Well, that's not ISA, it's VESA... What motherboard do you have?

This is a VLB card, if you have only ISA slots, invest in something else.

From my personal experience, Video card is seldom bottlenecking a 486 so you may not get very noticeable gains by upgrading it, unless yours is currently a very crappy one.
Im far from Video card expert though, if you tell us what card you currently have in what system, im sure other members will be able to counsel you much more specifically.

Ah sorry yes I have VESA I just assumed it was a variation of ISA. The motherboard I had is a very unusual one its the same as this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonnett/455596555/

And a thread that featured about this mobo I noticed here: 486 PC prices...

I'l see and pull the cards out tomorrow and let you know what it is but I can tell you it is a VERY simple one and it is un-expanded in terms of memory with all it's DIP RAM slots empty. Il also try and get some pictures up.

ATi Mach (something) or Tseng Labs ET4000 are the way to go IMO.

Personally, I would go for a Mach32 or Mach64 with 2mb or 4mb of memory, but you usually can't find them cheap and when you do you have to jump on them right away before someone else does.

sliderider wrote:

Personally, I would go for a Mach32 or Mach64 with 2mb or 4mb of memory, but you usually can't find them cheap and when you do you have to jump on them right away before someone else does.

That is why I am stuck with a crappy Trident card 😢

nforce4max wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Personally, I would go for a Mach32 or Mach64 with 2mb or 4mb of memory, but you usually can't find them cheap and when you do you have to jump on them right away before someone else does.

That is why I am stuck with a crappy Trident card 😢

Well there are some alright Trident cards and best of all they are proably the most compatible since it was very mainstream. 😀

I did find this though: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-10232010401-MAC … =item4d06ecc1cf

4Mb would be really cool but does anyone know if this is 16 or 32 bit? Is it worth the cost? 😒

I would go for it, 2mb would allow you to run 1024x768 in 16 bit colour, extra memory does'nt give you better performance only more resolution and bit depth.

Its reasonably priced (IMO)

Looks ok to me, the cirrus logic chipset isn't the fastest but is very compatible and looks pretty good in my experience.

tokyoracer wrote:

Well there are some alright Trident cards and best of all they are proably the most compatible since it was very mainstream. :) […]
Show full quote

nforce4max wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Personally, I would go for a Mach32 or Mach64 with 2mb or 4mb of memory, but you usually can't find them cheap and when you do you have to jump on them right away before someone else does.

That is why I am stuck with a crappy Trident card 😢

Well there are some alright Trident cards and best of all they are proably the most compatible since it was very mainstream. 😀

I did find this though: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATI-10232010401-MAC … =item4d06ecc1cf

4Mb would be really cool but does anyone know if this is 16 or 32 bit? Is it worth the cost? 😒

That looks like a good price for that card but unfortunately the seller is not shipping outside the UK. Even if you did manage to convince them to ship it the price would likely rise dramatically.

Thanks guys. Before I buy it, i'd just like to know how easy is it to get software and install it for these old ATi's? I can tell I have a basic unexpanded Cirrus Logic card now.

Here's some pr0n pics:

Sorry if they're a bit big.

Have you considered upgrading the memory on that card of yours? That memory look like EDO so maybe a dead scrap card that has the right memory could work but you would need to add the sockets.

nforce4max wrote:

Have you considered upgrading the memory on that card of yours? That memory look like EDO so maybe a dead scrap card that has the right memory could work but you would need to add the sockets.

To be honest I havn't looked. I thought it was DIP RAM and I often find any form of RAM that is upgraded by chips separately usually an expensive affair.

Hence why an ATi Mach64 card seems the most logical choice as I assume it would still be more powerful then the Cirrus Logic and could work out cheaper in the long run anyway. I ain't too fussed about screen res aslong as it has atleast 640x480 or at best 800x600.

This is unless there's no way to get drivers for the ATi card anymore and the support for it is poor even for mainstream games.

Are you using windows 95 or 98? Windows will have the drivers built in/on the disc.

I'm not really clear on why you need to upgrade from the Cirrus card you have now... it's not the best card you can get, but it should be good enough for just about anything you'd be doing on a 486.

tokyoracer wrote:

[text] http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Solvalu/20121115_142827-1.jpg [text] […]
Show full quote

[text]

[text]

I recommend that you remove the blue barrel battery because they WILL leak and kill the motherboard.

Check the marketplace forum on vintage-computer.com. Actually, I'll just link it here.

The Diamond(S3 Trio64) card he has is the same one I have, and it's fantastic. Very compatible and very fast. Unless you're going to hold out for a Tseng or Ark card, and pay ~$100 for it, I don't think you can do much better.

I don't know about ISA and DOS, but I found that my PCI Trio64 card was faster than my PCI Mach64 in 3dmark 99. I don't know if that's due to the chipset itself being faster, or just having a better Windows driver. The S3 card is probably more compatible in DOS.

I have a similar Cirrus Logic card (mine's a 5426 though) to yours too, but I haven't tested it yet. That's on my to do list for this weekend.

dirkmirk wrote:

Are you using windows 95 or 98? Windows will have the drivers built in/on the disc.

It's currently on 95, not sure if to put 3.11 on it instead.

memsys wrote:

I recommend that you remove the blue barrel battery because they WILL leak and kill the motherboard.

I had planned to don't worry it's fine at the moment but when I got time I will remove it A.S.A.P. 😀

Hatta wrote:

Check the marketplace forum on vintage-computer.com. Actually, I'll just link it here. […]
Show full quote

Check the marketplace forum on vintage-computer.com. Actually, I'll just link it here.

The Diamond(S3 Trio64) card he has is the same one I have, and it's fantastic. Very compatible and very fast. Unless you're going to hold out for a Tseng or Ark card, and pay ~$100 for it, I don't think you can do much better.

I don't know about ISA and DOS, but I found that my PCI Trio64 card was faster than my PCI Mach64 in 3dmark 99. I don't know if that's due to the chipset itself being faster, or just having a better Windows driver. The S3 card is probably more compatible in DOS.

I have a similar Cirrus Logic card (mine's a 5426 though) to yours too, but I haven't tested it yet. That's on my to do list for this weekend.

Thanks for the link I signed up and will be checking it out. 😀

Can you still source the S3 drivers for Windows 95 today?

Cirrus aren't that bad... I have one with 2MB and IDE controller. Never used it... Skipped VLB and went PCI for the 486 motherboard.

Here is the card: