In terms of speed the Western Digital Paradise WD90C. In terms of image quality I'd go with the Cirrus GD542x. The mach64 has compatibility issues with some games (keen, axe - games that make use of scrolling).

kanecvr wrote:

In terms of speed the Western Digital Paradise WD90C. In terms of image quality I'd go with the Cirrus GD542x. The mach64 has compatibility issues with some games (keen, axe - games that make use of scrolling).

But in terms of features is the Mach64 the most advanced? And what about S3 latest ever ISA?

On the signal quality I had some doubts of the GD5429 I own or maybe the ATi 28800-5 Wonder had very good filters on board. Both are good but on the LCD it seems to be better the ATi imho.

Fastest are the last gen ISA cards.

- Cirrus Logic 5434
- Ati Mach64
- Tseng ET4000/w32i

Mach64 is probably the fastest as Windows accelerator and also very good in DOS.

CL 5429 is also very good. In DOS as other better ones, only in Windows it won't be as fast as it doesn't support memory interleaving.

Well I'm talking DOS game performance - don't really care about windows GUI acceleration really - since I use ISA cards on 386 or slower machines, so most of the faster cards will perform similarly.

In fact, for 286 and slow 386 machines, my favorite cards are the Paradise PVGA1A-JK and the Tseng ET3000. The PVGA1A has the nicest output quality of all the slower ISA cards I tested - no banding whatsoever.

Mach64 is probably going to be the most advanced for an ISA card. S3 had the 968 and 868 which were a little faster, but I don't think I've ever seen those on an ISA card before. Even the S3 801/805 are a pretty rare find on ISA. There are 4MB versions of S3 928 for ISA, but those are more inline with the Mach32.

The GD5429 is pretty darn good for DOS. I reckon anything that could be an upgrade is the same or slower in DOS and/or more problematic compatibility wise.