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CL-5446 being better than S3 Trio64v+ ?

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Reply 20 of 34, by zyga64

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brostenen wrote:

You know... Cannon Fodder crashing with and without UniVBE loaded.

I know that this thread is a bit old but..

wbc's s3vbefix helps with Cannon Fodder on S3 cards ! Even those with VBE1.2 bios. At least it helps my S3Trio64V+ (1MB, VBE1.2). Not to mention 2.0 ones (I've tested S3Trio3d 2x and S3 Virge DX with 2.0 bios).

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Reply 21 of 34, by kjliew

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The Graphic history of wikipedia speaks very well of why Cirrus had failed to compete with S3. Their equivalent product were late, and S3 won the race to be 1st in the market for PCI priced for the segment.

"...By the mid-1990s, when PC's had migrated to the PCI bus, Cirrus had fallen behind S3 and Trident Microsystems..."
I believe this was the chronology of how both companies launched their product lines back then.
- S3 Trio32/64
- CL 5430/5434
- S3 Trio64V+
- CL 5440/5446
- S3 ViRGE
- CL 546x Laguna

So in end, it was CL5430/5434 that was actually competing with S3 Trio64V+, while the later CL5440/5446 was competing against S3 ViRGE. This was how I remember back then in the mid/late 90's of Asia market when I was building PCs for college. The market was simply dominated by S3 products top to bottom for the average PC builders, for someone who was not looking at Matrox or ATI, which was an entirely different priced segment.

Reply 22 of 34, by Jo22

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CL-GD5428/5430 were also used in Japan, on the PC-98 platform (NEC PC-9821)..
yawetaG and me had a little talk about SVGA chips on that platform a while ago.
The Cirrus, as well as other chipsets, were increasingly used about the time Win95 became popular.
Being VGA cards, more or less, they sometimes had issues with the DOS games of the same platform that expected a real GDC.
Here's a site about a PC-98 "laptop" that has a Cirrus chip: http://usamimi.b.ribbon.to/pc9821ts.htm
Text is in Japanese, but the pictures are in English. 😉

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Reply 24 of 34, by kjliew

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Jo22 wrote:

CL-GD5428/5430 were also used in Japan, on the PC-98 platform (NEC PC-9821)..

It was CL-GD5428. Well, the CL-GD5424/5426/5428/5429 was the golden era for Cirrus Logic for the VLB market and a very successful product line for 486/586VLB. S3 competition wasn't there, too expensive for mainstream OEM market in Asia, and Trident competing product was crappy until the much later TGUI9440 series. Perhaps, too successful that the company failed to notice the future of PCI.

Reply 25 of 34, by matze79

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The Cirrus Logic also needs no TSR for reaching full speed.

The S3...

You may want to watch Phils Video:
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Reply 26 of 34, by ElBrunzy

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Oh! I'm so glad this thread is still alive, I was sweating bullets considering necroposting it or opening a similar thread for something regarding this one. 😅

So here is my 2 cents, because of the trend I did try the S3 but I grew tired of its randomness: black pedestal, gray only picture, inconsistent win9x refresh frequency and whatnot I forgot. Really it's a gamble ordering them from ebay.

After reading this Brostenen post I gave a try to some of my cl-gd5446 which drag in the workshop shed and I was surprised by them quality and stability. Of course you have to give up 4mb of ram and vbe 2.0 but I realized I don't need that. So now I'm totally happy in the camp of Cirrus Logic with an intend to stay.

I would also thank Gdjacobs for giving me the idea to mix the ram of an inferior card and add it to a good one (picture quality wise). It really only allow my to notch win98 from 800x600 to 1024x768 at 16bpp, but It was a fun operation. Because I am so happy it worked (and quite proud) I attached a picture. (but beware, so many chips are 21 pins wide and not 20)

The attachment cl-gd5446-memory_swap-soj-2x512kb_2mb-heat_gun.jpg is no longer available

But anyway here is my questions :

  1. I noticed some chips have a BV added to them but I cannot find a precise explanation as to what it means, CL-GD5446 vs CL-GD5446BV. Also, what about the -HC-A and -HC-B suffix ?
  2. The win98 drivers are correct imho, but I'm intrigued about this ISDcorp 2.0 for the 5446 that Matth79 mentionnned previously in this thread. I could not find it, maybe if someone still have them, it would be a good idea to put it on vogonsdrivers.

Thank you

Reply 27 of 34, by ElBrunzy

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Searching for the ISD driver again I stumbled on the CL-5446 Technical Reference Manual so I found some interesting information regarding the chip nomenclature. Unfortunately both of my cards are A revision which mean they are not pc97 compliant. Maybe in a non retro-computing, or targeting a more recent era, context it would matter. Still it dont explain the BV following the 5446 number. Hope if I ever find out what it mean it wont be another deception 🤣

The attachment clgd5446.png is no longer available

Reply 28 of 34, by DesktopDynamite

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Hello, and sorry to post on and revive the thread here, but my friend actually has the attached cards in which I opted for the CL-GD5446BV-HC-B from all of them..

