rasz_pl wrote:

pshipkov wrote:

I can run and post the full screen low and high settings for doom for completeness, if you think that's missing.

was there more than 1-2 fps between the cards?

pshipkov wrote:

Updated the 386 Doom tests according to your suggestions.

so it was 3fps between the worst and best VGA in 386DX40 Doom, or ~30%, seems significant for attaining that unplayable/playable balance at the time, thank you.

Not sure how I missed this juicy thread.

pshipkov wrote:

Will try to "smoke" the ET4000 VL/PCI at some point soon.

I'm a little lost amongst all delicious pr0n posted herein. Did you benchmark the ET4000 PCI vs. ET4000 VLB on an identical system? What was the outcome?

feipoa wrote:

I'm a little lost amongst all delicious pr0n posted herein.

Thank you Sir, your comment is well appreciated.

feipoa wrote:

Did you benchmark the ET4000 PCI vs. ET4000 VLB on an identical system? What was the outcome?

Soon.
Monkeying around with some "impressive" underperforers at the moment. Wanted to post some results and findings already, but cannot get myself to move on. Will run some VLB/PCI tests right after.

pshipkov wrote:

Chips 65554 4Mb

How have your experiences been with this card? I saw on the video card compatibility list that this may be the only GPU that's VESA 2.0 natively and can handle the PowerVR version of Tomb Raider well. Is that a 4 MB card? Also, is that an integrated printer port?

The video card is ok-ish. An average performer. It has 4Mb of memory. Travelling at the moment and cannot remember what was the other port, but you are probaby right - an LPT one.
The main issue with it is that it messes up picture size and aspect ratio on some LCDs.
Never tried it with pvr tomb raider, so cannot comment really - sorry.

Ilon USA M216A rev 1.2

CPU: Intersil CS80C286-25
FPU: IIT 2C87-12
RAM: 4Mb 60ns parity FPM
VGA: Tseng Labs ET4000AX 1Mb
IDE: Chips F82C712
SCSI: Adaptec AHA-1520A

The motherboard is actually not that bad - handles IDE and FPU really well, but hates video cards - slows them down to a crawl.
Coretest for SCSI freaks-out when the CPU runs at 25MHz, but in general IDE is much faster than SCSI for 20 or higher MHz 286 machines.

--- 25MHz

Wolf3D: 12.5 fps
Superscape: 6.9 fps
F1 Grand Prix: 151% (CPU utilization, lower is better)
F1 Grand Prix 2: 475% (CPU utilization, lower is better)
Autodesk Chaos, 2D Mandelbrot set: 4296 seconds (lower is better)

--- 30MHz

Wolf3D: crash
Superscape: 10.7 fps
F1 Grand Prix: 97% (CPU utilization, lower is better)
F1 Grand Prix 2: 308% (CPU utilization, lower is better)
Autodesk Chaos, 2D Mandelbrot set: crash

All in all - really slow motherboard.

D'aww! I <3 motherboards that are just big enough for their ISA slots. 😄

There's a pretty significant difference between those Adaptec SCSI cards. Huh. Would not have expected that. And I'm still trying to get over how fast the Trident 8900 is.

I haven't ever really been concerned with benchmarks before, but this is kind of making me want to run some comparisons on the hardware I have lying around. I've got a 386SX/25 and a DX/40 that I've been trying to decide which to pair with an Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 and a Trident 8900D. I'm a little more concerned with Win 3.11 performance on the DX and assumed the 1280 would be faster than a Trident. But now I'm not so sure...

Now I'm also wondering how my three VLB graphics cards compare... my DX2/66 has an ATI Graphics Pro Turbo (mach64) because that's my old setup from back in the day, but I also have a Cirrus and Tseng ET4000/w32i. I could be missing out.

Another vote, BTW, for the 4000 VLB vs PCI. I don't have a PCI 486, and I'm curious how VLB and PCI compare.

Yeah, the compact mobos are cool in their own way.
I really like the Trident VLB VGA, even S3 does a bit better in Doom, which is the test that actully matters, i am still using the Trident one as the main video card in the rig.

Run some tests if you have the time - any info like tht is well appreciated.

In case my questions got lost in the long post above:
- i cannot find any info about the Cirrus Logic combo jumper settings. Any hints ?
- what memory should go into its available slots ?

Any idea why the 386 mobo seems to be cache-less ?
It is not BIOS settings, or faulty chips for sure.

