Best Video Card Pre-1992 \ VOGONS

Best Video Card Pre-1992

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First post, by fsmith2003

Posted on 2018-05-04, 16:55

fsmith2003 Offline

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What, in your opinions, would you choose as the “best” video card that would of been available before January 1, 1992? I had a Tseng 4000ax but it just recently bit the dust. Was looking to replace it with something of equivalent compatibility and speed. Due to motherboard limitations I’m constrained to ISA or PCI however. I know PCI is newer than 1992 but maybe there is a low-end PCI card that would be equivalent to 1991-ish standards?

Just to add, I will be used strictly for DOS.

Reply 1 of 2, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 2018-05-04, 18:44

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Acumos AVGA2 / Cirrus Logic 5402-5420, Western Digital 90C11-LR/WD90C30-LR. Pretty much same performance for ISA, but don't look as "noble" as Tseng cards (Acumos AVGA2 is a dwarf).
On PCI side probably some Alliance cards. No idea how they are compatible though.

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Reply 2 of 2, by Anonymous Coward

Posted on 2018-05-06, 04:45

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I can't tell you what is "best", but I know the ATi Graphics Ultra was a pretty powerful card in 1991. The S3 911 was also pretty nice, but I think the early S3s with VRAM had pretty bad DOS performance. The ATi card had 512k of dedicated DRAM and a discrete VGA chip from the VGA wonder+, so it didn't suffer from the same problems. If you don't care about accelerated graphics, then probably the ET4000 or something based on the WDC would be the way to go. What I think would be pretty badass is to combine one of those cards with a TIGA card using the VGA feature connector.

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