Video

Video

ATI | Quantum3D | Banshee/Voodoo3
SIS6326 | Matrox | FastVid | FAQ
Excellent this is one of my fav subjects, me like to say I've experienced a lot of different Video cards in my time, and think it would be nice if I shared my findings.

This is for people who want to purchase a videocard for interfacing to an Arcade monitor, if your aim is to use a PC monitor you can ignore most of this section.

Each card will be divided up in its good/bad points.

Firstly lets clear up the different types of Arcade monitor:

Standard Resolution
This has a horizontal scanning frequency of 15.75khz (VGA is 31.5khz) and a vertical frequency of (49hz to 62hz) the resolution normally is 336x240.
Extended version of this monitor can achive 512x288 at 53hz.

Most JAMMA games used this type of monitor.

Medium Resolution
This has a horizontal scanning frequency of 24/25khz and a vertical frequency of (55hz to 60hz) the resolution normally is 512x384. Sega games are 496x384.

Currently I am using a Voodoo Banshee card, and must say I am extremly happy with the results.

ATI Cards

I tell you ATI wasn't very smart having most of there video cards feature 'Rage' in there titles, its a consumer nightmare!

ATI Rage 128 and ATI Rage have nothing incommon, only similarities is in the name.

ATI Rage 2/Pro. (Mach64 internal clock)
These videocards where once considered the king for MAME Arcade monitor support.
This was the first videocard to have a 15khz 640x480/16bit colour mode (courtsey of Brian Lewis of PC2Jamma project), and was soon recommened by everyone who wanted to hook a videocard to an Arcade Monitor.

Advantages

MAME 640x480 15khz mode at 8 or 16bit color (running at 30hz update, this means games run at 30fps, suitable for Vector games).
MAME 640x240 15khz mode at 8 or 16bit color (running at 60hz update).
Excellent picture quality on Arcade Monitors.
Full MAME modex support for other NTSC/PAL modes.
Good DOS support (VESA2 linear framebuffer).
Motion Compensation on some models (Expert@Play/Work/98) for DVD playback.
Very cheap!

Disadvantages

No 24khz support.
Not the fastest card in the world (CPU bottleneck).
No Windows98 Arcade monitor support (as of time of writting).
Awful Direct3D/OpenGL.
16bit support only for games that have a width that when doubled are <=640 or a width = 640 (This effects games like CPS 1 (and 2 if emulated), certian Midway games), however it works with the Generic15khz driver which fixes that problem (see below for information about the Generic15khz driver).

Choose this card if your main goal is just to run low resolution games, probably in a DOS only environment, also this is a good solution if you want to play Vector games (30FPS limit).

ATI Rage 128.
I remember I took this card out of my machine to replace it with the card above, cause I really wanted to play 16bit games on my Arcade monitor, yep crazy eh?

But I could not handle the restrictions it put on my machine for other uses, and I badly wanted to have 16bit monitor support with this card.

I was mucking around with the MAME source, and managed to get a picture to work using some registers settings from one of the Modex modes (512x240), I e-mailed Brian Lewis and he told me that doubling the mode width would also result is 15khz, Brian also implemented this in MAME, however there is no tripplebuffer support or support for 256 height games (Opti-MAME did correct these).

Extra information about the Generic15khz driver, the mode actually is 1280x240 and there is no interlacing, however many games fit this mode, many games have there width trippled or quadrupled (this does put extra CPU usage especially if the videocard doesn't support VESA linear framebuffer!).

Advantages

MAME 1240x480 15khz mode at 8 or 16bit color (Midway and CPS1 games fit).
Full MAME modex support for other NTSC/PAL modes.
Fast DOS speeds.
Good DOS support (VESA2 linear framebuffer).
Hardware DVD support.
Good 3D and OpenGL accelaration.

Disadvantages

No 24khz support.
No Windows98 Arcade monitor support (as of time of writting).
No interlace mode (requried for Vector games).

Choose this card if your main goal is to run low resolution games (no vector games) and still want to use Windows98 to play DVDs and 3D games.

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Quantum3D AArdvark

Quantum3D does indeed make some Arcade equipment, this videocard is based on a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee, whats the difference bewteen this and a normal Voodoo Banshee?? Notice the two ports on the picture, one port is a VGA connector (for VGA monitors) the other is a 9pin EGA connector (for 15kzh/24khz arcade monitors).

You flash the BIOS to what arcade monitor you want to interface, either 15khz (CGA) or 24khz (EGA), the VGA output is never changed.

