CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-03, 15:52:

I open this thread, because a lot of old graphics cards (I am talking here mainly about vesa local bus ones) can be upgraded fro […]
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I open this thread, because a lot of old graphics cards (I am talking here mainly about vesa local bus ones) can be upgraded from 1MB to 2MB RAM.
Is it useful to upgrade them?

Cirrus Logic 542x series - the most common vesa local bus graphics.
additional resolutions with 2MB? No, only interlaced ones.
speed gain? No.
useless

Ark logic 1000VL cards - late chipset which is very fast under DOS.
additional resolutions with 2MB? At least with my card => no. No speed gain. useless.

Trident 9440 cards - also good speed under DOS.
I have such a card and upgraded it to 2 MB. Will downgrade and compare, but I guess that the upgrade was useless.

Tseng ET4000 W32i and W32p
I had a W32i card in the past. There is a clear speed gain with 2MB. Not sure about additional modes, I guess it depends on the RAMDAC.

S3 864, S3 868, S3 Trio64
No discussion here, for 64 bit access 2MB are needed. I have a card with the S3 868 that came with 2MB soldered.

S3 Trio 32
I don't have such a card, most cards were made with 1MB only. So maybe the upgrade is useless here, too.

ALI ALG2228
I never had such a card, but I would like to know about it. Since they were all produced with 1MB only (as far as I know), I guess that the upgrade is useless. If somebody can tell exactly, it would be great.

Ati Mach 32
At least for VRAM based cards (which usually have a 135MHz RAMDAC), there are additional modes - resolutions.
I have a 2MB VRAM card (soldered in, so no upgrade / downgrade).

Chips F64300 cards
I have such a card: I upgraded it from 1MB to 2MB.
Also there is a special feature called "XRAM" with 2 DRAM sockets for 256Kx4 chips, which shall work as a cache. for 1MB config one dram chips is needed, for 2MB both.
I have no clue if the upgrade to 2MB was useful, I will test it, when I have time. Also don't know about the DRAM cache. It should speed up graphics under Windows.

I know that a lot of threads were written about that topics, but I think it is nice to have a summary for the most common chipsets.
Also some cards have the possibiliy to be upgraded to 4MB or even 8MB, but those are rare and uncommon.

So I checked the Trident 9440 now in detail.
I first posted about this card (and also about the Asus SV2GX4) here:
Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations
You can see in the picture that I had upgraded the card to 2MB.

So my plan was the following:
Run the usual tests like in this thread
Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

with 2MB equipped. For both DOS and Windows.
For Windows check available resolutions (and refresh rates).
Then remove 1MB and do the same.

The test system: Asus SV2GX4 Rev.2.0. Amd Am5x86 @ 160MHz. 1 MB L2 Cache. 64MB RAM. Vesa local bus Trident 9440 card.
The trident card was jumpered to zero wait states. Asus board set to T2 and Transparent.

One small remark at the very beginning: I fucking hate this card: The position on the screen always changes on my Eizo TFT, when switching from text mode to 320x200 and back. So running Phils benchmark suite is unpleasant, it uses text mode, 320x200 and 640x480. Second and even more important: The quality of the video output is very poor.

So first the DOS benchmarks:

13D Bench 1.0:  00.00
23D Bench 1.0c: 98.7
3Chris:         105.9 / 63.5fps
4Chris 640x480: 29.6 / 17.7fps
5PCP:           26.7
6PCP 640x480:   11.0
7Doom min:      406 realtics
8Doom max:      1177 realtics
9Quake low:     17.6
10Wolf 3D:       139.2
113DS R3 chevy:  109sec

The old version of 3dbench shows zero, seems to be the case when the value is too high. Otherwise you can see that the values are good. Especially high are Chris 640x480, Doom max and Wolf 3D.
I should mention that one Quake run did not work, it ended too early. I thought it is not a problem and continued with Windows.

I switched to Windows 98SE and the desaster started.
I searched for new hardware, Windows 98SE detected Trident Super VGA and showed 1MB. So a good starting point (?)
But the system was not stable at all. Changing all the Bios options to slower values did not help.
I found out that I have to change this wait state jumper on the card. Disappointing.

So then I wanted to load a fitting driver (which detects 2MB, and allows higher resolutions).
No dice. I remember that before I used the Windows 98SE built driver for PCI Trident 9440. When I used this driver, I was unable to switch to another graphics mode, I was stuck at 640x480 and 16 colours 😁
After reading some posts on Vogons, I found that the windows driver seems to use a frame buffer below 64MB. Omg. So yes, I reduced the RAM to 32MB and then the driver worked without any problem, I could switch to higher modes, like 800x600 16bit.