Ok, will post VLB vs PCI tests at some point soon.
Too bad i fried a ET4000w32 VLB adapter during some of my "underperformers" jurney. It was a dark day. 🙁

Thanks.

It seems my VLB Tseng ET4000/w32i bit the dust as well. I just get an "unsupported resolution" on my workbench LCD, and my OSSC shows a couple red boxes on the screen, but that's it. sigh...

Wish I could help with the questions. That combo card is quite peculiar, and handy given the low number of VLB slots available on 486 boards. The SIP slots look like RAM, alright -- presumably video RAM. But so many pins! I've never seen SIP memory that long.

I decided to test my ISA / VLB kit. This is all on a 486 DX2/66 motherboard with VLB, using Landmark 6.0 (char/ms), PC Player Benchmark (fps), and 3DBench2 (fps). I bring you, the ISA Trident trio, ISA and VLB Orchids, and ATI Mach64 VLB:

Trident 8900CL (512K) - LM: 1164 chr/ms; PCP: 2.3fps; 3DB2: 16.4fps
Trident 8900D (1M) - LM: 4349 chr/ms; PCP: 4.1fps; 3DB2: 32.8fps
Trident 9000C (512K) - LM: 2678 chr/ms; PCP: 3.2fps; 3DB2: 26.4fps
Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 (1M) - LM: 1755 chr/ms; PCP: wouldn't run; 3DB2: 16.3fps
Orchid Kelvin 64 VLB (Cirrus GD-5434, 2MB I believe) - LM: 8330 chr/ms; PCP: only runs in 320x200 (10.8fps); 3DB2: 44.7fps
Tseng ET4000/w32i VLB (2M) - forfeit on account of not working anymore, apparently. suck.
ATI Graphics Pro Turbo VLB (Mach64, 4MB) - LM: 9274 chr/ms; PCP: 4.5fps; 3DB2: 45.7fps

Most surprising to me is, again, how fast that 8900D really is. What a sleeper. Who knew? The PCPlayer benchmark is clearly CPU limited, but you do get to see where the cards hold back performance a little. VLB is faster (around 2x in this case), but not 4x despite the 8MHz to 33MHz bus clock speed jump. Interesting.

I'm rather happy with these results, as it turns out the builds I wanted for nostalgic reasons turned out to be the best performers. Nice!

Put your numbers in charts for better readability. Thanks for making the effort. It will be awesome if we see some doom stuff as well.
Btw, what is the mobo you tested on ? Brand, model, chipset, etc.
I will try to test all the isa, vlb and pci cards on my asus pvi-486sp3 mobo and merge your results as well.

TBH, I don't know how you make those graphs. I've seen that style before -- is it an app or site that you use? I could toss them in Excel or something, but it wouldn't be as pretty. 😀

The board is a Chaintech 4ULD with a UMC chipset (UM8498F).

It is Excel. There are some templates in the "view" bar when you select a chart.

Thanks for the clarification about the Mobo.

LuckyStar-486E rev.F

BIOS settings on max.
Under such conditions the motherboard gets quite picky about RAM modules.
Took a moment to find the right sticks for complete stability.

LuckyStar-486E rev.F featuring the POD83 CPU.

LuckyStar-486E rev.F with AMD-X5-133ADZ 160MHz

Used Matrox Millennium MGA-2064W-R3 8Mb PCI - a top dog back in 1996.

benchmark results

Summary:
Mediocre performer at best. Cost cutting was the predominant design factor for this motherboard.

Spent few hours over the weekend to find out how different generations and types of video cards compare against each other.

Time period is capped at 1996.
Used unaccelerated DOS performance tests only as a common denominator because many of the older cards don't support accelerated GUI features, so no point of comparing them against the next gen ones.
Started running the tests with CPU at 160MHz CPU and FSB at 40MHz, but some of the ISA/VLB cards were too unstable.
Decided to step down to 133MHz CPU and 33MHz FSB to give all "players" a fair chance. Obviously, the results don't show peak performance of the more potent "participants", but the relative performance difference between all tested video cards. Feel free to compare the numbers below with the peak performance tests in my first post in this thread.
All tests were performed on Asus PVI-486SP3 rev 1.22 motherboard. For those who have doubts about the motherboard's ISA/VLB/PCI performance - take a look at my previous post.

