In 1994, you most likely had a 486 system with a local bus VGA card. For this post, I consider PCI to be a local bus, so the card might have been VLB or PCI. Cirrus Logic cards cards (CL-GD5428/CL-GD5429) were a typical entry level VL card those days. For PCI, Cirrus CL-GD5434 was used on entry level cards. For DOS game performance, the typical recommendation are Tseng-based cards, especially with the ET4000W32i / ET4000W32p chips. The former one is typically only found on VL cards, the latter one is found on PCI cards, too (the "p" indicates the PCI capability). As these cards are the typical recommendation, prices on ebay went insane lately, so keep being aware of alternatives. The generic S3 805 cards won't win any benchmark, but should still beat the Cirrus cards. Again, you can get S3 805 cards for VLB or PCI. The latest revision of the 805 includes native PCI support, but there also are 805-based cards with a PCI interface built from discrete logic.

All of the cards/chips I mentioned are "Super-VGA" chips, so they are VGA compatible, but can also do higher resolutions (up to 1024x768 at 72Hz or 1280x1024 interlaced should be possible on all of them). You might want to buy a card that can do 1280x1024 non-interlaced in case you connect a 17" or 19" TFT with that as native resolution. Most TFT computer monitors don't sync to interlaced VGA signals.

1mb was probably typical at that time. My 1993 family computer was a 486sx-33 with 1mb Cirrus Logic VLB.

Do you remember if it was a 486 or Pentium?

Usually a Tseng ET3000 / ET4000AX is a very common card used in 1994 (non-W32). ISA video was still in wide use, though Doom fever also hit this year with a reality check. 😉

What'd help identify from memory is the text font. (i.e. ATI cards' numbers looked more boxy). Also a bios splash (i.e. if there's a beatles lyric among colorful text, it's a Number Nine. If there's red/green/yellow swishes, it's Trident)

There was a neat video diagnostic test program that shipped with Tseng cards, it'd help to fire that up and see if they set off a memory flash (assuming if you were curious enough to run it 25 years before)...

The problem with "for 1994" also has a generational jump many here associate the year with (PCI, S3 Trio, AWE32, Pentiums and DX4s). If it's a "family pc" it's probably not going to be that bitchin' WC3-playing P90 from later in the year, but some old stock 486DX2/66 with the promise of on-disc encyclopedias and Simcity 2000. 😀

mkarcher wrote on 2021-08-03, 17:01:

In 1994, you most likely had a 486 system with a local bus VGA card. For this post, I consider PCI to be a local bus, so the card might have been VLB or PCI. Cirrus Logic cards cards (CL-GD5428/CL-GD5429) were a typical entry level VL card those days. For PCI, Cirrus CL-GD5434 was used on entry level cards. For DOS game performance, the typical recommendation are Tseng-based cards, especially with the ET4000W32i / ET4000W32p chips. The former one is typically only found on VL cards, the latter one is found on PCI cards, too (the "p" indicates the PCI capability). As these cards are the typical recommendation, prices on ebay went insane lately, so keep being aware of alternatives. The generic S3 805 cards won't win any benchmark, but should still beat the Cirrus cards. Again, you can get S3 805 cards for VLB or PCI. The latest revision of the 805 includes native PCI support, but there also are 805-based cards with a PCI interface built from discrete logic.

All of the cards/chips I mentioned are "Super-VGA" chips, so they are VGA compatible, but can also do higher resolutions (up to 1024x768 at 72Hz or 1280x1024 interlaced should be possible on all of them). You might want to buy a card that can do 1280x1024 non-interlaced in case you connect a 17" or 19" TFT with that as native resolution. Most TFT computer monitors don't sync to interlaced VGA signals.

Thanks very much, that's a great place to start! As it happens, it would've been SVGA anyway as I played Command & Conquer: Red Alert and Warcraft 2 on it (albeit in DOS as we only had Win 3.11). I know we had a pretty basic 14-inch screen, but I'm always up for better forward-compatibility if it exists! I guess it'll boil down to whether I'll end up building a VLB or PCI system then...

ET4000s were more for Windows focused rather than Dos. Reviews for Dos performance wasn't that great.

BinaryDemon wrote on 2021-08-03, 17:21:

1mb was probably typical at that time. My 1993 family computer was a 486sx-33 with 1mb Cirrus Logic VLB.

