Not that many customers were buying ISA graphics cards in 1996. Thus this ought to be a special one.This might be the ISA graphics card with the most advanced VGA chip ever produced.
The CL-GD5434 is a modern 64bit chip with EDO RAM support and a comprehensive acceleration feature set. Obviously, it is sitting on a slow ISA bus so the card can’t match simpler VL-Bus designs in DOS performance. However, holds its own in Windows GUI acceleration.
CL GD5434 supports EDO DRAM, but can this card actually accept and make use of it?
Samsung chips installed on this card are actually EDO (unlike the the soldered-on Micron parts in the first bank). I am not sure about timing the card actually use. Could check next time I run this card again. But I doubt this could make any practical difference.
Most S3 cards can be run off-specs with EDO-like timings with any chips.
Question, I have one missing the speed star label on the bios. Does the screen say anything when it boots up? Wondering if someone swapped the bios. It does work.
The Diamond Speedstar series lived up to its name back in the day. It was THE card to have for a solid performance all around, even in ISA form. Thank you for the memories!