Notes:
- Couple of people asked for comparison between ET4000/W32 ISA/VLB/PCI on the same motherboard - there you go.
- the UMC ISA adapter runs at 50MHz (core speed), but produces visual artefacts. At 40MHz picture is clear, but perf is low.

orange outline denotes best performance in particular time period
solid orange bar denotes best performance across the board

Typing the names of the tested video cards here, so they can be searched:
__________ 1996 PCI __________
Tseng Labs ET6000
Trident ProVidia 9685
S3 Trio64V2/DX
PC-Chips 65554
Matrox Millennium MGA-2064W-R3
Cirrus Logic GD-5480

__________ 1994 VLB __________
Tseng Labs ET4000/W32i
S3 805
Trident TGUI9440AGI
Weitek Power 9000
Cirrus Logic GD-5428

__________ 1993 PCI __________
Tseng Labs ET4000/W32P 2Mb

__________ 1993 ISA __________
Cirrus Logic GD-5426
Cirrus Logic GD-5420
S3 928
Tseng Labs ET4000/W32i
Trident TVGA9000C
Trident TVGA8900CL-C
Realtek RTG3105
WDC90C30-LR
UM85C408AF

__________ 1990 ISA __________
Western Digital WD90C00-JK
OTI-037
Headland GC208-PC
Ahead V5000-50PC-B
Cirrus Logic GD-510/520
Trident TVGA8800CS
Tseng Labs ET4000AX

Brief summary:
Trident TGUI9440AGI is the best option for unaccelerated DOS graphics (gaming). In reality the performance difference between the VLB/PCI cards is marginal. They are all in the ballpark.

Interesting reading for later, thanks 😀

Nice! Yeah, you can really see the difference moving from ISA to a local bus for graphics. Not a surprise, but this clearly shows how significant that change really was.

Notice how ahead of the game ET4000AX was when released in the late 1980'ies. No wonder it made such a name for itself.
Competitors quickly closed the gap and bypassed the ETs, but their charm stayed throughut the 90ies.
At the same time Trident was looked down so much because of their widespread cheapo products, but they actually offered and some of the best performers. Looking at that TGUI boy - it is quite impressive.

Updated the ASUS PVI-486SP3 vs LuckyStar-486EF post with info about ASUS VLI-486SV2DX4 to make it a 3-way comparision: PCI - PCI/VLB - VLB

ASUS 386/33-64k based on SiS 85C310/320/330 "Rabbit"

The hardcoded 64Kb of DIP22 SRAM, max 8Mb of RAM and barebone BIOS (no timings, etc.) hint at an early stage 386 hardware, offering somewhat subpar performance.
UPDATE: After stumbling upon some random information online, i just realized that this motherboard is a later model of what Asus started their business with back in 1989 - the one they developed "blindly" without having access to an Intel's 386 CPU prototype. Or, at least that's what the legend says.

I was annoyed by the lack of options in the BIOS, so tried bunch of other ones that are rich on cache/ram timings.
Results were not great - performance was same or worse, compared to the default BIOS.
Okay, fine. Lets see if it overclocks then.

I didn't expect much, given the already low entry point, but for my surprise this boy turned out to be unexpectedly capable in that department.
It works completelly reliably in DOS and Windows 3.1 at 50MHz. Well, with one exception - it failed all 3D rendering tests. None of the 3DCC apps can get to UI, let alone render something - a big red-flag in my books.
There was a bit of complication with finding the right video card for the 50MHz FSB. After combing through bunch of them, it was an ET4000AX from 1998 that did the job. The rest were unstable, or didn't light up at all.
I started with 60ns RAM, but noticed that 70ns is fine too.

Ok, what about 55MHz ?
The motherboard takes it with ease (along with the CPU and VGA), but the IDE controller gives up.
Tried bunch of other IDE/SCSI adapters - they all hang during their turn at the end of POST.
Too bad ...

Screen does not light-up at 60MHz.

https://www.petershipkov.com/temp/retro_pc_im … motherboard.jpg

https://www.petershipkov.com/temp/retro_pc_im … _2_et4000ax.jpg

For some reason i was not able to capture screenshots of NSSI.

benchmark results

The motherboard running at 50MHz overcomes its inherent slowness and positions itself near the top.
8MB RAM limit won't be a problem for games and casual computing, but is a factor.
Failures with offline graphics tests hint at stability issues.

I came late and saw a topic. I liked it very much 😀

can you take a photo of your memory? brand and how many nanoseconds? which is located on 286-VLSI

you also disabled "parity error check" ? turn it on - failed?