Do you remember if it was a 486 or Pentium?

It was a 486dx2-66, which amazingly lasted us until 1990/2000 (my parents were NOT computer people by any shape of the imagination) when we finally modernised with an AMD K7-800. We never owned Windows 95! Went straight from 3.11 to 98. Needless to say I got good use out of the very few games I had that were fairly modern that could play on DOS!

Lawro wrote on 2021-08-03, 19:47:

BinaryDemon wrote on 2021-08-03, 17:21:

1mb was probably typical at that time. My 1993 family computer was a 486sx-33 with 1mb Cirrus Logic VLB.

Do you remember if it was a 486 or Pentium?

It was a 486dx2-66, which amazingly lasted us until 1990/2000 (my parents were NOT computer people by any shape of the imagination) when we finally modernised with an AMD K7-800. We never owned Windows 95! Went straight from 3.11 to 98. Needless to say I got good use out of the very few games I had that were fairly modern that could play on DOS!

You weren't the only ones to stay with in Win3.x then jump to Win98 😉 My 286/16 went to a 486DX33 then a Pentium 1 133 using other folks cast offs. Dos and Windows 3.1 got faster for some strange reason..... Still haven't figured that one out.

leileilol wrote on 2021-08-03, 17:43:

Usually a Tseng ET3000 / ET4000AX is a very common card used in 1994 (non-W32). ISA video was still in wide use, though Doom fe […]
Show full quote

Usually a Tseng ET3000 / ET4000AX is a very common card used in 1994 (non-W32). ISA video was still in wide use, though Doom fever also hit this year with a reality check. 😉

What'd help identify from memory is the text font. (i.e. ATI cards' numbers looked more boxy). Also a bios splash (i.e. if there's a beatles lyric among colorful text, it's a Number Nine. If there's red/green/yellow swishes, it's Trident)

There was a neat video diagnostic test program that shipped with Tseng cards, it'd help to fire that up and see if they set off a memory flash (assuming if you were curious enough to run it 25 years before)...

The problem with "for 1994" also has a generational jump many here associate the year with (PCI, S3 Trio, AWE32, Pentiums and DX4s). If it's a "family pc" it's probably not going to be that bitchin' WC3-playing P90 from later in the year, but some old stock 486DX2/66 with the promise of on-disc encyclopedias and Simcity 2000. 😀

Unfortunately I'm a complete blank on that aspect. It's funny, I can remember clear as day the Phoenix BIOS with Energy Star logo on the IBM PS/1 we had before that, and the American Megatrends we had after, but not at all the 486 (yes, it was a 486DX2-66, and we had the whole gamut of Microsoft Home software, including Encarta '95, as well as SimCity 2000 😁). As it happens, the first and only Pentium I ever owned was a Pentium 4 3.2ghz!

EDIT: I'm talking crap about the PS/1 BIOS...there essentially wasn't one, or at least much of one, that was displayed. I was getting confused with the Sierra logo and intro for Silpheed. So the 486 must have been a Phoenix BIOS with Energy Star logo, as I do remember that quite clearly, and the AMD K7-800 was on a Gigabyte 7IXE motherboard which was definitely AMI.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-08-03, 19:36:

ET4000s were more for Windows focused rather than Dos. Reviews for Dos performance wasn't that great.

Perhaps I had a ET3000 or equivalent then, as I never had any performance issues under DOS (for games that the 486 could actually run, anyway...)

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-08-03, 19:36:

ET4000s were more for Windows focused rather than Dos. Reviews for Dos performance wasn't that great.

No, the ET4000/W32i/p are actually very good performers in DOS (not necessarily the most compatible though), and perform pretty well on Windows with 2MB of memory due to interleaving. At the time they were highly recommended for DOS gaming because they were fast and cheap compared to "high-end" cards.