Finally I was able to run the 2 Windows benchmarks with 800x600 16 bit colours

1Wintune 2.0 graphics:               3115 KPixel/sec
2Lightwave 3D rendering space/blade: 1457sec

The Wintune value is really super low. So the card or the driver really sucks under Windows. Espcially the text scroll test was very slow.
Even when in driver info there was shown 2MB: Max for 800x600: 16bit. 1024x768 16bit is only interlaced and 1280x1024 8 bit is only interlaced, too. Expected, but still disappointing.

Good so because I changed the jumper on the card, I should repeat the DOS tests.

13D Bench 1.0:  90.9
23D Bench 1.0c: 88.3
3Chris:         97.2 / 58.3fps
4Chris 640x480: 26.8 / 16.1fps
5PCP:           25.9
6PCP 640x480:   10.5
7Doom min:      414 realtics
8Doom max:      1299 realtics
9Quake low:     17.3
10Wolf 3D:       120.6
113DS R3 chevy:  109sec

Values are still good, but some are significantly lower like Wolf 3D from 139.2 to 120.6.

OK, after that I shut down the system and removed the additional MB. Yay.

I repeated all the Dos tests (no more strange things with Quake) aaaannnnnddddddd: All values are still the same.

Back to Windows 98SE, both benchmarks Wintune and Lightwave are still the same.
The driver shows now 1MB and the two interlace modes are no more here. THAT'S IT.

So the major difference between 2MB config and 1MB config is the startup screen:

The card keeps the second megabyte warm. That's it. I assume nobody really wants to use the 2 additional interlaced modes.
So the situation is pretty similar to Cirrus 542x cards and Ark 1000 cards. Do not upgrade them to 2MB.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention: I will never use this card in a real system. As already mentioned the picture quality is very poor, and the Windows performance is horrible.

I couldn't get certain vesa modes on ark VL1000 without upgrading to 2mb. Stargunner wouldn't run without it.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-23, 22:44:

Wintune 2.0 graphics: 3115 KPixel/sec
Lightwave 3D rendering space/blade: 1457sec

Afaik wintune is synthetic and measures blitting speed so will only show difference when more ram means higher bandwidth, and Lightwave doenst use any acceleration?
Difference between 1 and 2 MB or video ram could be visible in DirectDraw games. Something like Starcraft, sadly this game doesnt display fps so we would need another third party program to count frames.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-23, 22:44:

I forgot to mention: I will never use this card in a real system. As already mentioned the picture quality is very poor, and the Windows performance is horrible.

What is bad about the picture quality? Too dim? Bad colors? Blurry? LCD conversion "Jail bars" ?

Warlord wrote on 2023-08-23, 23:21:

I couldn't get certain vesa modes on ark VL1000 without upgrading to 2mb. Stargunner wouldn't run without it.

Interesting. May I ask on which hardware do you run dos stargunner? Am5x86 is strong enough?

douglar wrote on 2023-08-24, 01:49:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-23, 22:44:

I forgot to mention: I will never use this card in a real system. As already mentioned the picture quality is very poor, and the Windows performance is horrible.

What is bad about the picture quality? Too dim? Bad colors? Blurry? LCD conversion "Jail bars" ?

It is both blurry (espcially after a mode switch, maybe can be fixed again with adjust position - but it is always blurry, sometimes more, sometimes less) and jail bars.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-08-24, 01:48:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-23, 22:44:

Wintune 2.0 graphics: 3115 KPixel/sec
Lightwave 3D rendering space/blade: 1457sec

Afaik wintune is synthetic and measures blitting speed so will only show difference when more ram means higher bandwidth, and Lightwave doenst use any acceleration?
Difference between 1 and 2 MB or video ram could be visible in DirectDraw games. Something like Starcraft, sadly this game doesnt display fps so we would need another third party program to count frames.

Yes, lightwave 3D is not really a speed test for graphics, it is more a performance test of the system (CPU, cache, RAM) and a stability test.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-24, 06:01:

Warlord wrote on 2023-08-23, 23:21:

I couldn't get certain vesa modes on ark VL1000 without upgrading to 2mb. Stargunner wouldn't run without it.

