in DOS, at least in PCI, nothing beats the ark2000, in my cyrix 5x86 and pentium 200, the difference with next faster i have, a S3 2mb, is abismal
Even emulators like callus or kgen , in P200 with S3 i need some frameskip, with ark2000 no, 60fps, is brutal
Yes an ARK2000 was the fastest 2D DOS card I ever came across, and more compatible than Matrox or Tseng Labs too. Setting up the frame buffer important for VESA modes of course.
Life? Don't talk to me about life.
^ yup.
ARK are best pure DOS chips, in a combination of speed and compatibility. Also the cards themselves are marketed towards games and tend to have better than average picture output.
If you want these cards today ARK1000 is a better choice due to still being cheap. A 1MB card is plenty for DOS VGA.
I have three shoe boxes worth of cards and this is the one I'm using on the DOS PC.
A 4MB ARK2000 could be interesting for a Pentium II/III SVGA DOS build.
I doubt it's the fastest card outside VGA.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-19, 08:19:Yes, it's very likely that those chips are just 5429 with some minor tweaks to DAC (no interlaced mode for 1024x768) and PCI bus, but with no performance to back that up.
There was a slight improvement in stability for some 2d acceleration functions and a better tolerance of bus speeds in excess of 33Mhz vs the 5428 as well as that extra mode.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Gotta say it though. Depends a lot on what you are putting one in.
386 max out with pretty much any of the top half ISA chipsets. As do single clocked 486 in the main. Takes DX2/4 to start separating the top few, then Pentium+ to spread them out more.
There is also some "What CPU optimisations does the BIOS have?" considerations on slower machines and the odd card or two that "flies" on a lower spec machine in comparison to how it's bottom of the pack on a Pentium.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-25, 14:43:I doubt it's the fastest card outside VGA.
OP should be more precise and ask about VGA or Windows accelerators. They're different things.
ARK is faster than most PCI age Windows accelerators too.
the ark2000 may be fast, due to ark1000's fame among 32bit cards. but ark2000 is so rare, with the lacking of datasheet, makes me doubt whether 4mb cards exist, which is required to enter this election.
same for the oak61107/61111.
Ark 2000 was an obscure budget chip which just so happened to nail VGA and Mode X (supposedly), when it was already mostly irrelevant. All cards I saw with this chip were only 2 Mb too.
Also apparently only Ark 2000MT has EDO memory, although it doesn't indicate performance outright, like I've outlined with superclocked Trio64 supporting only FPM.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
IIRC software renderers don't do many colors, like 256 or so. So if the high res requirement is for that on fast fast CPU, then 1MB cards are fine even. A lot of 97ish games will dump your windows color depth, maybe insist on lower res also. I don't even remember being offered better than 800x600 for software rendering of things that are D3D etc, I mean DN3D and quake go high but they were designed around software rendering.
Anyway, seeming a bit like a game of what rock crawling tires are best for my formula one car.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Archimedean Dynasty did software 640x480 16-bit color in 1996 mocking Quake.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
I should have been clearer, was thinking windows software renderers for games designed around 3D APIs, with software rendering tagged on for the poors. Rather than games that are primarily software rendered but have add-on 3D API modes.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
A bunch of 2D strategies with 16-bit color. KKND2 for example. Forsaken has 16-bit color software render and that's what I used to bench.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-28, 10:29:Ark 2000 was an obscure budget chip which just so happened to nail VGA and Mode X (supposedly), when it was already mostly irrelevant. All cards I saw with this chip were only 2 Mb too.
Also apparently only Ark 2000MT has EDO memory, although it doesn't indicate performance outright, like I've outlined with superclocked Trio64 supporting only FPM.
I only use dos+win3.1, then all my test are in DOS, but even in windows 95, the difference is brutal. For example, emulators like Gens in pentium 200 are much faster than using the fastest S3 Virge i have, same happen neoragex, with virge i need to use 11khz and some frameskip, with ark i can even go to 22khz without frameskipping
The only card i have is fast like ark2000 is a riva128 but this one is agp
One thing, ark2000 with 1mb is much slower than 2mb, i read than 1mb = 32bit, 2mb 0 64 = bits
theelf wrote on 2025-08-28, 18:04:For example, emulators like Gens in pentium 200 are much faster than using the fastest S3 Virge i have, same happen neoragex, with virge i need to use 11khz and some frameskip, with ark i can even go to 22khz without frameskipping
Majority of noname Virge cards are crap without tweaking, so it's not really that surprising.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-28, 19:07:theelf wrote on 2025-08-28, 18:04:For example, emulators like Gens in pentium 200 are much faster than using the fastest S3 Virge i have, same happen neoragex, with virge i need to use 11khz and some frameskip, with ark i can even go to 22khz without frameskipping
Majority of noname Virge cards are crap without tweaking, so it's not really that surprising.
