GeorgeMan wrote:

386SX wrote:

GeorgeMan wrote:

Wait states should be 0-0 if they work good. 😀

i think it hang at boot with 0 but i try again. 😀

The lower, the better. 😀
This setting does make a difference.

Today I should get my 16MB 60ns 30pin ram... so I'm going to push the hell out of these ram. 😁

You can set CLK/4 or maybe even CLK/3. You'll see if system boots and then if there are any artifacts in games, freezes...

Probably the Cirrus Logic 5434 is the latest and maybe the fastest in DOS & Windows. I'll try when it arrives (eta 7days). Although I'm still missing some good ISA cards Tseng ET4000/w32, WD90C31... to do the proper testing.

Ram won't do much difference in general performance. Only in Windows.

kixs wrote:

You can set CLK/4 or maybe even CLK/3. You'll see if system boots and then if there are any artifacts in games, freezes...

Probably the Cirrus Logic 5434 is the latest and maybe the fastest in DOS & Windows. I'll try when it arrives (eta 7days). Although I'm still missing some good ISA cards Tseng ET4000/w32, WD90C31... to do the proper testing.

Ram won't do much difference in general performance. Only in Windows.

I've tested yesterday a Cirrus Logic 54M30 1MB but on PCI bus.. nice 2D quality anyway.

386SX wrote:

idspispopd wrote:

386SX wrote:

And what about the WDC alternative to the ET4000? Anyone tried the BitBLT accelerated version WD90C31 if existed on ISA?

We had a Paradise WD90C31 card in a 386DX40. The card was very fast in DOS and had decent GUI acceleration for Windows 3.x.
I overclocked the ISA bus, too. I think the default was CLK2IN/10 which would mean 8MHz, everything worked fine at CLK2IN/6 = 13.3MHz.

Well the only option I've seen with that name is with CLK/5.. but I've to read better the bios option..

But at the end, not talking only about the speed that I understand were already similar and at the top of the isa possibilities, which was the "most recent" and "most featured" both DOS and Win capable highend chipset mounted on an ISA board? Talking about the chip model itself. I've seen that there're WD90Cxx higher than 31. And I've read somewhere of also some Virge rare ISA board...

CLK/5 should be the same as CLK2IN/10. CLK is 40MHz with a DX40, 40 MHz/5 = 8MHz. CLK2IN is twice the system clock, so 80 MHz/10 = 8MHz. If you have CLK/4 and CLK/3 you can try those.
I think there was a thread about late ISA video cards. WD90C33 supports VLB so I'm not sure it was ever put on ISA cards.
See also VGA Legacy (I think I already mentioned the site here or in another thread of yours):
Graphical overview of many chips (no information about ISA/VLB/PCI, though): http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/doc/historysm.png
Some Benchmarks (ISA/PCI information is given, no VLB cards): http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/benchmarks

Keep in mind that ET4000/AX is from 1989 and WD90C31 from 1992.
There are some S3 ISA cards. I don't think you would have to use Virge for optimum performance with an ISA card, those cards with 1 or 2MB should be fine.
There are also some ATI Mach32 ISA cards with 4MB, but those are quite rare.

I have a 2meg S3 928 ISA card but I haven't tested it yet but I don't expect any difference between the other ISA cards.

On my 386-DX40 I saw no difference between the ET4000/5434 in dos, IMO their probably is next to no difference in dos between all the later ISA cards but I think Matrox cards sucked in DOS, one user in here purchased an ISA Matrox Impression which had basic 3D acceleration but obviously useless on a 386.

As to your benchmarks you should be hitting 16-17fps on 3Dbench with the 386 when its running well, your speedsys CPU score is good, I hit 4.4fps in svga mode on the PCPbench with a 5434.

I got 15.0fps and 9.29 speedsys with 0-2 read write in bios only but with some artifact...

with 0-1 it hang at bios post...

With 1-2 states and clk/4 I got 15.4 in 3dbench.. but is this an'overclock? The bus is already over their specifics?

386SX wrote:

With 1-2 states and clk/4 I got 15.4 in 3dbench.. but is this an'overclock? The bus is already over their specifics?

Yup, technically you're overclocking the ISA bus, because officially it should run at about 8 MHz, and now it's running at 40/4 = 10 MHz I suppose
However, most late ISA stuff, especially videocards based on chips that also have a VLB variation, can run at much higher speeds than that.
If you have even faster settings, such as clk/3 or even clk/2, you could try them, as you see, it makes a difference (probably more in a game like Doom, which relies more on videomem access speed and less on CPU than 3DBench).

Scali wrote:

I'm not comparing, just saying that a good ISA card can indeed get 35+ fps in Doom, which debunks your claim that ISA is too slow for even mid-range VLB.