Interesting. May I ask on which hardware do you run dos stargunner? Am5x86 is strong enough?

sure why not? Now that I remember it wasn't an issue with stargunner it was a problem with univibe not giving me vesamodes.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-23, 22:44:

So I checked the Trident 9440 now in detail. I first posted about this card (and also about the Asus SV2GX4) here: Re: 3 (+3 mo […]
Show full quote

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-08-03, 15:52:

I open this thread, because a lot of old graphics cards (I am talking here mainly about vesa local bus ones) can be upgraded fro […]
Show full quote

I open this thread, because a lot of old graphics cards (I am talking here mainly about vesa local bus ones) can be upgraded from 1MB to 2MB RAM.
Is it useful to upgrade them?

Cirrus Logic 542x series - the most common vesa local bus graphics.
additional resolutions with 2MB? No, only interlaced ones.
speed gain? No.
useless

Ark logic 1000VL cards - late chipset which is very fast under DOS.
additional resolutions with 2MB? At least with my card => no. No speed gain. useless.

Trident 9440 cards - also good speed under DOS.
I have such a card and upgraded it to 2 MB. Will downgrade and compare, but I guess that the upgrade was useless.

Tseng ET4000 W32i and W32p
I had a W32i card in the past. There is a clear speed gain with 2MB. Not sure about additional modes, I guess it depends on the RAMDAC.

S3 864, S3 868, S3 Trio64
No discussion here, for 64 bit access 2MB are needed. I have a card with the S3 868 that came with 2MB soldered.

S3 Trio 32
I don't have such a card, most cards were made with 1MB only. So maybe the upgrade is useless here, too.

ALI ALG2228
I never had such a card, but I would like to know about it. Since they were all produced with 1MB only (as far as I know), I guess that the upgrade is useless. If somebody can tell exactly, it would be great.

Ati Mach 32
At least for VRAM based cards (which usually have a 135MHz RAMDAC), there are additional modes - resolutions.
I have a 2MB VRAM card (soldered in, so no upgrade / downgrade).

Chips F64300 cards
I have such a card: I upgraded it from 1MB to 2MB.
Also there is a special feature called "XRAM" with 2 DRAM sockets for 256Kx4 chips, which shall work as a cache. for 1MB config one dram chips is needed, for 2MB both.
I have no clue if the upgrade to 2MB was useful, I will test it, when I have time. Also don't know about the DRAM cache. It should speed up graphics under Windows.

I know that a lot of threads were written about that topics, but I think it is nice to have a summary for the most common chipsets.
Also some cards have the possibiliy to be upgraded to 4MB or even 8MB, but those are rare and uncommon.

So I checked the Trident 9440 now in detail.
I first posted about this card (and also about the Asus SV2GX4) here:
Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations
You can see in the picture that I had upgraded the card to 2MB.

So my plan was the following:
Run the usual tests like in this thread
Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

with 2MB equipped. For both DOS and Windows.
For Windows check available resolutions (and refresh rates).
Then remove 1MB and do the same.

The test system: Asus SV2GX4 Rev.2.0. Amd Am5x86 @ 160MHz. 1 MB L2 Cache. 64MB RAM. Vesa local bus Trident 9440 card.
The trident card was jumpered to zero wait states. Asus board set to T2 and Transparent.

One small remark at the very beginning: I fucking hate this card: The position on the screen always changes on my Eizo TFT, when switching from text mode to 320x200 and back. So running Phils benchmark suite is unpleasant, it uses text mode, 320x200 and 640x480. Second and even more important: The quality of the video output is very poor.

So first the DOS benchmarks:

Copy code to clipboard

13D Bench 1.0:  00.00
23D Bench 1.0c: 98.7
3Chris:         105.9 / 63.5fps
4Chris 640x480: 29.6 / 17.7fps
5PCP:           26.7
6PCP 640x480:   11.0
7Doom min:      406 realtics
8Doom max:      1177 realtics
9Quake low:     17.6
10Wolf 3D:       139.2
113DS R3 chevy:  109sec

The old version of 3dbench shows zero, seems to be the case when the value is too high. Otherwise you can see that the values are good. Especially high are Chris 640x480, Doom max and Wolf 3D.
I should mention that one Quake run did not work, it ended too early. I thought it is not a problem and continued with Windows.

I switched to Windows 98SE and the desaster started.
I searched for new hardware, Windows 98SE detected Trident Super VGA and showed 1MB. So a good starting point (?)
But the system was not stable at all. Changing all the Bios options to slower values did not help.
I found out that I have to change this wait state jumper on the card. Disappointing.

