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VGA Benchmarks Recommendation

sergey

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I am trying to test and benchmark some of the ISA VGA cards that I have. Of course, something like this has been done before, for example see:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=57459, https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=37844 and https://www.philscomputerlab.com/phils-ultimate-vga-benchmark-database-project.html

Unfortunately these tests seem to measure the overall system performance with an application that also happen to generate VGA output, rather than measuring the VGA performance specifically. See the table below. Some of my results are surprising, e.g. getting higher FPS with PC Player on an 8-bit Paradise PVGA1A vs. 16-bit OTI037C, or getting an insignificant performance difference in Quake benchmark.

Ideally, I'd like to do something that would isolate VGA performance measurement from everything else. Perhaps something like measuring write speed to VGA? It is likely that the speed will depend on the video mode too, so it might sense to measure several popular modes: 320x200-256 colors, 320x240-256 colors (X-mode), 640x480-16 colors, and a few SVGA modes for these cards that support SVGA (800x600-256 colors, 1024x768-16 colors, etc.)

Any suggestions for benchmarks that already do that?

VGA Card \ Benchmark3DBench (FPS)PC Player (FPS)Doom, low resolution, low detail (FPS)Quake 320x200 (FPS)
Trident TVGA9000A10.62.515.81.2
Oak Technologies OTI037C7.22.214.31.1
Cirrus Logic CL-GD542012.12.618.11.2
Trident TVGA9000I-110.62.515.81.2
Realtek RTG310611.12.5161.2
Tseng Labs ET4000AX11.72.517.81.2
Cirrus Logic CL-GD510/20 (8-bit ISA)7.22.214.41.1
Paradise PVGA1A (8-bit ISA)8.52.315.71.2
 
Some of my results are surprising, e.g. getting higher FPS with PC Player on an 8-bit Paradise PVGA1A vs. 16-bit OTI037C

That's not surprising if you read the datasheet of the OTI037C. The only thing that's 16 bit on a card with that chip is ROM access (under favorable circumstances only), the VGA controller itself is completely 8-bit.
 
That's not surprising if you read the datasheet of the OTI037C. The only thing that's 16 bit on a card with that chip is ROM access (under favorable circumstances only), the VGA controller itself is completely 8-bit.
Huh, looked the datasheet up. It indeed has an 8-bit data bus. Also, it multiplexes back the data and the address. I am guessing they were trying to save on the pin count?
 
Huh, looked the datasheet up. It indeed has an 8-bit data bus. Also, it multiplexes back the data and the address. I am guessing they were trying to save on the pin count?

I imagine so, but yeah, the multiplexing thing it is kind of weird? Maybe there was some kind of manufacturing constraint that forced them to below a certain pin count.

Kind of amusingly I have a pile of cards based on one of its successors, the OTI077; the VGA chipset on those *is* 16 bit, but the cards only have a single 8-bit ROM instead of the even/odd 16 bit arrangement of the 037-based cards, so *theoretically* it might be possible to find highly BIOS-dependent software that would run faster on the older card if it were installed in a machine without option ROM shadowing support.

(This isn’t unusual on later 16 bit VGA cards, though, even really high performance ones. 16 bit ROM access was always an iffy proposition because of that quirk in the ISA bus that requires everything in a full 128k window to support 16 bit access or nothing can. If you had any other option ROMs in the system you were probably SOL. Does the machine you’re benchmarking these cards on shadow?)

I wonder what’s slower, an OTI-067/077 or the Trident TVGA 9000. I was firmly convinced the latter was the slowest 16 bit VGA card in the world based on having one in my 486/33.
 
I wonder what’s slower, an OTI-067/077 or the Trident TVGA 9000. I was firmly convinced the latter was the slowest 16 bit VGA card in the world based on having one in my 486/33.

Trident 9000 and OTI-077 aren't that slow, just towards lower class. Of course they slow down a 486 so I understand the feelings. An OTI-037 or a Realtek though... certainly broadens your horizons on slow VGAs
 
Trident 9000 and OTI-077 aren't that slow, just towards lower class.
Exactly. This seems to be something people just blindly repeat based on tests that were done the wrong way from the start. These cards were low-cost and never meant to be put into very fast 486s.

In a 286 or 386sx, a Trident TVGA9000 performs just as good as any top-level card. The difference is just that it will be maxed out on that systems already and can't go faster.
 
Exactly. This seems to be something people just blindly repeat based on tests that were done the wrong way from the start. These cards were low-cost and never meant to be put into very fast 486s.

Thing is, if you bought your PC from one of those rotgut mail order vendors in the back of “Computer Shopper” circa 1990-ish a TVGA9000 was what you got with the base bundle no matter what motherboard/cpu you ponied up for. So having one of these things in a fast computer was a thing that happened In the real world.

(And yes, if you only barely had the money for the computer at all you can’t expect better, I’m totally aware of that and never “blamed” the card, it was what it was. Instead of the 486 CPU I could have spread the money differently and gotten, say, a 386/25 with a better VGA and maybe more memory in the initial purchase, but overall going big on the foundation and fixing it later seemed to make sense at the time. This computer was bought during that painful period where the price of RAM had spiked up to around $100 a Mb so it in particular seemed like a dumb idea to budget on maxing that out….)

Also, FWIW, I also know that in the real world as much as people gush about some cards like the Tseng Labs products if you look at the real numbers it’s clear that once you start pushing SuperVGA modes over ISA bus it’s obvious where the real problem is, and any plain ”Just a framebuffer” card can’t do anything about it. I later had a Diamond Speedstar something-or-other in the same 486 that had an accelerated Cirrus Lab chip, and while that thing could completely wipe the floor with the TVGA *in Windows 3.11* I can’t say it was significantly different under DOS; there are only so many pixels per second you can sling across an ISA bus.

So really, while I still enjoy ragging on the TVGA I know the *real* takeaway is that the worst PCs ever made were fast 386s and 486s that only had ISA slots for video. Alas there were a *lot* of them made, considering VESA local bus didn’t really become common until a couple years into the 486’s production run.
 
You might also try this one.
 

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