PC-Engineer wrote on 2023-08-15, 06:16:

Jo22 wrote on 2023-08-15, 05:59:

.
That's why Voodoos were popular, after all.
They allowed the poor guys with a weak machine to run current games.

I completely agree with you, from the perspective of the 90s.

Thanks, I think that's fair and makes sense to me, too! ^^

From today's perspective, it looks a bit different. Games in 90s used to be considered smooth if they were over 15fps, nowadays you're at min 60fps for that threshold and used to it too.

Funnily, I find games with a slightly slow fps fascinating.
Games like Descent, Magic Carpet, Interphase, Alpha Waves/Continuum or Star Fox (SNES) would look weird to me if they're smooth.

For that authentic, thrilling experience I need to see that the system is actually "working" hard on creating the 3D environment.
Not stuttering by any means, 5 fps or less would be a torture. But if it's very smooth, it looks surreal to me, like a pre-rendered video.

Same goes for old CGA games. I'm fine with the PC XT compatible being dog slow.
It's fascinating to see the game graphics being drawn step-by-step, at least when it comes to adventures.
It's kind of relaxing to see how things build up.

Still, I wouldn't touch any drawing/3D software if the PC didn't have that 8087 upgrade. SimCity and astronomy programs would be unusable without that x87.

Also, today a Pentium or Pentium II is much cheaper to get than a 486 if you want to play 3D.

Sure, but I was looking at the other way round here.
Like, if someone is having an authentic 1994 era setup at hand (beige AT keyboard without Win95 keys, big PC speakers, 14" CRT, ball mouse or track ball, SB AWE/32 etc) and teaching it new tricks to making it run some late DOS games.
Not perfect, but as a nice bonus. To play some Tomb Raider, Descent 2 etc.

There's a reason why so many threads end up with a post saying,"The best 486 is a Pentium"

Wait, I thought the best 486 was PCem.. ;)

I'd go for any PCI video card made between 1994-1997 for a 486
The best balance between price/performance will include chips from S3, Cirrus, Trident.
those with cash to (literally) burn can go for the ATi, Tseng, Matrox, Hercules and the very 1st gen nVidia chips in that time gap.

Either S3 Trio64 or Virge, both are cheap, easy to find and have excellent compatability. There's a reason S3 support is part of Dosbox!

More than enough performance for anything you wou ever want to run on a 486 (and I wouldn't include 3d/voodoo games in that list!).

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-08-15, 20:07:

I'd go for any PCI video card made between 1994-1997 for a 486
The best balance between price/performance will include chips from S3, Cirrus, Trident.
those with cash to (literally) burn can go for the ATi, Tseng, Matrox, Hercules and the very 1st gen nVidia chips in that time gap.

ATI Rage is dirt cheap ?

matze79 wrote on 2023-08-15, 20:14:

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-08-15, 20:07:

I'd go for any PCI video card made between 1994-1997 for a 486
The best balance between price/performance will include chips from S3, Cirrus, Trident.
those with cash to (literally) burn can go for the ATi, Tseng, Matrox, Hercules and the very 1st gen nVidia chips in that time gap.

ATI Rage is dirt cheap ?

I'm not sure if the Rage was around in 1997?
I believe evaluation boards for press reviews were, but if the commercial boards came out in early 1998, then there could be compatibility issues with the 486 mainboard chipsets, since those could have slight revisions to hardware/firmware.

Vic Zarratt wrote on 2023-08-15, 20:37:

I'm not sure if the Rage was around in 1997?

ATI 3D Xpression was 1996! And like all 1996 GPUs, it also had a special version of Mechwarrior 2.

486 machines are fun, and early 3d accelerators are really interesting. However, texture filtering and performance on these early 3d cards are usually pretty rough. Many times "3d" accelerated means 25 fps with graphics that are basically identical to software rendering.

ATI 3d rage cards supported a few games and they aren't expensive. If I remember correctly only the first or second generation of ATI rage 3d cards are fully compatible though. The later 3d XL cards and the like are significantly faster but really more meant for D3D.

On another page (amoretro.de) the author suggested to get a S3 Trio64 with 4MB RAM for better screen resolutions on windows. What do you think?

