Which old-skool video adapter should I use?

[Petro89]

Hey all. I have an old pentium 100 machine which I'll be pulling out of my closet. I have a choice as to whether I should use the 1MB S3 chipset onboard the motherboard, or a 2MB ATI Mach 64 ISA card. Intuition would say to use the 2MB card, since I could have more colors and higher res. However, it is ISA. I doubt I'll be using it for any graphically intensive programs, and the only game I'd ever play is Starcraft. But I might as well use the better card. I'm too lazy to test both.
Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Priit]

Umm, ATI Mach64 can,t be ISA card AFAIK. ATI's only 2Mb ISA card was VGA Wonder. I say go with S3, less ISA cards is better

 

[Petro89]

Actually, the ATI Mach 64 is a 1 meg ISA card, but there are memory chips added to the card, making it 2 meg total. I know there aren't many (if any at all) ISA cards that have 2 meg installed before any upgrade. Anyone else have an opinion?

BTW, that is a beast of a machine. I am very envious.

 

[oldfart]

By all means go for the 2 meg card! With double the video memeory, I bet you could get to 2 FPD (frames per day) in Q3 demo1

 

[vss1980]

Hmmmm, I would bet that the onboard S3 chip is possibly hooked into a PCI/VL type connection to the CPU which would make it faster, but really I dont think it matters, at that level of speed the speed of the video card is no longer important - (what would be more helpful is the number of the S3 chip (that can tell us its connection type, features, etc.).

Personally, unless you have a very distinct advantage to use the ATI, use the onboard one (as for the extra memory providing resolutions & colours - I doubt you'll be using a monitor on such a machine that would push these limits) as this was from an era where S3 was one of the best graphic chip makers around. Besides, you can always use that ATI card in something else (like a crack rack, etc.).