matze79 wrote:

If you run Win95 the Mach64 will give you DirectDraw Support.
So a lot more Games will run on 9x. Pitfall, Jazz Jackrabbit II, Sonic..

Interestsing. What other VLB cards have DirectDraw support? What about S3 Trio64 VLB?

feipoa wrote:

matze79 wrote:

If you run Win95 the Mach64 will give you DirectDraw Support.
So a lot more Games will run on 9x. Pitfall, Jazz Jackrabbit II, Sonic..

Interestsing. What other VLB cards have DirectDraw support? What about S3 Trio64 VLB?

The Creative 3D Blaster VLB have DirectDraw support. The S3 Trio64 PCI version supports it, and according to the results from this DirectDraw benchmark a S3 VLB card have been submitted:
http://www.roylongbottom.org.uk/directdraw%20results.htm

That Longbottom guy has written tonnes of benchmarking programs, of which I have only used his DOS whetstone/dhrystone/linpack stuff. Anything of interest in his collection?

matze79 wrote:

If you run Win95 the Mach64 will give you DirectDraw Support.
So a lot more Games will run on 9x. Pitfall, Jazz Jackrabbit II, Sonic..

Is there no "software mode" work around for DirectDraw games on graphics cards which do not support DirectDraw?

feipoa wrote:

matze79 wrote:

If you run Win95 the Mach64 will give you DirectDraw Support.
So a lot more Games will run on 9x. Pitfall, Jazz Jackrabbit II, Sonic..

Is there no "software mode" work around for DirectDraw games on graphics cards which do not support DirectDraw?

They'll run AFAIK, just with no hardware help from the graphics card.

Any idea how much performance improvement DirectDraw would have on a Mach64 or Trio64 vs. that of S3 Vision 968? Double the frame rate?

feipoa wrote:

Any idea how much performance improvement DirectDraw would have on a Trio64 vs. that of S3 Vision 968? Double the frame rate?

No idea, would be interesting to know. Only way for me to test is with the PCI versions of those cards.

I have three S3 Vision VLB cards waiting to be installed. 864, 868, 964.

As I understand it, the 9xx has VRam as you guys have mentioned. But the x68 has motion video graphics accelerator.
Is there any benefit in me trying to source the 968? Or would using the 964 be my best option from the three I have above?

Also, what are the benefits of the VRam (9xx) versions? As far as I can see from the bench marks, the VRam equivalents seem to do better in Windows.

Thanks in advance,
-M

Very interested in this thread. I've never actually owned a VLB video card before. Jumped straight from ISA to PCI and never looked back, at least not until I obtained a 486 board that had both VLB and PCI. There is a PCI Cirrus Logic 5430 in there now. My understanding is VLB should outperform PCI of that era at least so I am going to be on the lookout for what cards I should be looking for.

The VideoDD1 test really looks promising. I think I will try this on my VLB cards. I used for BitBlt speed testing only Winbench 3.11 until now.
All drivers for the cards I have state support for DirectDraw, however it is not obvious if the functions are done by software or hardware.
Usually only benchmarks tell.
Also especially with the earlier chipsets there may not be hardware acceleration in every mode. There seems to be only very few information available about the specific chipsets capabilities and limitations. Sometimes Plasma Designs writes a bit about the acceleration support.

So if there is stated some chipset has BitBlt acceleration it may only be available in 8 and 15 bit modes, but not in 16/24/32 bit modes. Same applies for the video acceleration, that is even for more modern chipsets such as Riva128 limited and not available with modes above 1024x768 at 75 Hz.

Software Workaround for DirectDraw has not all resolutions avaible.
The Software Workaround often has 640x480 avaible, which is unuseable on a VLB System.
You will miss all small resolutions and instead need to play everything in a small window instead of fullscreen accelrated resolutions.

The mach64 has true directdraw accelration as far as i known, also the tseng w32i vlb will offer bitblt support.

Well yes, but is there a program that shows this?

Just to pick your example, the S3 864 shows to be about 20x faster for BitBlt than the TSENG ET4000/W32i VLB. However I can not judge from this difference that the driver of the ET4000 transfers the surface in software. It might as well be slow hardware.

Also what do you exactly mean with 'true directdraw acceleration' ?

In Windows, the S3 968 beats the competition by a respectable amount. VLB cards compared were Trio64, Mach64 VRAM, Mach64 DRAM, ET4000/W32P, and ARK1000VL). Windows 3.1 benchmarks used were Winbench96, Windows Speed, Wintune 2.0, and Speedy. In DOS, the 968 was in the middle of those cards. Someone else tested these and, unfortunately, the results didn't have the Creative 3D Blaster VLB.

The FAQ on Diamond's old website had these notes. Not sure what can be made of it. It is still unclear as to the relative DirectDraw comparison between these top cards.