So then I wanted to load a fitting driver (which detects 2MB, and allows higher resolutions).
No dice. I remember that before I used the Windows 98SE built driver for PCI Trident 9440. When I used this driver, I was unable to switch to another graphics mode, I was stuck at 640x480 and 16 colours 😁
After reading some posts on Vogons, I found that the windows driver seems to use a frame buffer below 64MB. Omg. So yes, I reduced the RAM to 32MB and then the driver worked without any problem, I could switch to higher modes, like 800x600 16bit.

Finally I was able to run the 2 Windows benchmarks with 800x600 16 bit colours

Copy code to clipboard

1Wintune 2.0 graphics:               3115 KPixel/sec
2Lightwave 3D rendering space/blade: 1457sec

The Wintune value is really super low. So the card or the driver really sucks under Windows. Espcially the text scroll test was very slow.
Even when in driver info there was shown 2MB: Max for 800x600: 16bit. 1024x768 16bit is only interlaced and 1280x1024 8 bit is only interlaced, too. Expected, but still disappointing.

Good so because I changed the jumper on the card, I should repeat the DOS tests.

Copy code to clipboard

13D Bench 1.0:  90.9
23D Bench 1.0c: 88.3
3Chris:         97.2 / 58.3fps
4Chris 640x480: 26.8 / 16.1fps
5PCP:           25.9
6PCP 640x480:   10.5
7Doom min:      414 realtics
8Doom max:      1299 realtics
9Quake low:     17.3
10Wolf 3D:       120.6
113DS R3 chevy:  109sec

Values are still good, but some are significantly lower like Wolf 3D from 139.2 to 120.6.

OK, after that I shut down the system and removed the additional MB. Yay. PXL_20230823_210152344.jpg

I repeated all the Dos tests (no more strange things with Quake) aaaannnnnddddddd: All values are still the same.

Back to Windows 98SE, both benchmarks Wintune and Lightwave are still the same.
The driver shows now 1MB and the two interlace modes are no more here. THAT'S IT.

So the major difference between 2MB config and 1MB config is the startup screen: PXL_20230823_201733940.jpg PXL_20230823_200546225.jpg

The card keeps the second megabyte warm. That's it. I assume nobody really wants to use the 2 additional interlaced modes.
So the situation is pretty similar to Cirrus 542x cards and Ark 1000 cards. Do not upgrade them to 2MB.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention: I will never use this card in a real system. As already mentioned the picture quality is very poor, and the Windows performance is horrible.

Another user confirmed that for Trident TGUI9440AGi 2MB of graphics memory is useless.
It was for a PCI variant, but same outcome => no additional useful modes. With useful I mean non interlaced modes.
Re: Bad luck with ebay video cards, asking for advice

Are there any differences between the plain 9440 and AGi versions?
The integrated RAMDAC on the 9440 is 108MHz, so you'd think the second megabyte could actually do something useful.

Not sure why people expect video ram to increase performance. It's just frame buffer which only gives you higher resolutions/bit depths. Unless the chipset does memory interleaving of some kind to effectively widen the bus. I only know a handful of chipset families that do this.

kingcake wrote on 2024-02-03, 01:14:

Not sure why people expect video ram to increase performance. It's just frame buffer which only gives you higher resolutions/bit depths. Unless the chipset does memory interleaving of some kind to effectively widen the bus. I only know a handful of chipset families that do this.

Yes. But the point of this thread is that on some cards (Cirrus 542x, Trident 9440) you don't even get higher resolution (excluding interlaced modes) / higher colour depths. Also very little gain on Ark 1000. On Ark 1000 there are the additional modes 800x600 24bit and 1280x1024 256 colours, but you need a higher clock, probably faster ram and a modified bios AND a 110MHz RAMDAC. Moreover the 800x600 24 bit mode is slow, even when you have the maximum clock of 80MHz.

kingcake wrote on 2024-02-03, 01:14:

Not sure why people expect video ram to increase performance. It's just frame buffer which only gives you higher resolutions/bit depths. Unless the chipset does memory interleaving of some kind to effectively widen the bus. I only know a handful of chipset families that do this.

