VOGONS


Reply 20 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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Major update!

Slightly revamped spreadsheet.
Retested some cards for more proper result.
Added Quake 2.
Added subjective performance observation in C&C Tiberian Sun (only spreadsheet).
Added 25 new cards, including Tseng ET4000/W32p, Tseng ET6000, 3Dlabs Wildcat VP760 and finally Cirrus Logic Laguna 3D PCI.
Added/edited more notes about various video cards.

P.S.
Doom and lowres Quake bar charts in original posts will be updated after edit threshold cooldown. For now I'll attach them here:

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Last edited by The Serpent Rider on 2020-09-16, 18:02. Edited 2 times in total.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 21 of 37, by appiah4

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Amazing thread, mostly jumped in to pay my respects.

Quick question: Did you test Trident Blade3D with Duke3D? Did you experience any HUD flashing as is reported in Gona's DOS compatibility page?

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 22 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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Did you experience any HUD flashing as is reported in Gona's DOS compatibility page?

Yes and also on various sprites like rooftop fence. It should be clarified, that this issue is mostly caused by active linear frame buffer on various cards (not only Blade 3D) and only in VESA modes.
Also, Blade 3D will refuse to work in Build engine games with NOLFB present, so it's stuck with blinking slideshow.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 23 of 37, by appiah4

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-09-16, 17:58:

Did you experience any HUD flashing as is reported in Gona's DOS compatibility page?

Yes and also on various sprites like rooftop fence. It should be clarified, that this issue is mostly caused by active linear frame buffer on various cards (not only Blade 3D) and only in VESA modes.
Also, Blade 3D will refuse to work in Build engine games with NOLFB present, so it's stuck with blinking slideshow.

OK, there goes my plans of using MVP4 integrated video for DOS, 🤣 😀

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 24 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. Apparently some Blade 3D cards had at least VBE 2.0 BIOS support (judging from Gona's DOS compatibility page), so maybe they'll behave differently with NOLFB. I may also test later EPOX motherboard based on VIA KLE133 chipset, which also has Trident Blade 3D.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 25 of 37, by appiah4

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-09-16, 21:13:

I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. Apparently some Blade 3D cards had at least VBE 2.0 BIOS support (judging from Gona's DOS compatibility page), so maybe they'll behave differently with NOLFB. I may also test later EPOX motherboard based on VIA KLE133 chipset, which also has Trident Blade 3D.

I have Trident Blade3D as an integrated video on an MVP4 as well as a KLE133 motherboard, I could easily use either if it actually has working Vesa extensions on either...

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 26 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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So they both don't have it? Oh well, then Blade 3D really sucks. Maybe contact Gona to clarify situation with his Blade 3D card?

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 27 of 37, by appiah4

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-09-16, 21:49:

So they both don't have it? Oh well, then Blade 3D really sucks. Maybe contact Gona to clarify situation with his Blade 3D card?

Oh no, I haven't tried either of them yet. I will try the MVP4 tomorrow.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 28 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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Might as well drop here my small side project. More "authentic" Pentium MMX 233 system in some DOS tests:

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I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 30 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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Ok, so I've checked Epox EP-8KEM2 motherboard with integrated Trident video chip and it behaves like most cards in my testing, i.e. normally. Duke Nukem 3D works perfectly with NOLFB and performance is increased. VBE 2.0 is also supported and you can play Quake in high resolution, but can't change refresh rates, since DisplayDoctor can't recognize it and VBE 3.0 is required for utilities like Unirefresh. All VESA modes are set with maximum refresh rate. Similar to AGP card, VGA performance is limited.

Supported VESA modes:
640x400
640x480
800x600
1024x768
1280x1024

Not compatible with VBEPlus (games just hang on custom resolution).

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 31 of 37, by framebuffer

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impressive work, really interesting
also helped me indirectly for a similar (but from a completely different perspective) project I'm working 😉

P.S. guys the technical level on this forum is crazy 😀

Windows 98 and SAMBA | Quake CPU Benchmarks | GeForce2: GTS vs MX400

Reply 32 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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I forgot to include one interesting observation which may be purely anecdotal, but still worth mentioning. Apparently you can damage or kill old 2D video card by pushing it too hard with GUI acceleration on a CPU which far exceeds period correct hardware. SIS 6326AGP SDRAM (PINE PT-5968-98) and ATI 3D Rage II+DVD EDO (ASUS 3DP-V264GT2/TV) were showing some small image corruption after extensive testing in Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun. SIS is just stuck that way and ATI works fine only if sufficiently cooled (during heavy GUI testing). So yeah, looks like you can overheat GUI accelerators, just like Voodoo 2.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 33 of 37, by Standard Def Steve

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Ooh, that's super interesting. I still have a ton of those old cards stashed away and never knew that was a thing with them.

I think my HTPC actually has a legacy PCI slot in it. That machine runs a 4790K @ 4.7GHz. I may have to pull it out of the component stack one of these days and melt some Rage. 😜

P6 chip. Triple the speed of the Pentium.
Tualatin: PIII-S @ 1628MHz | QDI Advance 12T | 2GB DDR-310 | 6800GT | X-Fi | 500GB HDD | 3DMark01: 14,059
Dothan: PM @ 2.9GHz | MSI Speedster FA4 | 2GB DDR2-580 | GTX 750Ti | X-Fi | 500GB SSD | 3DMark01: 43,190

Reply 34 of 37, by BitWrangler

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Damn, I hate the results, got a Trio64 that I thought I could beat like a redheaded stepchild, now I gotta respect that mofo.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 35 of 37, by The Serpent Rider

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Standard Def Steve wrote:

Ooh, that's super interesting. I still have a ton of those old cards stashed away and never knew that was a thing with them.

Well, that's just my speculation, but SIS card was new old stock and never used before. Then is just broke after Tiberian Sun tests, which doesn't have any frame cap on highest speed setting.

BitWrangler wrote:

Damn, I hate the results, got a Trio64 that I thought I could beat like a redheaded stepchild, now I gotta respect that mofo.

You mean Expercolor DSP-3364P? Yeah, this card is "overclocked" by manufacturer and packs a serious punch.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 37 of 37, by appiah4

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-11-14, 20:19:
Well, that's just my speculation, but SIS card was new old stock and never used before. Then is just broke after Tiberian Sun te […]
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Standard Def Steve wrote:

Ooh, that's super interesting. I still have a ton of those old cards stashed away and never knew that was a thing with them.

Well, that's just my speculation, but SIS card was new old stock and never used before. Then is just broke after Tiberian Sun tests, which doesn't have any frame cap on highest speed setting.

BitWrangler wrote:

Damn, I hate the results, got a Trio64 that I thought I could beat like a redheaded stepchild, now I gotta respect that mofo.

You mean Expercolor DSP-3364P? Yeah, this card is "overclocked" by manufacturer and packs a serious punch.

I think I own an Expertcolor MPG-3365P that currently resides in my P133 Win95 PC. I never bothered to check its clockspeeds because it was mostly an MPEG accelerator and 2D card to pair with a Voodoo 1 in that system. But now that you mention it..

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.