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Trying to choose an ISA video card...

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Reply 60 of 90, by sliderider

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The best ISA video card was the ATi Mach64 with 4mb of memory. You'll be very lucky to find one as they were the last ISA video card and PCI was already out by the time they were released. Mach64 doesn't have 3d acceleration, so don't expect it to be a good gaming accelerator. Acceleration back then was limited to Windows functions. I managed to find a Mach64 ISA with 2mb memory several years ago that I could afford so I grabbed it almost as soon as it hit ebay. They usually don't last long when they appear so if you find one with a reasonable BIN price get it fast because there are people who specifically look for them.

Reply 61 of 90, by Anonymous Coward

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Here's a 2mb DRAM model:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Classic-ATI-Mach-64-ISA-V … =item5193aa1d83

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 62 of 90, by sliderider

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This is the first time I have seen one selling as a normal auction. When you see a Mach64 ISA card the BIN prices usually start in the $75 range and some sellers are even deluded into thinking they can get $200 or more for them. I suppose if you have some old ISA bus machine that you are stuck with for some reason, like it's part of a vital industrial process and there is no suitable modern replacement, then they pretty much got ya by the short and curlys, but if you're just looking for one to build a DOS box for personal use there's no excuse to pay that much for one. I only paid $20 plus $8 shipping for my 2mb Graphics Xpression and that was still sealed in the original box. I also know someone who bought a sealed in box 4mb Graphics Pro Turbo for only $35 plus $10 shipping.

Reply 63 of 90, by GL1zdA

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Is there anything else important for DOS games other than pure bus/memory speed? Are there games that support:
-proprietary INT 10h modes and do not support VBE modes?
-proprietary acceleration similar to the VBE/AF (are there SVGAs that disclosed such API?), but not through VBE?
If only speed is important, according to the tests in CGW posted by swaaye a Cirrus Logic card would be the best ISA solution, followed by S3 and Tseng.

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Reply 64 of 90, by Anonymous Coward

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I've seen the CGW article, but I think it's not a good comparison, as they mostly tested VLB cards with a few ISA models tossed in for good measure. The ISA version of Mach64 was not included in that test. I know that the Mach64 is one of the fastest cards for DOS, but as I have never seen a good ISA card roundup so I don't have much to compare with. Anyone know if a better comparison exists?

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 65 of 90, by swaaye

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What is the most you can expect from pathetic ISA? Apparently it only has a practical bandwidth of about 2 MB/s!

320x200: (64,000 px x 8-bit color)/(8 bits / byte) = 64,000 bytes / frame. @ 60 fps = 3.8 MB/s

512x384: (196,608 px x 8-bit color)/(8 bits / byte) = 196,608 bytes / frame. @ 60 fps = 11.5 MB/s

640x480: (307,200 px x 8-bit color)/(8 bits / byte) = 307,200 bytes / frame. @ 60fps = 18.0 MB/s

I hope I'm somewhat on track. 😀

Reply 66 of 90, by h-a-l-9000

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According to http://www.ee.nmt.edu/~rison/ee352_fall06/PC104timing.pdf a 16-bit memory access takes 4 clock cycles and thus you can get 4MB/sec at 8 MHz if it was possible to continuously transfer data. The CPU needs to get its instructions and data too, thus you end up with lower values.

1+1=10

Reply 67 of 90, by Tetrium

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swaaye wrote:
What is the most you can expect from pathetic ISA? Apparently it only has a practical bandwidth of about 2 MB/s! […]
Show full quote

What is the most you can expect from pathetic ISA? Apparently it only has a practical bandwidth of about 2 MB/s!

320x200: (64,000 px x 8-bit color)/(8 bits / byte) = 64,000 bytes / frame. @ 60 fps = 3.8 MB/s

512x384: (196,608 px x 8-bit color)/(8 bits / byte) = 196,608 bytes / frame. @ 60 fps = 11.5 MB/s

640x480: (307,200 px x 8-bit color)/(8 bits / byte) = 307,200 bytes / frame. @ 60fps = 18.0 MB/s

I hope I'm somewhat on track. 😀

People just want the fastest xxx that can support yyy, like the fastest computer that will work with Windows 98SE, etc etc etc.

Reply 69 of 90, by sliderider

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swaaye wrote:

More ISA video card results. (I can't remember who posted this)
http://82.114.193.227/vga/view.php?cisloclanku=2007030003

The thing is, in most comparisons you see from that time period they always show the Mach64 PCI results if Mach64 is included at all. Trying to extrapolate Mach64 results from the Mach32 results doesn't work especially when you consider most Mach64 cards had more memory to work with than the Mach32 cards.

Reply 70 of 90, by swaaye

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What do you think the chances are that Mach64 ISA is going to pull a solo performance above its peers? 😉 Memory size probably doesn't matter. VGA resolutions use very little RAM. Memory speed may not matter either considering the ISA bus which the card communicates through can only manage ~2 MB/s.

It's funny how some of the fastest DOS cards are the super cheap Cirrus Logic, Trident and WD chips. That's because it doesn't take fancy hardware to work as a snappy dumb framebuffer.

See that huge jump that the first PCI card shows? (I'm ignoring the strange AGP outliers at the bottom) It's something like 85% faster than the fastest ISA card, and this PCI card is just a ultra cheapo Trident 9680. I'm sure you're seeing bus limitations vanish.

