VOGONS


Matrox VLB?

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First post, by Claris

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Anyone know anything about these?

I stumbled across a Matrox VLB card while i was at RE PC a few days ago. Didn't pick it up because it was like $40 untested but its stuck with me since. It was very long and had all sorts of memory chips on it.

I think this was it?

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Everyone knows Matrox from their Mystique days. But how where they early on? Where these cards fast like a ET4000 VLB. Couldn't find too much online.

Reply 1 of 32, by mpe

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Yes. There was Matrox MGA Ultima and Ultima Plus family of cards for VL-Bus, ISA, PCI and possibly also EISA.

http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item/ … ima-ultima-plus

All very capable for CAD and windows acceleratiors with "baby" 3D features aimed at CAD users.

I haven't tested one, but based on contemporary reviews they compared favourably against 1991/1992 cards, not so much against newer cards. Not sure if they ever had DOS VGA support. I think they might have been dedicated CAD/GUI accelerators.

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Reply 2 of 32, by zapbuzz

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untested means bunged up every time for me (just saying)
if it wasn't fully functional it'd be the memory is what all the gpu's that were screwy had issues with for me.
you know, you could ask if it came from a complete system that would give the deal more confidence.
It wasn't one of the best if you want the better ones its smaller size the better.
If its VLB the best ones have 2mb+ ram and are simply not cirrus logic brand. Everything is better than them.
EISA was just as good. Probably that less distance to the GPU through the bus, and smaller form factor.
VLB is probably best for comms and IDE ports on systems without that stuff. GPU use was really a joke.
DIP memory socket gpu cards were great to replace faulty ram banks even today a few non tested ones to make a fully working unit sort of thing.

Reply 3 of 32, by jheronimus

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Everyone knows Matrox from their Mystique days. But how where they early on? Where these cards fast like a ET4000 VLB. Couldn't find too much online.

Pretty horrible when it came to DOS performance. Here's a quick benchmark of various VLB videocards I did with a Pentium 200. I've used Quake 1.08 timedemo 1 at 320x240 in the form of QDOS sourceport. You can see Matrox can't reach even Trident CX card here:

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If I'm not mistaken, the switches near the VGA connector even allow the Matrox card to be used as a secondary graphics adapter — well, because it's a board for pretty specific usecases.

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Reply 4 of 32, by Claris

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jheronimus wrote on 2021-11-15, 15:57:
Pretty horrible when it came to DOS performance. Here's a quick benchmark of various VLB videocards I did with a Pentium 200. I' […]
Show full quote

Everyone knows Matrox from their Mystique days. But how where they early on? Where these cards fast like a ET4000 VLB. Couldn't find too much online.

Pretty horrible when it came to DOS performance. Here's a quick benchmark of various VLB videocards I did with a Pentium 200. I've used Quake 1.08 timedemo 1 at 320x240 in the form of QDOS sourceport. You can see Matrox can't reach even Trident CX card here:

photo_2021-11-15 18.52.37.jpeg

If I'm not mistaken, the switches near the VGA connector even allow the Matrox card to be used as a secondary graphics adapter — well, because it's a board for pretty specific usecases.

Oof! Really glad i didn't spend $40 on it now i guess. Was overhere thinking i might have passed up on a cheap VLB speeddemon.

Reply 6 of 32, by Tiido

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Looks like it is full length indeed 🤣

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 7 of 32, by zapbuzz

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Claris wrote on 2021-11-15, 15:59:
jheronimus wrote on 2021-11-15, 15:57:
Pretty horrible when it came to DOS performance. Here's a quick benchmark of various VLB videocards I did with a Pentium 200. I' […]
Show full quote

Everyone knows Matrox from their Mystique days. But how where they early on? Where these cards fast like a ET4000 VLB. Couldn't find too much online.

Pretty horrible when it came to DOS performance. Here's a quick benchmark of various VLB videocards I did with a Pentium 200. I've used Quake 1.08 timedemo 1 at 320x240 in the form of QDOS sourceport. You can see Matrox can't reach even Trident CX card here:

photo_2021-11-15 18.52.37.jpeg

If I'm not mistaken, the switches near the VGA connector even allow the Matrox card to be used as a secondary graphics adapter — well, because it's a board for pretty specific usecases.

