When someone uses "titular" in their video, I sit straight upright and pay attention. Lovely cards and presentation! I like that you upgraded the RAM on the VLB card. Nice touch!
Thank you sir! I really do appreciate the support! Thank you for the kind words! The Tseng is especially a joy--it's THE Diamond SpeedStar, something that I find very cool! I also quite love Boca Research boards, and that Cirrus is built like a tank! The RAM upgrade on the Cirrus VLB card was something I'm somehow both glad that I did--and not. It didn't really do much, but it did enable some extra VGA modes. That being said, they're weird, interlaced modes and I don't have a CRT around to mess with that haha.
I really appreciate the effort you've put into this video, as it's not a card I've heard of, so it's great to have it covered in such depth. I also really enjoyed hearing Duke3D with FM sound, plus liberal use of the RPG in the very beginning! I like that you actually backed up your claims with evidence rather than doing a cosmetic report on this card.
Thank you so much for the kind words and support! This video was a tough one to put together; there’s a lot out there about these cards in the sense that there’s lots of vague information about them. The reality seems to be that what’s concrete has been lost to time, unfortunately, so it was a lot of guesswork and tinkering to find the answers. Duke3D and FM is just one of those natural pairings, and it felt right for this video! This was on the ESS AudioDrive, too, which I find to be a perfect OPL3 implementation. And hey, you’ve got to have some fun with the RPG, right? And thank you! I really tried to find everything I could to be able to claim something about this card; it’s a beautifully-designed piece of hardware, but it’s a damn shame that the drivers are so hard to find!
I'll just leave it up to you to explain how capable rare vintage video cards are. There's so much information in this video I'll probably need to watch it three or four times to start to internalize parts of it. Besides all the cool hardware characteristics it's always fascinating to see how companies used ingenious ways to cheat and try to appear to be further ahead than what they really are. Seems like this video card is one of those that was a little late to the party and with that it had advantages and problems. Thanks for another great video, buddy. Always fun to see your work.
What makes these cards legendary is that they started it all. The Nvidia RTX really came from those cards. The Voodoo is really credited with that though. SLI is a Voodoo patent.
Thank you for all of the kind words and for your continued support and guidance, good friend! This video was a lot--hell, I learned so much making it that I just had to share it all! I'm glad that you were able to get a lot out of it; this was my testament to a really ingenious design that deserved more love, and yet also was somehow underwhelming. It's definitely crazy to see these companies try and outfox the reviewers. I don't know why Hercules, of all brands, would pull that. Especially seeing as they were one of the most-respected graphics card manufacturers of their time. It really was a bit late to the party; IIT's use of the aging XGA-2 architecture was an interesting choice, to say the least. The fact is that I am so damn impressed at the speed of this card; it should not have been as fast as it is! Thank you, Bruno, again, for all your kind words and friendship and support! It means far, far more than you know!
Yessiree! That they did. They were awesome cards. I just have to ask--any chance you have the driver diskettes somewhere and can upload an image? I can't find the proper drivers for the life of me. This card must've been great when used to its fullest potential! Anyway, thanks for watching, and I'm just so glad that you enjoyed!
Now wait a damn minute... if the card is from '92 and plays Duke 3d AT ALL, it's a huge deal! Graphics weren't moving as fast then as the mid-late 90s but that thing was a FOSSIL by '96. The fact that it played Doom totally acceptably (for the time) is HUGE too. Most 1992 graphics cards were lucky if they played more demanding side-scrollers smoothly. It doesn't look quick for those much newer games, but I'd suggest it's a total beast.
I definitely can agree, especially when you put it in that light. I do think this card does not fully saturate the ISA bus in DOS, as does the Tseng ET4000AX or WD90C31, amongst the other, weirder late ISA cards and that's where I guess I gave it more grief than necessary. The truth is, it's really darned impressive when you consider that this card is just a cloned XGA-2 with a few tweaks; that means it's an even OLDER card and still running Duke3D pretty well. I do think that the chip itself is very, very fast, but its speed and design shine best in Windows. In DOS, it's up there, but I'd still probably take an ATI Mach32 ISA over it, just for the 32-bit core and 64-bit datapath if nothing else. I do think that ISA graphics products on the whole are underrated; I have an NCR 77C22E that is faster than some VLB cards in text/graphics modes, and it's from 1990. It is about ~3% faster than the Tseng on average, or tied thereabouts. It also runs Duke3D pretty well. I guess that's a testament to the engineering, you know? There were some really special, beastly cards out there!
