Best VESA graphics card?
category: general [glöplog]
What in your opinion was the best PCI graphics board for VESA support? Either natively or with a VBE driver.
Please also mention the name of the VBE driver to be used with that card.
Please also mention the name of the VBE driver to be used with that card.
tseng et6000?
S3 864? (diamond stealth 64, iirc)
PCI.. wow that's newschool.
I remenber having a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5422 running on VLB (Vesa local bus), using univbe as a vesa 2 bios driver. But it doesnt fit the topic, it was about the best cards, and mine was very crappy.
I remenber having a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5422 running on VLB (Vesa local bus), using univbe as a vesa 2 bios driver. But it doesnt fit the topic, it was about the best cards, and mine was very crappy.
Strange question..
Back in the PCI-days all graphic cards had proper VBE support. I liked the Matrox cards most because they had a incredible sharp picture.
Back in the PCI-days all graphic cards had proper VBE support. I liked the Matrox cards most because they had a incredible sharp picture.
Quote:
Back in the PCI-days all graphic cards had proper VBE support.
Ahem. You must be joking. I remember my first S3 card had a crappy VESA support and had no linear framebuffer (VESA 1.2, but no 2.0). I had to use UniVBE too.
My newer S3 (Trio64+) was ok, but really slow.
On topic: I second bartman. The Tseng ET6000 was quite famous back then.
I remember I just bought the ET6000 to watch low-res (320x240) Hicolor/Truecolor demos like Totraum 209 or The Fulcrum.
Tseng ET 4000 & 6000 ; Matrox Mystique had good support too.
AFAIK tseng had separate read and write windows which caused trouble with lots of vesa programs.. univbe may have fixed that though.
I never had a tseng to benchmark on, but the 864 s3 (which came out before trio) benchmarked pretty well. At least compared to CL cards =)
I never had a tseng to benchmark on, but the 864 s3 (which came out before trio) benchmarked pretty well. At least compared to CL cards =)
Hm, never had problems with the S3 Trio64V+ and it supported everything you needed. S3 even sent me all manuals to the chip back then (that's why old Smash Designs DOS demos have a special S3 mode with bilinear filtering for the framebuffer ;)
TSENG LABS!
The Matrox G200/250 had PCI versions and AFAIR they performed pretty well with Vesa.
Otherwise, Tseng Labs :-)
Crappiest Vesa support goes to Trident Microsystems, god bless UniVBE for those :)
Otherwise, Tseng Labs :-)
Crappiest Vesa support goes to Trident Microsystems, god bless UniVBE for those :)
kb_, I had a Pentium with S3Trio 64V+ and I'm almost certain it had only Vesa 1.2 and no LFB.
I had to use some freeware I found somewhere utility to get VBE 2.0 support, or uniVBE which I found was bloated by comparison.
I think the VBE 2.0 software drivers wezre just emulating the LFB, alledgedly by setting the x86 paging system so that it would redirect the adresses of the LFB to the 64K the card was exposing to the user at a given time, and pagefaulting on accessing outside of the window , then changing banks in the exception handler...pretty lowlevel if you ask me.
I didnt know the S3 could do hardware bilinear, i'n not sure I understand, i guess it's something like for example 320.240 framebuffer with smoothed High res output...
I had to use some freeware I found somewhere utility to get VBE 2.0 support, or uniVBE which I found was bloated by comparison.
I think the VBE 2.0 software drivers wezre just emulating the LFB, alledgedly by setting the x86 paging system so that it would redirect the adresses of the LFB to the 64K the card was exposing to the user at a given time, and pagefaulting on accessing outside of the window , then changing banks in the exception handler...pretty lowlevel if you ask me.
I didnt know the S3 could do hardware bilinear, i'n not sure I understand, i guess it's something like for example 320.240 framebuffer with smoothed High res output...
Tseng Labs ET6000, as people already pointed out a dozen times.
ET4000 was also very popular.
Thanks for the answers so far.
I used to have an ET6000 for a while back in the day and I remember many '97 era prods showed buggy graphics on it without a separate VBE driver.
I currently have an MGA G200 in the DOS PC, but I feel that it's VESA support isn't as good as I like either. I might try and hunt down mgavbe or whatever it was called, see if it makes the situation any better. I also love the sharp picture of the MGA cards, especially important if the machine is plugged into a TFT or LCD projector..
I seem to remember trying univbe and it didn't support the G200, but I may remember wrong, as this machine has been on the shelf for many years due to lack of interest. :-)
I used to have an ET6000 for a while back in the day and I remember many '97 era prods showed buggy graphics on it without a separate VBE driver.
I currently have an MGA G200 in the DOS PC, but I feel that it's VESA support isn't as good as I like either. I might try and hunt down mgavbe or whatever it was called, see if it makes the situation any better. I also love the sharp picture of the MGA cards, especially important if the machine is plugged into a TFT or LCD projector..
I seem to remember trying univbe and it didn't support the G200, but I may remember wrong, as this machine has been on the shelf for many years due to lack of interest. :-)
univbe's development continued far into the win9x era, so a later version probably supports G200.