Oof! Really glad i didn't spend $40 on it now i guess. Was overhere thinking i might have passed up on a cheap VLB speeddemon.

Thanks for not showing cirrus logic 😀

Reply 8 of 32, by cyclone3d

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Even if it sucks for DOS, it is still one of the cards I want to get.

@jheronimus - how did you test VLB cards on a Pentium 200 system?

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Reply 9 of 32, by kixs

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I'd buy it for $40. Matrox pre PCI cards aren't around much. Looking at my list I have:

Matrox MGA Impression 2MB VLB
Matrox MGA Ultima 2MB VRAM VLB

But this could be a mistake in the naming and I have only one.

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 10 of 32, by dionb

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Claris wrote on 2021-11-15, 15:59:

[...]

Oof! Really glad i didn't spend $40 on it now i guess. Was overhere thinking i might have passed up on a cheap VLB speeddemon.

Maybe you did - just not in DOS 😉

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-15, 17:34:

Even if it sucks for DOS, it is still one of the cards I want to get.

@jheronimus - how did you test VLB cards on a Pentium 200 system?

Sounds like the fastest CPU you can get to work on an So5 VLB board, which would make it basically the fastest VLB system out there. In that case: very sensible choice to avoid CPU or RAM being the bottleneck.

Reply 11 of 32, by Claris

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dionb wrote on 2021-11-15, 18:14:
Maybe you did - just not in DOS ;) […]
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Claris wrote on 2021-11-15, 15:59:

[...]

Oof! Really glad i didn't spend $40 on it now i guess. Was overhere thinking i might have passed up on a cheap VLB speeddemon.

Maybe you did - just not in DOS 😉

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-11-15, 17:34:

Even if it sucks for DOS, it is still one of the cards I want to get.

@jheronimus - how did you test VLB cards on a Pentium 200 system?

Sounds like the fastest CPU you can get to work on an So5 VLB board, which would make it basically the fastest VLB system out there. In that case: very sensible choice to avoid CPU or RAM being the bottleneck.

Hahaha, maybe! I don't spend much time in windows on a 486. (Not enough perhaps)

Im allways looking out for a cheap ET4000 VLB or something uber fast to put in my machine. Allways seems like something in any 486 i do keeps it from being as speedy in games as other similar benchmark systems. (like getting 30FPS with a DX4 in Doom when people are reporting 45).

Allways had a hunch it was the Diamond Speedstar Pro i have.
Maybe I'll go back and rescue the Matrox for the sake of curiosity?

Reply 12 of 32, by dionb

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Great win for curiosity, although objectively it's only worth the money for that and nothing else.

There are faster options than ET4000 in DOS out there, the ARK 1000VL is legendary, but in DOS (and *only* in DOS, as it's otherwise a primitive unaccelerated beast) the UMC UM85C418F is also a beast, and a cheap one too. DOS VGA performance is purely a matter of how fast bus and chip can fill that frame buffer, so simple, primitive designs well executed beat the hell out of complex accelerators like Matrox' and Weitek's offerings.

Reply 13 of 32, by kixs

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Early Matrox and Weitek usually used OTI chipset for DOS compatibility. For Windows usage their offerings were very competitive and also expensive.

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 14 of 32, by TheMobRules

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zapbuzz wrote on 2021-11-15, 15:47:

If its VLB the best ones have 2mb+ ram and are simply not cirrus logic brand. Everything is better than them.
EISA was just as good. Probably that less distance to the GPU through the bus, and smaller form factor.
VLB is probably best for comms and IDE ports on systems without that stuff. GPU use was really a joke.

Uhh, no. It's the opposite actually... EISA is not much better than regular ISA for graphics cards, while VLB (at least the decent ones) have a similar performance to PCI. Also, Cirrus Logic is not that bad, even though they're not the fastest they are still leaps and bounds over ISA cards in DOS.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-11-15, 15:59:

it seems to be best in class in the metric of longness

That's enough to warrant an "Ultra Vintage!!1! Rare retro gaming card!!" label on eBay and the 3 digit price that goes alongside it. Experiencing "slideshow Doom" in your new 486 is worth every penny 😉

dionb wrote on 2021-11-15, 19:48:

There are faster options than ET4000 in DOS out there, the ARK 1000VL is legendary, but in DOS (and *only* in DOS, as it's otherwise a primitive unaccelerated beast) the UMC UM85C418F is also a beast, and a cheap one too. DOS VGA performance is purely a matter of how fast bus and chip can fill that frame buffer, so simple, primitive designs well executed beat the hell out of complex accelerators like Matrox' and Weitek's offerings.