Nice video! I enjoyed the review. I think you could have explicitly mentioned why the acceleration features of any card cannot help in DOS games or DOS benchmarks. The reason is that they are programmed to do everything using CPU and the whole communication with a card is just about sending the processed pixels to the card's own memory. Therefore, the only thing that matters in most DOS apps is the bandwidth from the CPU to the video memory (which is limited heavily on any ISA card compared to VL-bus and PCI). I can tell that back then, it was very good to have the GUI acceleration for basically any office work in higher resolutions (not just CAD/CAM). It helped with mem-to-mem copy within the video memory when moving windows and the card could do solid fills on its own instead of spending CPU time to fill the memory pixel by pixel just to draw a new program window. I have one 486 computer with a large professional ISA video card (TIGA based) and working in Windows 3.11 in 1280x1024 is surprisingly snappy as long no bitmap pictures are redrawn.
Hey, thank you! Glad that you were able to learn and enjoy! This card sure must’ve been an elusive one. I can’t imagine it was that popular of a choice, and the IIT AGX has this status now as a “weird/obscure/rare Windows accelerator,” which, to most people, means little. It’s a shame, too, as it’s clearly an impressive piece of tech. I do think that the VLB version might be more compelling and interesting to mess with, especially given that it’s 32-bit. Either way, for a late-model 16-bit card, this is a neat one! Thanks again for stopping by, for the kind words, and for the support!
Thank you so much for the kind words and support! I’m really glad that you enjoyed this one! It was a trying time getting this card running, but it was worth it; lots to share, and even more to learn! Thanks again for checking it out, and for all the kind words! See you in the Slot 1 race!
Very interesting videocard and it looks so beautiful. Lower color depth can be also not a problem at text processing, at spreadsheets at Excel or at programming. At Windows maybe that card can work also very good with SimCity 2000 for Windows 95 or Caesar 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 2. Thanks for that comparison with other videocards and for your great work good friend.
Thank you for the kind words and support, as always, good friend! Indeed, the lower color depth isn't too much of an issue for office work and productivity tasks. It's a shame that I couldn't get true color going, as this card can/should handle it. The drivers are just gone, and that makes it a pain to work with. I would be curious (and probably should've tried) SimCity 2000 and Caesar II or Heroes of Might and Magic II. It's definitely a pretty fast card, so I'd imagine it'd be okay. Especially at a fair resolution, like 640x480! And thank you again for all of the kind words and support, good friend. I am so glad that you enjoyed!
Thank you! I really spent some time trying to clean this case up. It was not in the best shape when I first picked it up, unfortunately, so this is its new lease on life! As far as this card goes, there’s not much out there; it seems like AGX cards are rare/nonexistent, being specialized, niche pieces of hardware. It’d be cool to find more out about these and the VLB variant!
I can totally see that. Duke3D normally runs pretty okay on this machine on a Chips F64300, which is about as fast as a Tseng ET4000/W32P or ARK1000VL. It's a testament to that game, though, and how advanced it was; I'd say that a 5x86 at 160 is much, much better suited for Duke3D. Hell, it'd be great for 640x480, which is always nice! Anyway, thanks for watching!
Have you used Univbe Universal Vesa Bios Extensions? With those maybe performance changes / improves. There were Scitech universal drivers for windows 3 and 95 too. SDD, scitech display doctor. Best wishes.
i had a 486 dx4100 with a 1 meg ISA 8900C trident graphics card and i could play duke3d dark forces and even quake just fine was never jerky perfectly playable .... i could load tomb raider but could not play it it was too jerky that really needed a 2meg pci card and pentium 75 as min
![[Tech Byte 0010] This 386SX Motherboard has the WEIRDEST L2 Cache Setup!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/w8371NW3SQA/mqdefault.jpg)
When someone uses "titular" in their video, I sit straight upright and pay attention. Lovely cards and presentation! I like that you upgraded the RAM on the VLB card. Nice touch!