Do the Diamond GT Drivers support DirectX 2 or greater (Direct 3D)?
Officially Speaking: We do not have a GT driver that supports DirectX v.2 (Direct 3D) or above. However, all of our video cards support Direct X 1, 2, and 3. For instance, if you download and install the DirectX 3 API, and let it install a certified Direct X driver, it will install the proper certified driver for your video card, and you will have full DirectX functionality. You will not, however, have Diamond GT (InControl Tools) functionality, but when you're done with whatever application you are using, you can always swtich back to the Diamond GT driver.

When installing DirectX applications, I receive a message asking if I want to install a certified DirectX driver.
You should select "No". Choosing "Yes" will reinstall a driver that is not as accelerated as the Diamond drivers that you currently have installed. Selecting "No" ensures that the best drivers available for this product remains in tact.

What driver should I use with applications that require DirectX?
When you install DirectX 1,2, or 3 it will install a certifed S3 driver from Microsoft that will work with our card. Once the card is up and running with this driver, load the current Diamond GT Driver for your card. Doing this will allow InControl Tools to run properly. At this time, the current version of the Diamond GT Drivers is 4.03.325b. This driver version is available from our FTP server and BBS. With our driver you will have Incontrol Tools but the performance will be about the same as the DirectX driver. Since our driver is only DirectX 1 compliant there may be a case where you would have to run the S3 driver, but in testing here most games will work.

feipoa wrote:

matze79 wrote:

If you run Win95 the Mach64 will give you DirectDraw Support.
So a lot more Games will run on 9x. Pitfall, Jazz Jackrabbit II, Sonic..

Interestsing. What other VLB cards have DirectDraw support? What about S3 Trio64 VLB?

I have a Diamond SpeedStar PRO VLB, which has a CL5428 chip iirc, and it supports DirectDraw.

My S3 Vision 968 card passed the DirectX DirectDraw acceleration tests when using the dxdiag utility w/DirectX6. Are there any early DirectDraw games which yield some sort of benchmark result?

I ran a quick test using the game Outlaws (with update 2.02) in DirectDraw mode. Although the employed systems are not ideal for a fair graphics card comparison, these are what I have setup. The systems are as follows,

IBM 5x86-133/2x - 64MB - 1024K - Win95c - Audican32 plus - Matrox G200 PCI
AMD 5x86-160/4x - 64MB - 1024K - Win95c - AWE64Gold - Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM VLB (S3 Vision968)

From what I can tell, there is no software mode option to play this game. It is either DirectDraw, Glide, or Direct3D. I selected DirectDraw.

640x480
G200 = 7.0 fps
Vision968 = 6.8 fps

320x240
G200 = 17.2 fps
Vision968 = 19.5 fps

On each systems, I took the the fps from an idle point in the game, just after entering the game. I let gameplay sit idle for 30 seconds and recorded the max instantaneous frame rate which was reoccurring. Max value in actual gameplay is quite a bit higher, upwards of 28 fps at 320x240, however it would be difficult to capture the exact same instance on both systems.

If the Vision968 card was not using DirectDraw acceleration, it seems to me that frame rates would be slower compared to the G200 system and not 15% higher as indicated.

I have compiled the data submitted by Anonymous Coward for his high-end VLB graphic cards, all of which were benchmarked on the same system with these specifications:

MCCI/Nice SuperEISA V1.2 motherboard
1024kb cache, 12ns tag
Am5x86-160 (L1 in WT mode)
64 MB RAM
Adaptec AHA-2742W EISA SCSI controller
3com 5c597TX 10/100 EISA NIC
STB ECP & 16550 I/O
Roland MPU-401AT + Yamaha DB60XG
Yamaha OPL3SAx
Maxtor Atlas IV 36GB 10k SCSI
HIMEM, ASPI7DOS, OPL3SAX, mouse, ASPICD, MSCDEX all loaded.

I will post the DOS results first, with the last set of results being from Win 3.11.

Mach64 DRAM 2MB = ATI Graphics Expression VLB
Mach64 VRAM 2MB = ATI Graphics Pro Turbo VLB
S3 968 VRAM 4 MB = Number 9 FX Motion 771 VLB
Tseng ET4000/W32P DRAM 2 MB = Hercules Dynamite Power VLB
S3 Trio64 DRAM 2MB = Hercules Terminator 64 DRAM VLB
ARK1000VL DRAM 2 MB = Octek VL-VGA1000

Windows 3.1 benchmark results.

Could you start the x-axis in the graphs at zero?
Currently the arbitrary start value indicates huge differences while on absolute scales it might be small.
So this is quite misleading.

Love the benchmarks 😀 Too bad you don't have a DRAM based Stealth64 (864/868).