I would also add cards based on the WD90C33 to the list of fast VLB options that go unnoticed because the Tseng cult deems them unworthy!

Reply 15 of 32, by Claris

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TheMobRules wrote on 2021-11-15, 21:42:
maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-11-15, 15:59:

it seems to be best in class in the metric of longness

That's enough to warrant an "Ultra Vintage!!1! Rare retro gaming card!!" label on eBay and the 3 digit price that goes alongside it. Experiencing "slideshow Doom" in your new 486 is worth every penny 😉

$40 at RE PC? More like...$400 once i take it home and flip it on Ebay. Another retro computer saved! Booyah!

*No jk, I would never do that. Im not that evil. I love all retro pc parts i bring home and let them retire in peace in my gameroom for aslong as they want*

Reply 16 of 32, by Anonymous Coward

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Even if it has shite DOS performance, it's still one of the few 64-bit cards made for VLB, and they're collectable.
I think $40 is a good deal. I'd get it as long as it's not all banged up.

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V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 18 of 32, by dionb

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zapbuzz wrote on 2021-11-16, 00:44:

its a generation of card i would trust in a completed working system and i stand by my word EISA and cirrus

Er...

EISA was a vastly more elegant system than VLB, but in terms of performance (precisely due to missing a lot of that elegance) VLB left it in the dust. For a start, EISA was clocked at 8MHz, so with 32b bus width, its theoretical maximum bandwidth was 32MB/s. Latencies were relatively high, as the bus was intentionally separate from (and generally asynchronous to) the CPU's own bus. VLB on the other hand ran at external CPU frequency, so 25-50MHz (let's take 33MHz as fastest it could generally reliably do without wait states) at the same 32b width, so you could get a theoretical 133MB/s out of it. Also because it was actually the CPU bus itself, latencies were much lower than with EISA. So you could get four times the speed out of VLB compared to EISA. Now, whether the VGA chip could use that extra bandwidth is another matter, but given that DOS is pretty bandwidth (and not much else) constrained in performance, given the same VGA chip (say S3 928 or ATi Mach32) the VLB implementation should perform (much) better than the EISA.

Which then begs the next question: Cirrus and EISA? Which card are you talking about? I'm not aware of any Cirrus Logic EISA cards or indeed chipsets...

Reply 19 of 32, by zapbuzz

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dionb wrote on 2021-11-16, 12:17:
Er... […]
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zapbuzz wrote on 2021-11-16, 00:44:

its a generation of card i would trust in a completed working system and i stand by my word EISA and cirrus

Er...

EISA was a vastly more elegant system than VLB, but in terms of performance (precisely due to missing a lot of that elegance) VLB left it in the dust. For a start, EISA was clocked at 8MHz, so with 32b bus width, its theoretical maximum bandwidth was 32MB/s. Latencies were relatively high, as the bus was intentionally separate from (and generally asynchronous to) the CPU's own bus. VLB on the other hand ran at external CPU frequency, so 25-50MHz (let's take 33MHz as fastest it could generally reliably do without wait states) at the same 32b width, so you could get a theoretical 133MB/s out of it. Also because it was actually the CPU bus itself, latencies were much lower than with EISA. So you could get four times the speed out of VLB compared to EISA. Now, whether the VGA chip could use that extra bandwidth is another matter, but given that DOS is pretty bandwidth (and not much else) constrained in performance, given the same VGA chip (say S3 928 or ATi Mach32) the VLB implementation should perform (much) better than the EISA.

Which then begs the next question: Cirrus and EISA? Which card are you talking about? I'm not aware of any Cirrus Logic EISA cards or indeed chipsets...

I mentioned prior that i don't like cirrus but i like EISA cards more for video than VLB