First post, by kanecvr
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hi guys. So after picking up some FPM ram yesterday I decided to finalize my 586 configuration by settling on a video card - so I began benchmarking the PCI and VLB video cards I have. I put the results down on paper, then I tough it might be useful for other users if I were to post them.
The 486 system I tested on has the following configuration:
- Cyrix 5x86-100GP @ 120MHz (3x30MHz) with register enhancements enabled
- FIC 486-VIP-IO 256KB cache, VIA chipset
- 2x16MB FPM ram
- MS-DOS 7.1 (win95)
So here are the benchmark results for the 486 platform:
And the cards I tested:
The results are interesting. The S3 Trio64 and Virge cards are faster in Quake and PC Player 3D Benchmark, while the VLB Cirrus Logic cards are quite a bit faster in DOOM and 3D Bench. This might be to the poor PCI implementation on the VIA chipset, or the architectural difference between older VLB cards and newer PCI cards. A pentium platform benchmark will tell us more.
I tried benchmarking my millennium, but it freezes both systems at POST so I think I killed it somehow 🙁 I would have loved to have it in the charts since it's such a popular card.
Swapping in a 160MHz 586 from AMD (4x40MHz) yields interesting results:
I'll also test the AMD 486 with a VLB video card tomorrow and compare again.
Now for the Pentium platform tests! I used a 133MHz non-MMX pentium on the Intel 440bx chipset, on DOS 6.22. Results are similar to the 486 platform albeit 2-3x higher:
What surprised me is that there is almost no performance difference between the S3 Trio and the S3 Virge. The virge is slighly faster due to the clock speed difference and larger memory (benched with 2MB). It only really takes off in VESA modes, where it sores a solid 1.6 FPS difference (PCPBench VESA 640x480). The gap widens even more as resolutions increase. Testing VESA 102 mode, the trio64 with 2MB installed scores 9.4 FPS, while the Virge with 2MB scored 11.9.
The logical conclusion is that the Virge is rather wasted on DOS gaming systems, unless you plan to play newer games at higher resolutions. But then you could go for the slightly faster Matrox Millennium if you're ok with the latter's compatibility issues regarding older DOS games (and of course it's price).
The Alliance card makes a good effort - solid performance on Quake and PCPBench, but poor performance in Doom. The Cirrus PCI performs as expected of a common budget card. Good enough for a 486 and early Pentium.