How much will it cost you? and what are the specs i.e. chipset / memory?

386_junkie wrote:

How much will it cost you? and what are the specs i.e. chipset / memory?

it is s3 vision 968 and i suspect 4mb vram. it would cost me 10€ plus shipping.

Then yes!

386_junkie wrote:

Then yes!

great, thanks!
is that a good chipset? or is it the vram? i've only found a pci version of this card on the net...

It depends on what you're looking to run it on...

Yes... it is one of the better chipsets which is best suited for Windows however it will not give great performance in Dos.

I have a similar VLB card... the Miro 32S which is also 4MB and has the S3 928 chipset... with this card it will be the inverse to your situation... good in Dos but not too great in Windows.

No idea about this particular model, but I suspect it only has 2 MB. 4 MB cards for VLB are rare, and there certainly are S3 968 cards with 256kB chips.

Miro is usually high quality, so I'd say go for it.

ok thank you both!

386_junkie wrote:

It depends on what you're looking to run it on...

Yes... it is one of the better chipsets which is best suited for Windows however it will not give great performance in Dos.

I have a similar VLB card... the Miro 32S which is also 4MB and has the S3 928 chipset... with this card it will be the inverse to your situation... good in Dos but not too great in Windows.

by windows you mean win 3.1 to win95 or win98(se)? would it be good for e.g. a top end 486 oder Am5x86-133 for lets say some windows games or is it more of an office card?

edit: wait, i just realized that my 5x86 has PCI slots so there will be easier to get and better cards than the 968 there.
but what about a let's say 486 DX4-100 VLB system which was upgraded using the intel dx4-100 overdrive processor from dx2-66?

That would work... any windows the system runs on, so long as the system itself can handle the software.

386_junkie wrote:

That would work... any windows the system runs on, so long as the system itself can handle the software.

thanks, and would it be a good fit too?

nemail wrote:

thanks, and would it be a good fit too?

I'd consider the card one of the better ones. (I suppose there are more high-end ones.)
A DX4-100 is also quite good, but not the fastest 486.
So I suppose it would be a good fit. A DX4-100 would run the VLB at 33MHz so no issues there.

Regarding DOS performance: S3 cards are not bad for DOS, but you might have to use S3VBE20 and S3SPDUP depending on the game to get best performance. (Not all games are compatible with those tools.)

S3 968 is indeed quite awesome. Pretty much the best you can get for VLB.

I'd buy it 😀 It's on my wish list 😉

It looks like it has 4MB on-board.

Thank you all, bought it 😀

Received the card yesterday, it has 8x 262144 Words × 16 Bits 70ns page memory on it, so I assume that is 4MB.
Not tested it yet, though.

40SV means 4MB, don't worry. The more common 2MB Vision964 card is named "Miro Crystal 20SV".

386_junkie wrote:

[...]Yes... it is one of the better chipsets which is best suited for Windows however it will not give great performance in Dos.

I don't know why people still think these cards won't perform well in DOS.
It's a very capable card. The whole Vision-series are great performers.
Btw. the smallest Vision, the 864 has the same core as the later Trio64 which integrated the RAMDAC and clock generator.

Vision864 (Trio64 uses this core)
Vision868 (like 864 + Video acceleration)
Vision964 (same as 864, but with VRAM interface)
Vision968 (same as 964 + Video acceleration)

All are great cards for fast VLB-systems. Plus the Vision series cards tend to have a better picture quality due to high quality external RAMDAC chips.

FGB wrote:

...Vision864 (Trio64 uses this core) Vision868 (like 864 + Video acceleration) Vision964 (same as 864, but with VRAM interface) […]
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...Vision864 (Trio64 uses this core)
Vision868 (like 864 + Video acceleration)
Vision964 (same as 864, but with VRAM interface)
Vision968 (same as 964 + Video acceleration)...

Interesting! I have a Spea V7 Mercury P-64 with Vision 964. Haven't considered using it since I have several Trio cards.

Do you think this is preferably to, say, an ELSA Winner 1000 with Trio64V2/DX?

FGB wrote:

40SV means 4MB, don't worry. The more common 2MB Vision964 card is named "Miro Crystal 20SV". […]
Show full quote

40SV means 4MB, don't worry. The more common 2MB Vision964 card is named "Miro Crystal 20SV".

386_junkie wrote:

[...]Yes... it is one of the better chipsets which is best suited for Windows however it will not give great performance in Dos.

I don't know why people still think these cards won't perform well in DOS.
It's a very capable card. The whole Vision-series are great performers.

FGB,

I think you may have taken out of context what I was saying, though you did help to prove my point.

As you say the 8XX vision series are DRAM, the 9XX are VRAM. It seems that you may not realise that DRAM performs better in Dos than does VRAM, which is memory best utilised in Windows. This is what I was saying.

There is a 20SV online at the minute which is Vision 964 (VRAM based without acceleration), and its VRAM memory is more suited to Windows than in Dos.

Hi,
having VRAM doesn't stop it to perform well in DOS. Also it is not true that DRAM performs better in DOS, it is more likely that some VRAM cards are clocked lower and therefore have a DOS performance that lacks behind its DRAM counterparts. But by which margin? Well it depends, of course. And most SVGA things suited for 486 machines are CPU limited in most cases so the graphics cards only scale to a certain degree. In the bottom line, VRAM cards are the better overall cards. Industry shifted to windows and the advantage of the VRAM got more evident in this environment.

I can give a quick DOS benchmark later today. I can offer a 864 vs 964 as well as a 868 vs 968 benchmark in DOS.

Best regards
Fabian

P.S.:

386_junkie wrote:

There is a 20SV online at the minute which is Vision 964 (VRAM based without acceleration), and its VRAM memory is more suited to Windows than in Dos.

Again, both claims/assumptions are wrong: The Vision 964 is a VRAM based accelerator card and of course it is suited for DOS. Also it has the VRAM advantage in Windows.