Trident's bad reputation mainly comes from the TVGA9000 series. Those were cheap and slow but heavily used by OEMs back then. So many people thought Trident = slow. The 8900D-R was good, so was the TGUI94xx series.

Regarding the Trident 8900s, the 8900D is on the fast spectrum. It's the rest of the models that built this bad reputation everyone vaguely remembers.

SimonV wrote:

Or just because it's from 1994 and the ORchid from 1991 ?

That's the most likely reason.

Anyway, if you want to seriously compare them, then plain VGA benchmark is far from enough.
That Orchid is based on S3 911, ie. accelerator, while TVGA8900 is just a dumb framebuffer.
So, do also some benchmarks in Windows, in various SVGA modes.

I can't read markings on RAMDAC chips, but it's possible the Orchid is better in this area as well.

Bad reputation about Tridents wasn't all about VGA speed, it was also about them being plain framebuffers when all the leaders offered accelerators, and about Tridents usually being coupled with 8bpp RAMDACs when all the leaders offered 24bpp.

I only use the 486 for some dos gaming and not for windows. Although I can install win3.1 and check things out, I suspect the results of a 1994 card to be not that bad either in Windows ?

So gaming wise I would say the Trident is the better option here ?

I am quite new to dosgaming, so total noob question ... in a DOS vga test the Trident wins but I guess in win3.1 video cards need dedicated drivers installed for them to work as intended in win3.1 ? But what gets accelerated then in Win3.1 ? windows itself ( screens, window dragging etcetere ... ) or also games if they make use of the windows driver ? If only windows use itself gets accelerated with the Orchid making it up to par with the Trident I see very little reason to put it back in there.

SimonV wrote:

I suspect the results of a 1994 card to be not that bad either in Windows ?

Very likely.
Between 1991 and 1994, there were radical changes in PC graphics: VLB (1992) and PCI (1993) were introduced, also hardware acceleration and true color became ubiquitous.
I often call that era "the local bus revolution".
Brand new graphics chipsets offered improved speed and other features even on ISA bus.
TVGA8900D still lacks acceleration, but I think I can see TKD8001 RAMDAC on your card - so 24bpp, very good by ISA standards.

I guess in win3.1 video cards need dedicated drivers installed for them to work as intended in win3.1 ?

Yes.

But what gets accelerated then in Win3.1 ? windows itself ( screens, window dragging etcetere ... ) or also games if they make use of the windows driver ?

All Windows software gets accelerated, including games - even though there's few major games for Windows 3.1, vast majority are just simple shareware toys, not really worth mentioning.

Thanks for the explanation, I can confirm it's a TKD8001 RAMDAC ... so I am going to stick with the Trident.