There's some very low cost ATI Mach 32's at Radwell industrial supplies. I believe the VRAM models are 2MB, which these are by the picture.

https://www.radwell.com/Buy/ATI/ATI/1090018940

Problem is shipping from Radwell can be in the hundreds of $$$/euro.

MikeSG wrote on 2026-04-18, 09:56:

There's some very low cost ATI Mach 32's at Radwell industrial supplies. I believe the VRAM models are 2MB, which these are by the picture.

https://www.radwell.com/Buy/ATI/ATI/1090018940

Problem is shipping from Radwell can be in the hundreds of $$$/euro.

Interesting. I don't see any way to purchase though. If shipping is indeed that much, it negates the low price obviously.

MikeSG wrote on 2026-04-18, 09:56:

There's some very low cost ATI Mach 32's at Radwell industrial supplies. I believe the VRAM models are 2MB, which these are by the picture.

https://www.radwell.com/Buy/ATI/ATI/1090018940

Problem is shipping from Radwell can be in the hundreds of $$$/euro.

Those cards are not listed as in-stock. Go there and it only offers you the ability to request a quote.
https://www.radwell.com/Brand/ATI?TopCategory … CategoryId=6022

Cornerstone had strange 1.25, 2.25 and 4mb isa cards meant for their fixed frequency monitors (many high end multisync will work with these cards anyway if you adapt the connector )

In the rather recent past they sold for rather small amounts because nobody knows that they have vga compatibility (usually) but are otherwise proprietary lugs usually with heavy win 3.1 / NT acceleration features.

No idea if they are still cheap because of obscurity

https://www.ardent-tool.com/video/IA_6091.htm

Find a Trident or Cirrus card with 1mb (loads of those) and with empty/unpopulated dip sockets and then fit the extra chips needed.

512k and 1mb cards were much, much more common than 2mb ISA VGA cards back then.

I don’t think the Trident chips support memory configs above 1MB.

megatron-uk wrote on 2026-04-18, 16:23:

Find a Trident or Cirrus card with 1mb (loads of those) and with empty/unpopulated dip sockets and then fit the extra chips needed.

512k and 1mb cards were much, much more common than 2mb ISA VGA cards back then.

What Cirrus Logic chip supports expandable memory and the higher resolutions that come with that? The only ISA Cirrus card I could find that does 1024x768 16-bit is the CL-GD5434, which is unobtanium.

I think the only way is to just continuously check and jump on opportunities at places other than Ebay.

Qbccd wrote on 2026-04-18, 20:15:

What Cirrus Logic chip supports expandable memory and the higher resolutions that come with that? The only ISA Cirrus card I could find that does 1024x768 16-bit is the CL-GD5434, which is unobtanium.

5428 and 5429 can do 1024 x 768 x 16-bpp, but only interlaced.

Isa bus is too slow for CPU driven 1024x768 at 16-bit, you will need a card with good bitblit driver. Drivers will be only for windows. Windows 95 and above will be too heavy for ISA only platform. Win 3.x is just bad in general 😀 and most of the software for win3 wasnt programmed with either 16bit or high resolution in mind - as in will glitch out due to color depth, will refuse to be maximized, will scale badly.

So the question is why? 😀

Grzyb wrote on 2026-04-18, 20:23:

Qbccd wrote on 2026-04-18, 20:15:

What Cirrus Logic chip supports expandable memory and the higher resolutions that come with that? The only ISA Cirrus card I could find that does 1024x768 16-bit is the CL-GD5434, which is unobtanium.

5428 and 5429 can do 1024 x 768 x 16-bpp, but only interlaced.

This is important, as your LCD monitor may not be willing to display it.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-04-19, 02:59:

Isa bus is too slow for CPU driven 1024x768 at 16-bit, you will need a card with good bitblit driver. Drivers will be only for windows. Windows 95 and above will be too heavy for ISA only platform. Win 3.x is just bad in general 😀 and most of the software for win3 wasnt programmed with either 16bit or high resolution in mind - as in will glitch out due to color depth, will refuse to be maximized, will scale badly.