To achive the output to lower resolution monitors the AArdvark does anti-aliasing, a simple two-by-two anti-aliasing scheme to compress the 2D into a low-resolution display format.

15khz the output is 320x240, and supports either 320x240 or 640x480.

24khz the output is 512x384, and supports either 512x384, 800x600, 1024x768.

The VGA screen must be one of the above modes and running at 60hz for the video output to be correct.

As the card is almost identical to the Banshee/Voodoo3 in DOS, all references to extra Aardvark functions our noted.

Voodoo Banshee/Voodoo3

All Voodoo boards from Banshee to Voodoo3500, both AGP and PCI.

Advantages

Full MAME support for 15/24khz games (using VSyncMAME).
Native 15/24khz output (Aardvark only)
No need for a VGA monitor, PLUG AND PLAY. (Aardvark only)
Windows and Direct3D/OpenGL/Glide at 15khz or 24khz. (Aardvark only)
Motion Compensation for DVD playback.
3DFX Glide support.
Simulatanous VGA and Arcade monitor output (Aardvark only).
Banshee/Voodoo3 2000 cheap.
Supported by Mon-ARC! (full DOS TSR solution)
In-Future support from WinMon-ARC! (25khz Medium Resolution monitor Windows95/98 driver)

Disadvantages

Vesa1.2 when in native arcade mode (Aadvark only), VESA3.0 in software mode.
Native 15khz output is awful, too blurry (Aardvark only).
RGB settings on Arcade monitor way off in Native mode (Aardvark only).
No interlace mode (requried for Vector games).
Expensive if Quantum3D Aardvark..

I honestly recommend a Voodoo3/Banshee card and nope I don't work for 3DFX.

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SIS6326
SIS is a videocard company that is well known in Tawain (this is mostly where all your motherboards/ram come from), these videocards are also normally found on motherboards that have intergrated video.

Advantages

Full MAME support for 15/24khz games (using VSyncMAME).
DVD accelaration for Windows
Interlace support for Vector games.
Very cheap, I got mine for free.
Windows 640x480 at 15khz with SIS_interlace util.
Supported by Mon-ARC!

Disadvantages

Very, very, very slow! (Did I mention it was slow?)
Windows picture output is very poor, infact unusable.
too slow for Windows use.

I'd only recommend this to people on a low budget, who don't require speed!

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Matrox G400

Now from the facts I have gathered this could be the card to get, I haven't got one yet, but I'll tell you all I know.

Now as I haven't got a G400, I am going to tell you the features gathered.

Features:

Support for most (if not all) MAME 15khz/24khz games at 8 or 16bit colour (using VSyncMAME).
Support for Windows98 640x480 at 15khz (using G400 interlace util).
Fast DOS speeds.
VESA3 support. (not known).
Hardware DVD support.
Good 3D and OpenGL accelaration.
Runs on AGP bus of 80+mhz (good choice for overclocking).
Supported by Mon-ARC! (full DOS TSR solution)
Matrox have always been the card of choice for 2D (speed and picture quality).

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FastVid

FastVid is a DOS utility that can improve read and writes to the video card greater than 50% in some cases!

Download the program from the Download section, I think it only works on Pentium Pro/2/3 chipsets, but I could be wrong.

Don't try to run this under Windows DOS, run it in native DOS and it write down the settings and put them to your autoexec.bat

example line to add to your AUTOEXEC.BAT (that way Windows programs benifit too).

fastvid 111 32 e4000000

This example presumes FASTVID.EXE is located in the root drive and remember DOS4GW.EXE has to be located in the same location.

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Video FAQ section

Q: Okay you have really confused me!

A: Hey its possible, no seriously e-mail me and I'll try to help you.

Q: What about scan convertors?

A: Well I wouldn't recommend them, the picture loses something in the conversion, in the signal conversion colours become washed out, the sync becomes slightly delayed.

Q: Why do use Arcade monitors?

A: I prefer the look of an Arcade monitor, these games arent designed to played on high resolution monitors, also Arcade monitors can be a lot bigger than PC monitors.

Also I'd like to get light gun support oneday, and they don't function with digital devices like VGA monitors.

Q: Why don't use use TV out?

A: I plan to interface to a TV, but not by using TV out, too be honest I don't like the composite/S-Video output, the colours are not so accurate and they are slightly fuzzy around the edges, I plan to interface to a TV using RGB (using 15khz at either PAL or NTSC).

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