Thank you sir! I really do appreciate the support! Thank you for the kind words! The Tseng is especially a joy--it's THE Diamond SpeedStar, something that I find very cool! I also quite love Boca Research boards, and that Cirrus is built like a tank! The RAM upgrade on the Cirrus VLB card was something I'm somehow both glad that I did--and not. It didn't really do much, but it did enable some extra VGA modes. That being said, they're weird, interlaced modes and I don't have a CRT around to mess with that haha.
I really appreciate the effort you've put into this video, as it's not a card I've heard of, so it's great to have it covered in such depth. I also really enjoyed hearing Duke3D with FM sound, plus liberal use of the RPG in the very beginning! I like that you actually backed up your claims with evidence rather than doing a cosmetic report on this card.
Thank you so much for the kind words and support! This video was a tough one to put together; there’s a lot out there about these cards in the sense that there’s lots of vague information about them. The reality seems to be that what’s concrete has been lost to time, unfortunately, so it was a lot of guesswork and tinkering to find the answers. Duke3D and FM is just one of those natural pairings, and it felt right for this video! This was on the ESS AudioDrive, too, which I find to be a perfect OPL3 implementation. And hey, you’ve got to have some fun with the RPG, right? And thank you! I really tried to find everything I could to be able to claim something about this card; it’s a beautifully-designed piece of hardware, but it’s a damn shame that the drivers are so hard to find!
I'll just leave it up to you to explain how capable rare vintage video cards are. There's so much information in this video I'll probably need to watch it three or four times to start to internalize parts of it. Besides all the cool hardware characteristics it's always fascinating to see how companies used ingenious ways to cheat and try to appear to be further ahead than what they really are. Seems like this video card is one of those that was a little late to the party and with that it had advantages and problems. Thanks for another great video, buddy. Always fun to see your work.
What makes these cards legendary is that they started it all. The Nvidia RTX really came from those cards. The Voodoo is really credited with that though. SLI is a Voodoo patent.
Watch somebody else's videos for a better explanation.
Thank you for all of the kind words and for your continued support and guidance, good friend! This video was a lot--hell, I learned so much making it that I just had to share it all! I'm glad that you were able to get a lot out of it; this was my testament to a really ingenious design that deserved more love, and yet also was somehow underwhelming. It's definitely crazy to see these companies try and outfox the reviewers. I don't know why Hercules, of all brands, would pull that. Especially seeing as they were one of the most-respected graphics card manufacturers of their time. It really was a bit late to the party; IIT's use of the aging XGA-2 architecture was an interesting choice, to say the least. The fact is that I am so damn impressed at the speed of this card; it should not have been as fast as it is! Thank you, Bruno, again, for all your kind words and friendship and support! It means far, far more than you know!
@@RetroTechBytes It's my pleasure, I'm always learning with you.
@@SUCRA Same here buddy!
I remember this very well and I had one. This predated the S3 and Voodoo cards. This was back in the early 90s.
Yessiree! That they did. They were awesome cards. I just have to ask--any chance you have the driver diskettes somewhere and can upload an image? I can't find the proper drivers for the life of me. This card must've been great when used to its fullest potential! Anyway, thanks for watching, and I'm just so glad that you enjoyed!
Now wait a damn minute... if the card is from '92 and plays Duke 3d AT ALL, it's a huge deal!
Graphics weren't moving as fast then as the mid-late 90s but that thing was a FOSSIL by '96.
The fact that it played Doom totally acceptably (for the time) is HUGE too.
Most 1992 graphics cards were lucky if they played more demanding side-scrollers smoothly.
It doesn't look quick for those much newer games, but I'd suggest it's a total beast.
I definitely can agree, especially when you put it in that light. I do think this card does not fully saturate the ISA bus in DOS, as does the Tseng ET4000AX or WD90C31, amongst the other, weirder late ISA cards and that's where I guess I gave it more grief than necessary. The truth is, it's really darned impressive when you consider that this card is just a cloned XGA-2 with a few tweaks; that means it's an even OLDER card and still running Duke3D pretty well. I do think that the chip itself is very, very fast, but its speed and design shine best in Windows. In DOS, it's up there, but I'd still probably take an ATI Mach32 ISA over it, just for the 32-bit core and 64-bit datapath if nothing else. I do think that ISA graphics products on the whole are underrated; I have an NCR 77C22E that is faster than some VLB cards in text/graphics modes, and it's from 1990. It is about ~3% faster than the Tseng on average, or tied thereabouts. It also runs Duke3D pretty well. I guess that's a testament to the engineering, you know? There were some really special, beastly cards out there!