Cards with 4 MB are also hard to find on e.g. ebay.

megatron-uk wrote on 2023-08-15, 20:12:

Either S3 Trio64 or Virge, both are cheap, easy to find and have excellent compatability. There's a reason S3 support is part of Dosbox!

+1

And they're well documented, too.
I have collected a few S3s because of DOSBox, for testing purposes (and collecting their VGA BIOSes).
The predecessor of the S3 Trio32/64 was the S3 Vision, btw.

The second "best" card might be the Trident 8900, maybe. No, seriously!
That's the reference VGA card that the ancient DOSemu project had used in the 90s.

Being an ISA VGA, it has (had) good compatibility with Super VGA software.
Not essentially games, though (they were more after V7 Vega, Paradise VGA/WD90c00 or ET-4000).

Productivity software had drivers available for 8800/8900/9000.
Some important ones shipped with with the original Trident driver/utility diskettes.

By contrast, the S3 had better VGA core and excellent VESA VBE support (along with 4 MB of VRAM).

What the *real* Tridents (not
DOSemu's Trident 8900C) also had was that optional backwards compatibility in silicon.

Like many other VGAs for ISA bus, it could more faithfully emulate CGA, EGA and Hercules at register level, if needed.
Those emulation modes had to be enabled via mode utility.

That's useful for running those lesser known Hercules games from Korea (and China or Russia maybe, too).

Or for vintage CGA games that play with the MC6854 registers a lot (set palettes etc).

leon22 wrote on 2023-08-16, 08:22:

On another page (amoretro.de) the author suggested to get a S3 Trio64 with 4MB RAM for better screen resolutions on windows. What do you think?

You need S3 Trio64V2/DX variations to utilize 4 Mb. Trio64, before that modification, RAMDAC is too weak.

leon22 wrote on 2023-08-16, 08:22:

On another page (amoretro.de) the author suggested to get a S3 Trio64 with 4MB RAM for better screen resolutions on windows. What do you think?

Cards with 4 MB are also hard to find on e.g. ebay.

Please keep in mind, that Windows will be slow with a resolution like 1280x1024. Even with a Am5x86 overclocked to 160MHz. So no, you will not need a graphics card with 4MB RAM.
On the other hand (old generation) PCI graphics cards with 4MB should not be so hard to find on Ebay.
Search for "S3 PCI 4MB" and you will find tons of it. A VirgeDX (86C375) should work fine on 486 motherboard.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-16, 11:46:

Please keep in mind, that Windows will be slow with a resolution like 1280x1024. Even with a Am5x86 overclocked to 160MHz.

It’s not true for VRAM cards like Vision 968 or Virge VX. If Windows at high resolutions an Color dephts is important, then you should avoid (FPM/EDO) DRAM cards.
This cards with VRAM were made for high resolutions and high color depht in windows. With a ELSA Winner 2000 Pro X/8 there is a Vision968 card with 8MB VRAM and a 250MHz True Color DAC, which supports reolutions of 1600x1200 in true color modes with adequate performance.

If CGA modes does matter, then you should take a Vision964 card. S3 droped CGA support with Vision866/968 and Trio64. But with Vision964 cards with 4MB VRAM are hard to find. And most of this cards have a 135MHz DAC only. So resolutions beyond 1024x768x24bit have low refresh rates.

leon22 wrote on 2023-08-16, 08:22:

On another page (amoretro.de) the author suggested to get a S3 Trio64 with 4MB RAM for better screen resolutions on windows. What do you think?

Cards with 4 MB are also hard to find on e.g. ebay.

S3 cards are great, but some times the image is too bright or too dark because they had QA issues. These cards are pretty cheap though and easy to find, so you can probably just buy another if the first one you get isn't very good.

For windows 3.1 IMO the UI isn't really designed for higher resolutions or greater color depth. You aren't missing much if you only have say 2mb of VRAM to work with (so long as you have a decent driver). I am not sure what the memory requirements are for windows 95. 640x480 with 16bit colors is useable with either OS, especially if you are working with a 486. Any card with 1mb of VRAM will give you that much.

I ordered now the Hercules Terminator 3D/DX S3 Virge/DX PCI 4MB! We will see 😉

Thx

That will be all you ever need for a 486/Dos system, enjoy!

Let us know when it arrives, works and most of all; if you're happy with it! 😀