EISA is interesting, but when it comes to video cards it will not give you noticeable advantages vs regular ISA. I have 2 EISA motherboards, one with a proprietary local bus slot (ECS) and one with VLB, so I use those for video instead since the performance is way, way better than ISA/EISA. But for other expansion cards such as networking or HDD controller it's cool to tinker with EISA.

Also you would need an EISA motherboard, they're nothing special really, but due to being somewhat rare compared to ISA/VLB sellers will often jack up the prices to obscene levels. It took me a while to find EISA boards for a decent price (say, less than $75). So my suggestion would be to sell those EISA VGAs and use the money to get a nice ISA/VLB board + cards. For some strange reason, when it comes to EISA, you can usually get lots of cheap expansion cards, but VGAs, despite their mediocre performance, command ridiculous prices.

I think these are 1MB cards. The one on top seems to be newer and has a beefier RAMDAC. If you're going to keep one, keep that one.
I really like EISA stuff, but these days I wouldn't go out of my way to buy a board unless it was cheap.
My feeling is that this card would be best at home in a 386 system (basically all of them are OEM built proprietary jobs, so you'd need a complete system).
486s really need local bus video.

It's said these cards don't show much of a boost in DOS, but accelerated graphics in Windows is a different story.

If keeping only one,then definietly the top one - a QVision 1024/E...the bottom is the much lesser Advanced VGA (might be as little as 256k of memory)

I have a few EISA systems (mostly 486 with an Early Pentium as well) and they are fun to mess around with.

The full EISA/VLB boards are the best of both worlds where you can use a VLB card all by itself for video and then use EISA for SCSI and Ethernet plus ISA for I/O and sound.

Finding EISA cards is pretty easy, but full motherboards that are not proprietary are harder and much more expensive.

Thank you very much.
I think i will follow your advices and look for a VLB / ISA / PCI system instead.
I will keep them in the meantime, only in case i find a cheap EISA system. (i'm not in the hurry)
Then probably trade/sell them later, when starting actively to look for this 486 VLB system.

TheMobRules wrote on 2023-05-14, 19:01:

EISA is interesting, but when it comes to video cards it will not give you noticeable advantages vs regular ISA. I have 2 EISA motherboards, one with a proprietary local bus slot (ECS) and one with VLB, so I use those for video instead since the performance is way, way better than ISA/EISA. But for other expansion cards such as networking or HDD controller it's cool to tinker with EISA.

Also you would need an EISA motherboard, they're nothing special really, but due to being somewhat rare compared to ISA/VLB sellers will often jack up the prices to obscene levels. It took me a while to find EISA boards for a decent price (say, less than $75). So my suggestion would be to sell those EISA VGAs and use the money to get a nice ISA/VLB board + cards. For some strange reason, when it comes to EISA, you can usually get lots of cheap expansion cards, but VGAs, despite their mediocre performance, command ridiculous prices.

The QVision shown in the top pic is faster than an ET4000AX. It's better than any ISA cards. Mine nearly keeps pace with a low end VLB card like a GD5426

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2023-05-14, 23:34:

I think these are 1MB cards. The one on top seems to be newer and has a beefier RAMDAC. If you're going to keep one, keep that o […]
Show full quote

I think these are 1MB cards. The one on top seems to be newer and has a beefier RAMDAC. If you're going to keep one, keep that one.
I really like EISA stuff, but these days I wouldn't go out of my way to buy a board unless it was cheap.
My feeling is that this card would be best at home in a 386 system (basically all of them are OEM built proprietary jobs, so you'd need a complete system).
486s really need local bus video.

It's said these cards don't show much of a boost in DOS, but accelerated graphics in Windows is a different story.

Hello,

I disagree. So I agree with maxtherabbit (last post at the moment): Especially the Compaq QVision 1024/E is good in DOS.
I made some benchmarks
Re: The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison
I don't think this throughput is possible with an ISA card.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-05-16, 19:21:

I disagree. So I agree with maxtherabbit (last post at the moment): Especially the Compaq QVision 1024/E is good in DOS. I made […]
Show full quote

I disagree. So I agree with maxtherabbit (last post at the moment): Especially the Compaq QVision 1024/E is good in DOS.
I made some benchmarks
Re: The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison
I don't think this throughput is possible with an ISA card.

Thanks for the benchmarks. I'm impressed by the write rates; I never have used that benchmark.
Too bad you have run SpeedSys without a VESA driver.
And you may use ctcm from c't/heise also with the /vid switch.

Disruptor wrote on 2023-05-16, 22:08:

Thanks for the benchmarks. I'm impressed by the write rates; I never have used that benchmark. Too bad you have run SpeedSys wit […]
Show full quote

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-05-16, 19:21:

I disagree. So I agree with maxtherabbit (last post at the moment): Especially the Compaq QVision 1024/E is good in DOS. I made […]
Show full quote

I disagree. So I agree with maxtherabbit (last post at the moment): Especially the Compaq QVision 1024/E is good in DOS.
I made some benchmarks
Re: The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison
I don't think this throughput is possible with an ISA card.

Thanks for the benchmarks. I'm impressed by the write rates; I never have used that benchmark.
Too bad you have run SpeedSys without a VESA driver.
And you may use ctcm from c't/heise also with the /vid switch.

I powered on the big server 😀 No tantalums exploded, at least I did not hear something.
For some unknown reason speedsys hangs on "detecting memory type". Damned. I have no clue, have to investigate.

ctcm is running, I ran ctcm 1.5 international with vid parameter