VOGONS


First post, by trixster

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TLDR: Is there any point getting a better VLB card than the 9400Cxi for my DX2-66?

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Hi all,

My 486 currently has:

486DX2-66 (WT, not WB)
Soyo SY-25P2 mobo, 256k 15ns cache
TGUI9400Cxi-VLB (1MB)
ESS 1868f
UM8672 VLB IO card
16MB 60ns ram

I’m pretty happy with the performance, it seems to do better in Doom for instance than the results Phil gets in his VLB round-up video using his DOSBENCH package for timedemo demo3 - I’m getting 24.6fps which seems pretty good. Quake timedemo demo1 is 7.8fps (both levels of hud showing, nosound).

However, reading up about the TGUI9400 VLB card here on vogons, and here (https://dependency-injection.com/vlb-vga-group-test/), the card seems to be the worst performing VLB card out there!

So is it worth the cost and effort to get a better card? Or with just a DX2-66 is it diminishing returns? Is the cpu a bottleneck and a ‘better’ VLB card won’t actually show any tangible improvement over this 9400 without a cpu upgrade too?

Thanks!

Reply 1 of 4, by bloodem

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Short answer, no. The Trident is capable of more than 25 FPS in Doom (when used with a faster CPU), so you would see no tangible benefit from such an upgrade.
I think the Trident is a good match for a DX2-66, unless you want something fancier, just for thrills 😀

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 2 of 4, by chinny22

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Yeh I don't think its worth upgrading either, no matter what CPU/Video card you have on a 486 Doom will have slowdowns on big levels and Quakes a form of torture.
It's only in benchmarks you'll notice any difference, real world use you may get a couple of frames but hardly the difference between making a game playable or not.

Reply 3 of 4, by trixster

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Thanks for the replies, that matches what I was thinking 😀 I want to keep this machine as a DX2-66 so unless there was the possibility for a decent % uplift in performance by getting a better card, it doesn’t seem worth it

Reply 4 of 4, by chrismeyer6

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The only thing I can think of is getting another card to keep as a spare just in case. But if the trident is filling all your needs you probably won't see any benefits to a better card unless you want to run a higher resolution then a card with more ram would help.