards look pretty interesting too, but I've never actually tried one. They usually sell pretty cheaply on ebay.

Would you consider the ATI Ultra to be a good card, overall? Because it sounds interesting, and I did see one available on eBay... not quite as cheap as I'd like, but still within the range that I'd be willing to spring for it, if its worthwhile...

for best compatibility get a Cirus Logic or S3 card.
Ati/Tseng can have probs in some games... 🙁

Wait... I know the ET6000 has some issues on that front, but I thought the ET4000 was one of the top cards to have for compatibility?

The ATi Ultra was my first VGA card, and I used it for quite a few years. I think for the time (1992) it was really not bad of a card. The only thing it was missing that I really wanted was support for high and true colour modes. It's only really an issue in Windows, where the 256 colour modes leave a lot to be desired. As far as DOS goes it's identical to a 512kb VGA Wonder. I ran pretty much every game under the sun at the time, and I didn't really start having issues until around 1995 or so when games started requiring VESA support. That required I load a TSR, but by that time my system was so slow it didn't really matter.

et4000 also has probs with scrolling. Especially in older games, like Apogee's titles that are ultra-fine for a 386 machine. IMHO you need a 1MB cirus or S3 card, compatibility is more important than some more frames in an ancient benchmark... after all you have a 386, hardly a speed killer 😁

http://kishy.comuf.com/forsale.htm

See if you can still buy this card: (Diamond Speedstar 64, CL5434 2MB)

Looks like a nice card, but shipping prices from Canada are usually pretty ridiculous. I might contact him anyway, just to see, but I don't hold great expectations.

What about Cirrus 5422 cards? Those seem to be quite plentiful... I know they lack some of the acceleration capabilities of the later cards, but again, I just want something that'll provide decent performance with 386-era software... I'm not really looking for the absolute fastest card I can get.

keropi wrote:

et4000 also has probs with scrolling. Especially in older games, like Apogee's titles that are ultra-fine for a 386 machine. IMHO you need a 1MB cirus or S3 card, compatibility is more important than some more frames in an ancient benchmark... after all you have a 386, hardly a speed killer 😁

Could you give some titles for testing? I use a ET4000AX myself in my 386 system and didn't noticed scrolling problems yet.

easy, try Commander Keen 4 , jazz jackrabbit and the likes... jazz can be a complete mess and keen can be very jerky... install another vga and see the difference 😀

I know of these problems and I have done testing with a lot of graphics cards already. For the TSeng cards the ET6000 showed flaws, but never the ET4000 yet. I could not reproduce bugs in Keen and Jazz.
Are you sure you have seen this kind of problems with an ET4000 ?

In my opinion your Trident already represents what the typical 386-era user had installed in their systems. Most VGA cards from the late 80s and early 90s were crap, really just clones of the original IBM VGA card. Trident was very popular, as was Paradise VGA, ATi VGAWonder, ET4000 based cards and Cirrus logic. Most commonly they had 256kb DRAM, sometimes upgradable to 512kb. I don't think S3 was really relevant in the 386 era, because I believe their first DRAM offering was the 801, which I think came out in 1992 (386 was pretty much out of the picture by this time).

Yup I remember the WD/Paradise and Trident cards primarily. Just slow DOS VGA hardware with essentially nothing for GUI functions.

I was actually on a 286 until 1992. 😁

OK, I should probably specify... my machine is a 386DX-40, made in mid '93. It's not really from what's normally thought of as the '386 era'.

The Trident is going out, no question about it. While it may have been the 'typical' card of the time, that doesn't make it suck any less. It's the same way with Intel IGPs now... they work, and a lot of people use 'em, but they don't really belong in a gaming machine.