I am thinking to remove the Voodoo 3 2000 PCI for older DOS games compatibility in my PIII machine as my aim is to run games from 1993ish to late 2001 maybe?

Specs:
Asus P3B-F slot 1
Pentium III 500Mhz Katmai
Voodoo 3 2000 PCI (stock heatsink removed and attached low profile fan)
NEC DVDrw optical drive
Yamaha YMF-V724 PCI with SB-Link
Nvidia 4200 TI 128MB AGP (currently disabled as intend to use this under Windows XP OS)
Gotek Floppy reader
2x IDE2SD adapters, 1x as OS 4GB SD card with Windows98SE, 1GB SD with pure MS-DOS 6.22.and other as secondary slave 32GB(drive D:)
Gravis Gamepad connected with Yamaha sound card Gameport.

Regarding the CL card, how much RAM does it come as a standard / unpopulated ?

Are the socketed RAM found on the S3 Virge compatible with the CL one ?

Thanks in advance!

Reply 29 of 34, by mkarcher

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DesktopDynamite wrote on 2023-05-10, 12:03:

Regarding the CL card, how much RAM does it come as a standard / unpopulated ?

Are the socketed RAM found on the S3 Virge compatible with the CL one ?

I would like to answer those questions, but the photos are not good enough to read the model number of the RAM chips on either the Virge card or the CL card. I expect the Virge card to have EDO RAM (I am unsure whether it still supports FPM like the Trio64 did), but I don't know about the CL card. Please post the model numbers of the RAM chips. The capacity will be the same. All of those chips are 256K x 16 chips, that is 512KB per chip, and both cards operate the memory at 5V. The S3 Virge is 2MB soldered + 2MB in sockets. The Cirrus card has 1MB at the moment and can be upgraded to 2MB.

Reply 30 of 34, by DesktopDynamite

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mkarcher wrote on 2023-05-10, 17:43:
DesktopDynamite wrote on 2023-05-10, 12:03:

Regarding the CL card, how much RAM does it come as a standard / unpopulated ?

Are the socketed RAM found on the S3 Virge compatible with the CL one ?

I would like to answer those questions, but the photos are not good enough to read the model number of the RAM chips on either the Virge card or the CL card. I expect the Virge card to have EDO RAM (I am unsure whether it still supports FPM like the Trio64 did), but I don't know about the CL card. Please post the model numbers of the RAM chips. The capacity will be the same. All of those chips are 256K x 16 chips, that is 512KB per chip, and both cards operate the memory at 5V. The S3 Virge is 2MB soldered + 2MB in sockets. The Cirrus card has 1MB at the moment and can be upgraded to 2MB.

I will take a sharper image of the S3 Virge one.

Also, would this card be upgradable to 4MB as shown here in the link ?

http://old.vgamuseum.info/palcals-collection/ … d5446-hc-a.html

Reply 31 of 34, by Imperious

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The S3 Virge pictured already has 4MB

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Reply 32 of 34, by Gmlb256

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2 MB is good enough for DOS games. 4 MB in your situation would be only useful for enabling 1024x768 at 24/32bpp video mode.

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Reply 33 of 34, by mkarcher

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DesktopDynamite wrote on 2023-05-14, 06:53:

Also, would this card be upgradable to 4MB as shown here in the link ?

http://old.vgamuseum.info/palcals-collection/ … d5446-hc-a.html

No, it won't be. Those memory chips are mostly universal on all those cards, and contain 0.5MB. The 5446 cards contain 2 or 4 chips, so they have 1 or 2 MB. 4MB requires 8 chips, like on your Virge card.

Reply 34 of 34, by wbc

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zyga64 wrote on 2019-04-13, 20:00:
brostenen wrote:

You know... Cannon Fodder crashing with and without UniVBE loaded.

I know that this thread is a bit old but..

wbc's s3vbefix helps with Cannon Fodder on S3 cards ! Even those with VBE1.2 bios. At least it helps my S3Trio64V+ (1MB, VBE1.2). Not to mention 2.0 ones (I've tested S3Trio3d 2x and S3 Virge DX with 2.0 bios).

WOAH! indeed, tested on my plain ViRGE and Trio64V2/DX, Cannon Fodder throws my LCD display to "out of range" (no matter if "VGA Normal" or "VGA Tseng" chosen in Setup), and S3VBEFIX indeed manages to bring the picture back! Honestly, i've never intended to address this issue since I was unaware of it, so it's cool to have such a nice bonus feature :D

so, this game would be an excellent addition to Gona's DOS compatibility testing project :)

Regarding the topic, I recall CL PCI cards being very uncommon that S3, at least here locally, so this may explain why everyone recommend S3 since they are dirt cheap, easier to obtain and good balanced in terms of compatibility/features/performance. As for performance, S3 cards (if running at 64bit memory bus) may perform a bit slower in Mode 0x13 and especially VESA banked modes (and that's the thing both S3SPDUP and S3VBEFIX address) but in LFB applications they tend to perform on par with fastest PCI cards, so it would be nice to have raw 544x vs S3 comparsions :)

--wbcbz7