This is getting ridiculous, especially in the logic departement.

It debunks nothing and only shows you try to use random numbers obtained in random conditions to "be right", and I don't have time for that.
As I said, I'm more interested in facts than fantasies, and my table is exactly that, "facts", not "claim". Apple to Apple facts.

I'll stop the thread derailing here.

386SX --> I'll still add the WD90C31 in my table, and more VLB cards (a S3 vision 864 actually)

sunaiac wrote:

As I said, I'm more interested in facts than fantasies, and my table is exactly that, "facts", not "claim". Apple to Apple facts.

On your configuration yes, which may not be representative of other configurations (different videocards, different chipsets, different BIOS settings etc).
I'm just saying that on my friend's 486DX2-66 with ISA ET4000, Doom ran silky-smooth (35+ fps in certain areas), like it does on VLB systems.

ok ram arrived and installed. Yeah.. but no differences..😁 anyway i could try a w95 installation..

Not sure if the BitBlt of a WD90C31 gets used in anything other than windows
My recollection of some old 90C30 cards was a jumper setting for "32 bit" - which I seem to recall put the cards memory into 32 bit mode (required both banks) so the chip could access memory faster to reduce contention between read & write.

Well, can I say that with this configuration W95 don't run badly? 😁

By the way 3dbench is really sensible to dram states.. it get artifacts easily (orizzontal lines at the end..)..

I've done some preliminary benchmarks on VLB AMD486DX4-100-WT - fastest BIOS options and ISA divider 1:3.

ET4000AX 1MB VLB
3DBench 1.0c: 64.1FPS
PCPBench VGA: 15.3FPS
Doom: 1966 / 37.99FPS
Quake: 9.5FPS
SysSpeed VESA: 11231KB/s

ET4000AX 1MB ISA
3DBench 1.0c: 50.9
PCPBench VGA: 14.7
Doom: 2704 / 27.62
Quake: 9.2
SysSpeed VESA: 6523

ATI Mach32 2MB DRAM ISA
3DBench 1.0c: 50.9
PCPBench VGA: 14.5
Doom: 2787 / 26.79
Quake: 9.2
SysSpeed VESA: 7135

S3 864 2MB DRAM VLB
3DBench 1.0c: 67.1
PCPBench VGA: 15.9
Doom: 1871 / 39.92
Quake: 9.7
SysSpeed VESA: 11892

Later (when I find the time) I'll try to add the following cards:
ISA ET4000 1MB (2nd one)
ISA CL-5434 2MB (it's in the mail)
ISA CL-5429 2MB
ISA CL-5426 1MB
ISA CL-5422 1MB
ISA WD90C30 1MB
ISA Trident 8900D 1MB
ISA Trident 8900CL 1MB
ISA Trident 9000i 512KB
VLB ET4000/w32i 2MB
VLB S3 Trio32 2MB
VLB S3 805 2MB
VLB CL-5428 1MB
VLB CL-5426 1MB
VLB Trident 9440 1MB
VLB ALi 1MB

The VLB S3 run very well!

Hopefully this won't qualify as hijacking and more an extension of the discussion. I just picked up my first VLB motherboard (with a mystery CPU under a heatsink - I've only got one 486 so I'm excited) so thought I may as well take the opportunity to acquire a VLB graphics card. I quick search through the forums has already given me a vague indication of which is best out of these two, but I wondered if anyone could offer some advice, anecdotal or otherwise. The cards in question are:

Videoseven V7 Mirage (S3 805i I believe)
Cirrus Logic GD5429

Both cards are 1MB, the V7 having the disadvantage of utilising DIP memory. I would get both if I had the money but unfortunately I must make a choice.

Cheers in advance.

Both are in the same class - so any card would be good. I'd probably take CL 5429.

kixs wrote:

Both are in the same class - so any card would be good. I'd probably take CL 5429.

That's what I was thinking. 😀

I am testing the ati 28800-5 with doom 1.9 demo and timedemo demo1 give me 12.8fps low detail with one less border size. I expected more but still playable on this DX-40. Is result good?

I've done some 3dbench test of some card with:
pentium 133
mvp3
384mb pc100@66

trident 9000i 512kb isa:25.1fps
oak oti077 512kb isa:27.9fps
gd5430 1mb pci:65fps
s3 trio64v+ 2mb pci:86fps
millennium 4mb pci:86fps=
alliance 3d 4mb pci:102.3fps
riva128 4mb pci:107.3fps
trio3d 4mb agp:110.1fps
g200 4mb agp:110.1fps =
savage4 8mb agp:110.1fps=