Regarding the OP's question: for 1994, if you have a PCI board you'll have a much easier time finding nice and cheap video cards, performance should be pretty much the same for VLB vs PCI assuming that you are using the same CPU and similar chipset. These graphics chips were available in 1994 and should offer good compatibility:

• S3 805/Vision864/Vision964: S3 has high compatibility, the 805 is slower than the Vision, but it's easier to find and cheaper if you go VLB. For PCI go with either of the Visions
• Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x/543x: very compatible like S3, maybe a bit slower but I don't think there will be much of a difference unless you go with a Pentium build
• Tseng Labs ET4000W32i/ET4000W32p: very fast for DOS, slight incompatibilities with some older games and ridiculous prices in eBay. Avoid the PCI version of the W32p, it has some problems
• Paradise WD90C33-ZZ: again, very compatible and fast... these WD cards usually go unnoticed but they are very good

Those would be my recommendations, but there may be other options I'm not really familiar with (CHIPS, Alliance). And of course the good old Tridents, but they usually have worse performance (except for a specific VLB chipset that is said to perform well).

Avoid at all costs: ISA cards (too slow for demanding VGA games like Doom), Diamond Viper VLB (Weitek P9000 chipset, atrocious DOS performance).

Tseng Labs cards have got some unusual cult following. Really they only shine at pure ISA troughtput. If you have a local bus or a PCI card, then a good S3 or Cirrus card is much better and more compatible. And even then a CL-GD29 ISA is almost as good as ET4000AX.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-08-04, 08:11:

Tseng Labs cards have got some unusual cult following. Really they only shine at pure ISA troughtput.

If you are after DOS gaming experience, ISA throughput is the only metric that matters. So it makes a lot of sense for DOS gamers to evaluate ISA graphics cards merely on the throughput. The cult over ET4000AX cards already started in the 90s, and at that time, the ET4000 cards were the fastest widely available and affordable ISA graphics cards.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-08-04, 08:11:

If you have a local bus or a PCI card, then a good S3 or Cirrus card is much better and more compatible. And even then a CL-GD29 ISA is almost as good as ET4000AX.

I compared a CL-GD5426 VLB and an ET4000AX ISA graphics card in the same DX33 system using write performance (in SVGA 256-color modes) as metric around 20 years ago. I don't remember whether I overclocked ISA to 11MHz, but the results were that in 640x480 @ 60Hz, the Cirrus card was noticably faster, but by far not making use of the full VL potential. I think it was around 30% speed increase. On the other hand, in 1024x768 @ 75 Hz (the highest mode the monitor I used supported), the better memory interface of the ET4000 card showed it potential and ISA transfer rates kept being good, whereas the Cirrus card dropped below the ET4000 card. The fair, but not stellar results of the Cirrus cards are easily explained by them being 16-bit chips. The CL-GD5430 is the first cirrus chips to feature a 32-bit bus interface the local bus. The same is true for the ET4000AX!. If you want to follow the Tseng cult onto the VL bus, don't get started below the ET4000/W32 which features a 32-bit data path. If there are ET4000AX VLB cards, they are not cult-worthy, although they might be a bit faster than the ET4000AX ISA cards due to the higher bus clock.

The discussion about 32-bit capable cards is only relevant for games that use 32-bit access to video memory. This is the case for most SVGA games (640x480, 256 colors) like WarCraft II, but often not the case is 16-color or games using the undocumented enhanced 256-color mode called "mode X". Mode X is a clever hack that switches the original 8-bit VGA hardware into a mode that allows utilizing the whole 256KB of video memory instead of just 64K as in the standard VGA 256-color mode. This hack does not hamper the memory performance of 8-bit VGA cards, but it makes mapping 32-bit CPU accesses to video memory access a lot more difficult, and it has a memory model that discourages 32-bit access by applications.

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-08-03, 20:01:

No, the ET4000/W32i/p are actually very good performers in DOS (not necessarily the most compatible though), and perform pretty […]
Show full quote

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-08-03, 19:36:

ET4000s were more for Windows focused rather than Dos. Reviews for Dos performance wasn't that great.

No, the ET4000/W32i/p are actually very good performers in DOS (not necessarily the most compatible though), and perform pretty well on Windows with 2MB of memory due to interleaving. At the time they were highly recommended for DOS gaming because they were fast and cheap compared to "high-end" cards.