Video memory size can affect the bus width even without interleaving, as some graphics chips can operate with reduced bus width. Nearly all VLB graphics cards operate using memory chips with 256K addresses. If you have 256KB, that's just 8 bits per addresses, resulting in a bus width 8 bits. At 512KB, that's 16 bits per address and 1MB results in 32 bits per address. Most common graphics chips utilize a bus width of 32 bits, so everything in excess of 1MB will just add extra banks, but does not increase bus width. As you correctly identified, there are only a handful of chips that can make use of bank interleaving (like the Tseng ET4000/W32i or W32p) or have an optional bus width of 64 bits (like the Trio64). These cards can get performance benefits from 2MB RAM. On the other hand, the 64 bit bus is not necessarily utilized by DOS games, especially games running in VGA-compatible modes. You get more profit from 64 bits when the accelerator is used, i.e. in Windows.

Another good early SVGA chipset (I think only for VLB?)
is WD90C33
Almost all cards come with factory high speed 45ns DRAMs.
Confusingly most of those cards can be upgraded to 2MB, which seems weird, when there is only a 80MHz RAMDAC on the board.

Re: WD Paradise VLBUS3300
Maybe user Douglas does the upgrade, then he can tell about it.

When I am able to acquire such a board, I will test it, because I have spare 8 times V53C104HP45 chips. I mean in case the board allows for this upgrade option.

I can watch a Video CD Movie on my 486 computer with CL-5429 VLB video card with 2mb ram
I have a 486dx4-100 CPU with 16mb of 30-pin Parity RAM
8x CDROM

Movie playback is Very Good. NOT Choppy.

Link: Re: 486 Multimedia dream build ( 1993/94 ).

I was looking at reviews of the Hercules Graphite Pro VL vs the Orchid Celsius and the primary difference is the Orchid 2 MB RAM. I figure upgrading the memory would improve the IIT AGX-015 from a low-middle card to acceptable.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-02-03, 20:30:

I can watch a Video CD Movie on my 486 computer with CL-5429 VLB video card with 2mb ram I have a 486dx4-100 CPU with 16mb of 30 […]
Show full quote

I can watch a Video CD Movie on my 486 computer with CL-5429 VLB video card with 2mb ram
I have a 486dx4-100 CPU with 16mb of 30-pin Parity RAM
8x CDROM

Movie playback is Very Good. NOT Choppy.

Link: Re: 486 Multimedia dream build ( 1993/94 ).

You put the wrong RAMs into those sockets, it should be FPM not EDO. But it does not matter obviously.
So you can test by yourself, if you are interested:
Remove those upgrade RAMs and then test again. Whatever.
"Movie playback is Very Good. NOT Choppy." It will be 100% the same with our without the additional megabyte.
EDIT:
Nevertheless you seem to have one of the best 542x cards that exist:
5429 chip and 45ns RAM.

demiurge wrote on 2024-02-03, 20:51:

I was looking at reviews of the Hercules Graphite Pro VL vs the Orchid Celsius and the primary difference is the Orchid 2 MB RAM. I figure upgrading the memory would improve the IIT AGX-015 from a low-middle card to acceptable.

Unfortunately I never owned such cards. The Hercules Graphite Pro VL was super expensive when it came out. As far as I know both are VRAM cards, so 2 MB should be good (and useful of course!) in theory. But the IIT chipsets were somehow not best performing chipsets. Maybe an search on Vogons will bring up some results.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2024-02-03, 23:04:

You put the wrong RAMs into those sockets, it should be FPM not EDO. But it does not matter obviously. So you can test by yourse […]
Show full quote

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-02-03, 20:30:

I can watch a Video CD Movie on my 486 computer with CL-5429 VLB video card with 2mb ram I have a 486dx4-100 CPU with 16mb of 30 […]
Show full quote

I can watch a Video CD Movie on my 486 computer with CL-5429 VLB video card with 2mb ram
I have a 486dx4-100 CPU with 16mb of 30-pin Parity RAM
8x CDROM

Movie playback is Very Good. NOT Choppy.

Link: Re: 486 Multimedia dream build ( 1993/94 ).

You put the wrong RAMs into those sockets, it should be FPM not EDO. But it does not matter obviously.
So you can test by yourself, if you are interested:
Remove those upgrade RAMs and then test again. Whatever.
"Movie playback is Very Good. NOT Choppy." It will be 100% the same with our without the additional megabyte.
EDIT:
Nevertheless you seem to have one of the best 542x cards that exist:
5429 chip and 45ns RAM.

Well that card does recognize 2mb and it works fine. I looked up the specs on this DRAM chip and it will work fine.
I know the chip reads 100mhz but it can accelerate faster.