VOGONS


First post, by Baoran

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I finally have all the parts for building a 386 pc and I was testing all my working isa video cards to choose which one to use with a 386. I did run the doom benchmark and vidspeed 3.2 320x200 256 colors for each of the cards. I used a VLB card in my previous 486 build, so I have not used any isa cards in my builds before.

The attachment 6isacards.jpg is no longer available

Benchmark results from the top on the picture:

Top card with ATI 28800-5 chip: 12647 Doom realtics 3498W 2059R in vidspeed.
Leftmost Tseng ET4000AX card: 12409 Doom realtics 3539W 2424R in vidspeed.
Rightmost Tseng ET4000AX card: 11900 Doom realtics 4589W 2421R in vidspeed.
Leftmost Trident card 9000A chip: 14886 Doom realtics 2114W 1951R in vidspeed.
Rightmost Trident card 8900D chip: 14705 Doom realtics 2747W 2062R in vidspeed.
Bottom card with Tseng ET3000AX: 16638 Doom realtics 1326W 1312R in vidspeed.

All benchmarks done with 386 33Mhz 8Mb ram and using same bios settings.

After doing all the benchmarks I knew which card was the fastest, but I have some questions:

I did benchmarks in a small screen because I didn't think about other things back then, but do these cards have any image quality differences that I should be aware of?
Do any of the cards/chips have any compatibility issues with dos games that I should be aware of?
Does the video card speed actually matter in games that you would be playing in a 386 33Mhz?
Any idea on why one of the ET4000AX cards so much faster than the other? Is it just ram speed (80ns vs 60ns)?
Are there other things I should consider when choosing the card for the build?

Reply 2 of 2, by Baoran

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jesolo wrote on 2020-02-02, 09:20:

Maybe try Phil's benchmark pack?
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/dos-benchmark-pack.html
Just skip Quake 😊.

I think I have quite good understanding of the performance of the cards. That is why I asked the questions about other things related to the cards. I did just put the benchmark results to the post in case the results would be helpful to someone else.