Regarding the OP's question: for 1994, if you have a PCI board you'll have a much easier time finding nice and cheap video cards, performance should be pretty much the same for VLB vs PCI assuming that you are using the same CPU and similar chipset. These graphics chips were available in 1994 and should offer good compatibility:

• S3 805/Vision864/Vision964: S3 has high compatibility, the 805 is slower than the Vision, but it's easier to find and cheaper if you go VLB. For PCI go with either of the Visions
• Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x/543x: very compatible like S3, maybe a bit slower but I don't think there will be much of a difference unless you go with a Pentium build
• Tseng Labs ET4000W32i/ET4000W32p: very fast for DOS, slight incompatibilities with some older games and ridiculous prices in eBay. Avoid the PCI version of the W32p, it has some problems
• Paradise WD90C33-ZZ: again, very compatible and fast... these WD cards usually go unnoticed but they are very good

Those would be my recommendations, but there may be other options I'm not really familiar with (CHIPS, Alliance). And of course the good old Tridents, but they usually have worse performance (except for a specific VLB chipset that is said to perform well).

Avoid at all costs: ISA cards (too slow for demanding VGA games like Doom), Diamond Viper VLB (Weitek P9000 chipset, atrocious DOS performance).

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it...) I don't have the motherboard yet, so I'm still flexible. I do think I'll end up with PCI though. The reason for this is that having thought about things more, I seem to remember at some point after 1994 the original motherboard blew, and we got a replacement. It's highly likely we upgraded the innards (they possibly all went together during the blowout), though not by much and certainly not the software/OS.

I could definitely play Warcraft 2 and Red Alert on it, which were probably the most taxing games I ever got back then. I never played any 3D games that I can recall until my first graphics card (GeForce 256 32mb DDR) apart from the Terminal Velocity demo, and Strike Commander.

So considering the above, it would appear I'm in the realm of PCI SVGA cards, but not 3D accelerators.

mkarcher wrote on 2021-08-04, 09:27:

If you are after DOS gaming experience, ISA throughput is the only metric that matters. So it makes a lot of sense for DOS gamer […]
Show full quote

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-08-04, 08:11:

Tseng Labs cards have got some unusual cult following. Really they only shine at pure ISA troughtput.

If you are after DOS gaming experience, ISA throughput is the only metric that matters. So it makes a lot of sense for DOS gamers to evaluate ISA graphics cards merely on the throughput. The cult over ET4000AX cards already started in the 90s, and at that time, the ET4000 cards were the fastest widely available and affordable ISA graphics cards.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-08-04, 08:11:

If you have a local bus or a PCI card, then a good S3 or Cirrus card is much better and more compatible. And even then a CL-GD29 ISA is almost as good as ET4000AX.

I compared a CL-GD5426 VLB and an ET4000AX ISA graphics card in the same DX33 system using write performance (in SVGA 256-color modes) as metric around 20 years ago. I don't remember whether I overclocked ISA to 11MHz, but the results were that in 640x480 @ 60Hz, the Cirrus card was noticably faster, but by far not making use of the full VL potential. I think it was around 30% speed increase. On the other hand, in 1024x768 @ 75 Hz (the highest mode the monitor I used supported), the better memory interface of the ET4000 card showed it potential and ISA transfer rates kept being good, whereas the Cirrus card dropped below the ET4000 card. The fair, but not stellar results of the Cirrus cards are easily explained by them being 16-bit chips. The CL-GD5430 is the first cirrus chips to feature a 32-bit bus interface the local bus. The same is true for the ET4000AX!. If you want to follow the Tseng cult onto the VL bus, don't get started below the ET4000/W32 which features a 32-bit data path. If there are ET4000AX VLB cards, they are not cult-worthy, although they might be a bit faster than the ET4000AX ISA cards due to the higher bus clock.

The discussion about 32-bit capable cards is only relevant for games that use 32-bit access to video memory. This is the case for most SVGA games (640x480, 256 colors) like WarCraft II, but often not the case is 16-color or games using the undocumented enhanced 256-color mode called "mode X". Mode X is a clever hack that switches the original 8-bit VGA hardware into a mode that allows utilizing the whole 256KB of video memory instead of just 64K as in the standard VGA 256-color mode. This hack does not hamper the memory performance of 8-bit VGA cards, but it makes mapping 32-bit CPU accesses to video memory access a lot more difficult, and it has a memory model that discourages 32-bit access by applications.

Thanks for this info! I suspect we had a VGA card of some description which would have been replaced by a non-3D-accelerated SVGA card. I'm probably aiming for the latter to be able to play the games and use the software I remember.

By the by, that Mode X hack sounds really smart, I always love reading about clever tricks like that and it reminds me of the sort of jiggery-pokery many old console games had to utilise in extremely limited memory environments.