• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Recommendations on ISA SVGA card?

Divarin

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2019
Messages
559
Location
Cleveland, OH
I'm looking for a decent Super VGA card for a 486 that has only 8 and 16 bit ISA slots (no PCI).

It's a dx-33. Currently I am using an OAK VGA but am running into some limitations such as I can't run sim city 2000 due to unsupported super-vga mode and also I can't find any windows 3.1 drivers to allow me to raise the refresh rate and remove headache-inducing flicker.

So I'm looking to upgrade this VGA card but I'm not sure what's available for ISA. Also I don't want to spend more than $50 (and preferably not even that much) so if anyone has any recommendations of which cards I should be looking for please let me know.
 
OAK is as (s)low as it can get. These cards are terrible, especially when used past a 286.

Anything from Cirrus Logic would be decent for a 486. These cards are not cheap, however. Unless you want to play DOOM, you can also get a Trident TVGA9000 or one of the 8900 models. These are slower than anything from Cirrus Logic, but still way faster than the OAK.

ATI cards are nice as well, like the VGA Wonder 16 and others. Unlikely to get one for $50, though.
 
In my memory, all Trident video cards were slow and the display was also very blurred. SVGA cards with the WD90C30 chip set ("Paradise PVGA") are better. The famous Diamond SpeedStar 24X (WD90C31 chip set) wasn't cheap back then...
 
In my memory, all Trident video cards were slow and the display was also very blurred.
Yes and no. As I said, as long as he doesn't want to play DOOM (not too much fun on a DX-33 anyway), those cards are totally fine. I speak from experience, not from what I've heard or read. I have cards from OAK and from Trident in some of my retro systems. The OAK ones are a joke; they are the slowest cards on earth. The Trident TVGA9000 e.g. however works very well and is also well supported by games. It has extended SVGA support using univbe. One of the 8900 cards (not sure if it was B, C, or D) even had interleaved memory and was rather fast. Also, these cards are cheap. If your budget maxes out at $50, there's not much choice anyway.

The WD90C30/31 is good as well. I have one of these, too. But again a very expensive card you won't get for $50.

//edit:
It was the 8900D, see here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=57082 - very fast card for its time
 
I don't know doom actually isn't that terrible in this dx33 even with the oak card.

Yeah I need to shrink the display a couple of steps and it's not running at full speed but it's playable.

I was considering a CIRRUS LOGIC CL-GD5422 currently on ebay for just a couple dollars outside my $50 budget.

Although there is also a ET4000AX for about the same price
 
Yeah I need to shrink the display a couple of steps and it's not running at full speed but it's playable.
Well, for a game like DOOM, full-screen and a good frame rate is a must. It's not just about being playable.

Also, with the fastest 16-bit ISA cards, you should be able to run it full-screen with about 20 fps when using low-res mode on a DX-33. But it would still struggle in high-res mode, so no need to waste money for the fastest cards unless you plan to upgrade the CPU.

The GD5422 is a good card. Had a 486SLC-33 with it, which performed very well.
 
OK, not all Trident cards are slow: Eliandas ISA VGA card roundup ... and maybe my memory of the blurry screen display is deceiving me..

I remember my TVGA9000 being a pretty lousy dog, but honestly it was probably about average. The real problem is, well, there's a reason why they invented VESA local bus around the time the 486 got popular. When you have a bus that optimistically taps out at about 8MB/s even if your VGA card can run with literally zero delay you're going to feel the drag when you get into SuperVGA resolutions. Cards like the aforementioned Cirrus Logic chip were good at covering up this problem, at least to some extent, when you were running Windows because of their acceleration features, I had one late in the 486's timeline, but I don't remember it being much different for games.

(Or to put it another way, I guess I remember it playing DOOM in the standard 320x200 mode just fine on the Trident, no complaints. But holy cow were its higher res 256 color modes draggy.)
 
The Speedstar 24x (along with some others that I can come up with, too) perform well, but they cost quite a bit more than a generic et4000ax. That’s why I generally recommend the ‘ax.

Same with sound cards; it’s _almost never_ worth going for the big name (Creative, Gravis, etc.) rather than a perfectly usable, and often better in many ways, no-name card.

- Alex
 
Same with sound cards; it’s _almost never_ worth going for the big name (Creative, Gravis, etc.) rather than a perfectly usable, and often better in many ways, no-name card.
Agreed. I am using a creative sound blaster 16 in this 486 but only because it's one of the few peices of pc hardware I held onto from the 90's.
 
Anything not OAK or Trident should be ok. Stay away from early ATI as well if you want to game.

I wouldn't worry about brand names so much and just find a decent TSENG or Cirrus Logic card, WD isn't that bad either oddly enough.
 
The one that is almost identical is the Speedstar 24 (true color RAMDAC + BIOS) You can in fact upgrade a Speedstar to Speedstar 24 with RAMDAC+BIOS swap.
The "Speedstar" and the "Speedstar 24" (without the "x") uses the Tseng Labs ET4000AX chip. The benchmark above compares the "Speedstar 24X" (WD90C31 chip) to the ET4000AX and there doesn't seem to be any difference in 3DBENCH ...
 
3DBENCH mostly relies on the CPU speed. If the CPU can not render more than say 15 fps, the speed of the graphics card won't matter much as long as it is fast enough to draw the 15 fps. Only if it isn't fps will drop.
 
Anything not OAK or Trident should be ok. Stay away from early ATI as well if you want to game.
It has been disproven already that all Trident cards are slow. Would be nice if people stop repeating this non-sense again and again only because it seems to be (false) common knowledge.

Look at the vogons thread I linked to or the chart posted by Jenz. The 8900D for example is a very decent card, on par with the ET4000AX. But it seems people just want to believe all Tridents cards are bad...
 
Trident cards were made with crap components to save money and video output on a CRT wasn't the greatest.

While not all Trident cards were total shit, I would still avoid them if you are a newbie and can't tell the difference.

These days you probably can't be that picky anyway since DOS gamers drive up the prices of anything top end.
 
Back
Top