Nice video! I enjoyed the review. I think you could have explicitly mentioned why the acceleration features of any card cannot help in DOS games or DOS benchmarks. The reason is that they are programmed to do everything using CPU and the whole communication with a card is just about sending the processed pixels to the card's own memory. Therefore, the only thing that matters in most DOS apps is the bandwidth from the CPU to the video memory (which is limited heavily on any ISA card compared to VL-bus and PCI).
I can tell that back then, it was very good to have the GUI acceleration for basically any office work in higher resolutions (not just CAD/CAM). It helped with mem-to-mem copy within the video memory when moving windows and the card could do solid fills on its own instead of spending CPU time to fill the memory pixel by pixel just to draw a new program window.
I have one 486 computer with a large professional ISA video card (TIGA based) and working in Windows 3.11 in 1280x1024 is surprisingly snappy as long no bitmap pictures are redrawn.
Great content, It is good to learn about vga I could never afford back in the day :)
Hey, thank you! Glad that you were able to learn and enjoy! This card sure must’ve been an elusive one. I can’t imagine it was that popular of a choice, and the IIT AGX has this status now as a “weird/obscure/rare Windows accelerator,” which, to most people, means little. It’s a shame, too, as it’s clearly an impressive piece of tech. I do think that the VLB version might be more compelling and interesting to mess with, especially given that it’s 32-bit. Either way, for a late-model 16-bit card, this is a neat one! Thanks again for stopping by, for the kind words, and for the support!
Vary nice job on doing the research on this card and nicely put together great job. 👏
Thank you so much for the kind words and support! I’m really glad that you enjoyed this one! It was a trying time getting this card running, but it was worth it; lots to share, and even more to learn! Thanks again for checking it out, and for all the kind words! See you in the Slot 1 race!
Nice !
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed :)
Very interesting videocard and it looks so beautiful. Lower color depth can be also not a problem at text processing, at spreadsheets at Excel or at programming. At Windows maybe that card can work also very good with SimCity 2000 for Windows 95 or Caesar 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 2. Thanks for that comparison with other videocards and for your great work good friend.
Thank you for the kind words and support, as always, good friend! Indeed, the lower color depth isn't too much of an issue for office work and productivity tasks. It's a shame that I couldn't get true color going, as this card can/should handle it. The drivers are just gone, and that makes it a pain to work with. I would be curious (and probably should've tried) SimCity 2000 and Caesar II or Heroes of Might and Magic II. It's definitely a pretty fast card, so I'd imagine it'd be okay. Especially at a fair resolution, like 640x480! And thank you again for all of the kind words and support, good friend. I am so glad that you enjoyed!
Wow that's a clean case... Haven't seen this specific card either.
Thank you! I really spent some time trying to clean this case up. It was not in the best shape when I first picked it up, unfortunately, so this is its new lease on life! As far as this card goes, there’s not much out there; it seems like AGX cards are rare/nonexistent, being specialized, niche pieces of hardware. It’d be cool to find more out about these and the VLB variant!
Duke3D was the reason I upgraded. My DX2-66@80 with a CL VLB VGA performed about as bad in this game as yours. It ran well on an AMD 5x85-133@160 ;-)
I can totally see that. Duke3D normally runs pretty okay on this machine on a Chips F64300, which is about as fast as a Tseng ET4000/W32P or ARK1000VL. It's a testament to that game, though, and how advanced it was; I'd say that a 5x86 at 160 is much, much better suited for Duke3D. Hell, it'd be great for 640x480, which is always nice! Anyway, thanks for watching!
Have you used Univbe Universal Vesa Bios Extensions?
With those maybe performance changes / improves.
There were Scitech universal drivers for windows 3 and 95 too.
SDD, scitech display doctor.
Best wishes.
i had a 486 dx4100 with a 1 meg ISA 8900C trident graphics card and i could play duke3d dark forces and even quake just fine was never jerky perfectly playable .... i could load tomb raider but could not play it it was too jerky that really needed a 2meg pci card and pentium 75 as min
only gui or game ?