Reply 71 of 90, by Tetrium

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Does having 2mb or 4mb on an ISA card help in general windows speed like dragging windows etc?
btw, the fastest ISA card I have happens to be a cirrus logic 2mb 5334 card (something like that), it's a speedstar something. My memory is lacking atm, sorry about that 😜

Edit: It's exactly this one! Diamond Speedstar 64, CL5434 2MB

Reply 72 of 90, by sliderider

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swaaye wrote:

What do you think the chances are that Mach64 ISA is going to pull a solo performance above its peers? 😉 Memory size probably doesn't matter. VGA resolutions use very little RAM. Memory speed may not matter either considering the ISA bus which the card communicates through can only manage ~2 MB/s.

It's funny how some of the fastest DOS cards are the super cheap Cirrus Logic, Trident and WD chips. That's because it doesn't take fancy hardware to work as a snappy dumb framebuffer.

See that huge jump that the first PCI card shows? (I'm ignoring the strange AGP outliers at the bottom) It's something like 85% faster than the fastest ISA card, and this PCI card is just a ultra cheapo Trident 9680. I'm sure you're seeing bus limitations vanish.

The memory bandwith with Mach64 is 64 bits compared to 32 bits for Mach32 and some Mach64 cards used VRAM instead of DRAM which is faster at higher resolutions. The extra memory also enables those higher resolutions and greater color depths. My Graphics Xpression with 2 megs DRAM can't hold a candle to my friends Graphics Pro Turbo with 4 megs VRAM in either maximum resolution or maximum color depth across most resolutions.

Reply 73 of 90, by swaaye

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We're talking DOS here. 320x200 to 640x480 at 4-8 bits per pixel almost without exclusion. 640x480x8 takes ~300KB of RAM.

And as I've said a few times now we're talking about a bus with ~2MB/s bandwidth. Shared bandwidth. What does the video card's memory performance matter? Almost any memory setup will be faster than 16-bit 8 MHz ISA.

More memory allows higher resolutions and color depths and this is mainly useful in GUIs. Memory performance can make GUI operations faster simply because it can move data around quicker and you need that more and more as the resolution and color depth increases. The GUI hardware makes a difference too of course. ISA is not what you want to be on.

Reply 74 of 90, by Anonymous Coward

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As far as I know Mach32 has 64-bit path to memory, not 32-bit as the name might imply.

I don't know that this benchmark of ISA cards is very useful either, as it appears many of the cards on the list must be running in 8-bit mode. In any case, I own pretty much every card ATI made for ISA bus. As many people (and myself) have already stated, in DOS there is going to be very little difference between ISA cards, unless you have something shitty like a Trident (which is infamous for being slower than standard VGA), or maybe an early VRAM design. Mach64 is a lot faster than a Mach8 in Windows. Most VGA gamers don't care about Win 3.11 apps, but I personally like the 3.11 crap.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 75 of 90, by sliderider

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

As far as I know Mach32 has 64-bit path to memory, not 32-bit as the name might imply.

I don't know that this benchmark of ISA cards is very useful either, as it appears many of the cards on the list must be running in 8-bit mode. In any case, I own pretty much every card ATI made for ISA bus. As many people (and myself) have already stated, in DOS there is going to be very little difference between ISA cards, unless you have something shitty like a Trident (which is infamous for being slower than standard VGA), or maybe an early VRAM design. Mach64 is a lot faster than a Mach8 in Windows. Most VGA gamers don't care about Win 3.11 apps, but I personally like the 3.11 crap.

It's still nice though to have a good Windows accelerator for those times when you aren't just playing games and since ISA cards are so cheap why not get one that does both games and windows apps well? If you're using a 486 or Pentium motherboard with PCI slots, then by all means you should get a PCI video card but if all you have is ISA slots you should get the best you can find and the last time I checked the Mach64 was at or near the top of all ISA cards. Some cards may be a little faster in certain areas but for general use that includes Windows apps Mach64 is a tough competitor.

And some systems with only ISA slots can still run Win95 and those apps are a lot better than 3.1 apps.

Reply 77 of 90, by sliderider

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swaaye wrote:

Are you trying to use your ISA 486 as your main PC? 😳 😁

No, it's sometimes just useful to be able to do something else while the game machine is fired up instead of switching to a different machine. You can still get online and check email with DOS, 3.1 or 9x you know and the old versions of Office still work the same as they always did. A DOS or early Windows box isn't just for games.

And my machine is actually a 386 with a hybrid 486 chip. 😁

Reply 78 of 90, by swaaye

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Yeah I have never really seen the point to "upgrading" word processors, for example. You can still type a big doc on Word 97 just fine. 😀 But you know how the world goes and how they bring in new features that aren't compatible with the older software. And then there are those who are genuinely excited over new office software and can't wait to buy it.....

I use Open Office these days if I need to type a doc or put together a spreadsheet. Wordpad is usually good enough for me actually.

Trying to be productive on 20 year old hardware isn't what I want to be doing at this point though. I also don't want to ever rely on Windows 3.x or 9x ever again. They are garbage.

Reply 79 of 90, by vlask

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swaaye wrote:

More ISA video card results. (I can't remember who posted this)
http://82.114.193.227/vga/view.php?cisloclanku=2007030003

I posted that, btw theres never version on new site, this one isn't actualised anymore... I'm still adding more cards here..

http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php?option=co … marks&Itemid=37

Last edited by vlask on 2011-12-31, 00:33. Edited 1 time in total.

Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info