Na, i tested many S3 cards, nothing even close to ark, i was in a quest of fastest 5x86 i can build with stuff in my home, and tested more than 40+ different video cards, and half of them s3. Then when i build a socket 7, did same, and ark still wins
BitWrangler wrote on 2025-08-25, 14:47:The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-19, 08:19:Yes, it's very likely that those chips are just 5429 with some minor tweaks to DAC (no interlaced mode for 1024x768) and PCI bus, but with no performance to back that up.
There was a slight improvement in stability for some 2d acceleration functions and a better tolerance of bus speeds in excess of 33Mhz vs the 5428 as well as that extra mode.
just a minute, if the 54m30 is just a slightly updated 5429 to be pci compatible, could it have only 16 bit data bus like the 542x series?
but it remains unconfirmed due to lack of datasheet, maybe one can find out with ctcm or x-vesa.
noshutdown wrote on 2025-08-29, 03:19:BitWrangler wrote on 2025-08-25, 14:47:The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-08-19, 08:19:Yes, it's very likely that those chips are just 5429 with some minor tweaks to DAC (no interlaced mode for 1024x768) and PCI bus, but with no performance to back that up.
There was a slight improvement in stability for some 2d acceleration functions and a better tolerance of bus speeds in excess of 33Mhz vs the 5428 as well as that extra mode.
just a minute, if the 54m30 is just a slightly updated 5429 to be pci compatible, could it have only 16 bit data bus like the 542x series?
but it remains unconfirmed due to lack of datasheet, maybe one can find out with ctcm or x-vesa.
If that is not the case, it certainly got implemented as 16bit only on many cheap cards. The PCI ones I have come across are terrible, beaten by 5429 VLB cards. Very different from '34 and '36 for sure, and excluded from everything that claims to pertain to GD543x
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
When I built computers in the shop back in those days there were people that either had or didn't have money for a "Windows graphics card". Those that didn't just bought Trident TVGA9000i. People/companies that had money had a specific application in mind, we served offices and bueraus alike and sold many different great VLBs and PCIs. In the PCI age, when Windows 95 became the norm S3 Trio was the Trident TVGA and Matrox became the go-to solution for most of our well off clients. People didn't build computers for gaming, as in I've never ever heard anyone entering any shop at any time and asking for a platform to be specifically good for DOS games. People did not know VGA incompatibilities. Every computer was quirky, shaking screen in some DOS game was seen as just that.
So every market/country is different and I can't be sure "DOS gaming" was actually not a thing back in the day. But it seems it wasn't therefore ARK performance in this area may be consequential. It may be due to design lineage which has proper IBM VGA implementation on the bottom.
The problem now is the price of ARK2000PV today, this price puts it in another gen to ARK1000PV, but is merely an iterative upgrade. In VESA/SVGA direction. And if you go to that place, you need a MMX/P2, where ARK2000PV will be a bottleneck. In that place you can already use Geforce.
Also ARK chips have very quirky VESA implementation, they are nigh impossible to functionally use on X11 for instance, getting a single mode or two working is a win.
I know this is purely theoretical thread but if anyone would be asking, don't buy ARK2000PV at these prices, get ARK1000PV, for a 486/Pentium PCI platform dedicated to <1996 DOS gaming. It's N times cheaper, you lose nothing, and seller mafia doesn't get their profits. If you really really want to mix VESA in there then just buy S3.
I second the recommendation with ARK1000PV. in our CRT Terminator tests, ARK1000PV has been one of the most compatible and capable graphics adapters that we've seen: https://oummg.com/manual/adapters.html . It "maxes out" Doom timedemo as well (i.e. gets the same best score on the test system as many other PCI cards), so performance is great as well.
Both compatible and fast: not something that Tseng ET4000/6000 was ever able to do.