So the question is why? 😀

386's with a 486 upgrade chip run Win95 fine, but I'd say 486's with VLB have the same problem. Rarity in finding a 2MB+ card.

cyclone3d wrote on 2026-04-18, 15:21:

Those cards are not listed as in-stock. Go there and it only offers you the ability to request a quote.
https://www.radwell.com/Brand/ATI?TopCategory … CategoryId=6022

This is another link for the same Mach 32 ISA cards.. new $223 USD + postage
https://www.radwell.com/Buy/ATI/ATI/1021891240

The top three "used" options are all 'Request A Quote'. They may actually be there but don't use a fixed availability on the website. For me the shipping is the same cost as the card though.

Taking a card and expanding its VRAM won't necessarilly work. The DAC must be able to support high-color too or else you will get garbage screen in Windows. The Diamond Speedstar 24x (WDC chipset) is a good ISA SVGA card that handles 16M at 640x480 and 32K high-color on 800x600. It is not that cheap though.
I have one installed in my 386 for CorelDraw 3. Gets the job done.

ET4000/W32i would be a good option for 1024 x 768 x 16-bpp... but probably not cheap, either.
Hercules Dynamite Pro ISA 2MB memory upgrade

Yeah, I definitely don't want interlaced, should have specified.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-04-19, 02:59:

Isa bus is too slow for CPU driven 1024x768 at 16-bit, you will need a card with good bitblit driver. Drivers will be only for windows. Windows 95 and above will be too heavy for ISA only platform. Win 3.x is just bad in general 😀 and most of the software for win3 wasnt programmed with either 16bit or high resolution in mind - as in will glitch out due to color depth, will refuse to be maximized, will scale badly.

So the question is why? 😀

Just because I want 1024x768 at more than 256 colors in Windows 9x, and the board only has 16-bit ISA, and it's a "nostalgic" build, so I don't want to swap the board haha.

I almost bought a CL-GD542x, but 800x600 is so tiny... To me 1024x768 is the minimum acceptable for desktop work. And 256 colors sucks, I was limited to that as a child in the 90s and I have PTSD. 😂

The CL 5434 is the card you want. It does 2MB and 2D acceleration. The acceleration bit is important for such a large framebuffer on ISA bus.

What are you running Windows 9x on that only has an ISA bus? Such a system is not well suited to 9x in the first place.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2026-04-19, 14:51:

What are you running Windows 9x on that only has an ISA bus? Such a system is not well suited to 9x in the first place.

It's a variation of an ultimate 486, but with the limitation of being ISA-only... So you can do Am5x86 133MHz, 32MB of RAM. With the PicoGUS, you can use a USB mouse.

st31276a wrote on 2026-04-19, 14:03:

The CL 5434 is the card you want. It does 2MB and 2D acceleration. The acceleration bit is important for such a large framebuffer on ISA bus.

You're right, that's the one. It does 2D acceleration like DirectDraw, which also helps in 2D games. I'm hoping that if I'm patient, I can find one for under $200. It really feels like in the last 2 years or so prices of rare retro gear have just exploded into ridiculous levels.

I'm also partial to CL because it's what I had as a child. I could never figure out what model though, I know it could do up to 1024x768 (could have been interlaced), but only 256 colors at all resolutions. And it wasn't a CL-GD5420 because it was from 1990-91 and it was a high-end card at the time that my dad bought for publishing work.

st31276a wrote on 2026-04-19, 14:03:

The CL 5434 is the card you want. It does 2MB and 2D acceleration. The acceleration bit is important for such a large framebuffer on ISA bus.

Doesn't do VRAM though, only DRAM. I don't think any of the Cirrus Logic chips did.

For DOS, VRAM actually performs worse than DRAM, but here we're talking Windows acceleration and that's where dual-ported VRAM shines. As for an ISA card with 2MB of it... now that's a challenge.

We can have very theoretical discussions about what would be best in a hypothetical situation where we can get our hands on any given card, but realistically, "whichever one you can find for an acceptable price" would be my suggestion. The already mentioned ATi Graphics Ultra Pro (=Mach32 chip) would probably be best-known, but I suspect that various S3 928-based cards might be more common, things like the Diamond Stealth Pro, Spea/Video 7 Mercury or Mercury Pro (with 4MB...) or the Miro miroCrystal 24S ISA. The only ISA card with 2MB VRAM I personally came across was an Artist Graphics Winsprint 1000, a much more obscure card and chipset (Artist's own GA123), with the added curiosity of a 72p SIMM slot for extra DRAM for the graphics processor. It has Win9x drivers - but sadly my card was dead.