I have been looking at this topic in the last couple of day's....
Does this mean that an TNT2-M64 PCI will be a better choice than a S3-Virge 325 for a pure MS-Dos setup?
If so, I will change the card in my tripple boot Pentium 166.

brostenen wrote:

I have been looking at this topic in the last couple of day's....
Does this mean that an TNT2-M64 PCI will be a better choice than a S3-Virge 325 for a pure MS-Dos setup?
If so, I will change the card in my tripple boot Pentium 166.

I don't have any S3 cards, so I can't say for sure. But one interesting fact is that GOG.com usually calls out an S3 graphics card in their default DOXBox configs, which indicates they agree that S3 is highly compatible.

If you have both, why not benchmark both and compare performance. I have not come across any incompatibilities on TNT2-M64 PCI with about 70 DOS games that I own. I would guess that if there were compatibility issues, they would be in older (earlier than 1990) DOS games. I have only a few games older than 1990 (Ultima 1,4,5, KQ1 and some Infocom games) and I haven't noticed any graphics-related compatibility issues with any of them.

I had it running in my 5x86 once, in MS-Dos-6.22 and some games had to have univbe loaded.
Some not. And a very few once just would not run on a S3-Virge-325. They were mostly vga games geared for the 386 platform.
More recent dos games, those geared towards the "DX2/Pentium" years had no issues at all.
I think it is a different S3 card than a Virge-325, that DosBox are based upon. I will try the TNT2 then, as I have the Os/2 drivers.

Today I went to another storage and removed all graphics cards from computers I have stored here, and found out that I have one S3 card (well, label says one artifact on screen, but I'll test what's gonna do.) I will test them all, even if they are not compatible with Commander Keen and post results here.

I think S3 Trio 64 & Cirrus Logic 54xx are the most compatible DOS cards, they are however not the fastest pure 2D cards, those would be the Tseng Labs ET6000 and ARK Logic PV 2000 and Matrox Millennium cards.
Nvidia RIVA 128 and TNT are very good for AGP cards, also 3DFX Banshee & Voodoo3 is quick and has few compatibility issues.

Mine is S3 Trio 3D/2X. Will see how it will perform, if it fits in AGP slot on motherboard, because I have no idea if it has 3,3V or 1,5V or combined. The card itself is 3,3V only.

This will take some time... I can't wait! 😁

S3 Trio3D/2X is pretty much a ViRGE mark 4, 2D is pretty decent, but all 3 of my cards are over bright(a common problem with S3 of the era), the blacks are grey, my ViRGE DX is the same too.
There was a thread here about this issue a while back.

I dont have a vast experience with older graphics cards but im using one S3 Trio 64v+ with 4mb and it seems to be a extremely compatible and powerful enough for dos games, i sidnt had any issue with 386 era games,486 and pentium. I even played duke nukem 3d.

There's an awful lot of S3 owners in here. I'd really appreciate it if anyone who owns a Virge DX, VX (or any other S3 card) could try out the game Alien Logic. It seems to be abandonware, so it isn't hard to find.

I mentioned this before, but ended up being the last post on the previous page.

The game works, but has strange shimmering pixel artifacts on most screens in the game (mostly outside of the dialog screens). I tried this with a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Virge DX and an STB Velocity 3D Virge VX, both had the same problem. Installing a Matrox Millennium surprisingly made the problem vanish. This was in a Pentium 200 MMX system on a Tyan 430HX board, running in pure DOS 6.22 (no Windows at the time).

The best card for dos gaming is the card that plays all the game you with the lest problems.

Ok ok. Let's get serious.
For me the best cards are as follows. (Not in any oder)
S3 Virge
S3 trio
Voodoo3
Rage
Banshee
Ati mach 32 and 64

For me the voodoo3 and virge cards have never failed me. The rage and mach cards are ok once you get them working with most later vga games.

Hmm... The Mach32 and Mach64 cards have bad EGA compatibility and produce the jerky motion bug in Keen, afaik. Edit: Rage as well, I can say from personal experience.

But I've heard very good things about S3 cards, particularly the Trio. Not surprising considering it's the card used in DOSBox emulation...

I have a voodoo3 though. I used it many many years ago for a lot of DOS and Windows games and it worked great, never had any problems.

Mach cards can be a pain with with older stuff. It can be fixed with driver tweacking. You really need the drivers for those cards and dos. But it's still hit or miss with older stuff. Not bad for 3D games like dark forces

Edit
Fist gen rage cards or more or less a modified Mach 64

Well, I was so happy that I arrived to my grandma's, so I instantaneously took cover off the PC. And good grief! The graphics card was ATI Rage of some sort IN PCI SLOT! I was sooooo disappointed, whole weekend was destroyed. Oh well, now I have to find another Pentium MMX-style board with AGP slot and build another one... Sigh...

But I at least ran that benchmark program, in first test it did 97,1 FPS, on second 37,3 FPS, DOOM test didn't even run and Quake test 969 FRM in 30 sec -> 32,3 FPS.

I have been using a PCI Voodoo Banshee, and I must say not a single dos game showed any incompatibility , they all just work perfectly.

Initially I was going to use a Rage Pro, but its terrible .... Lots of games had scrolling issues or just gave me a black screen.

Geforce 6200 doesn't seem to work with PLOP all that well either for what ever reason, it just displays a black screen.

I would love to posses one of the Voodoos, but in place where I live they are extremely rare, and when found, it usually goes for approx. 150 US dollars (or 130 euros). There is no way that I will buy this since my income is around (approx.) 3 USD a week.

I feel you there, I am from South Africa, and it isnt much different , I found mine on amibay for $5 and shipping was about $6, so I had to save up a bit , but I will keep my eyes open for anything in the Czech Rep for you 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote:

There's an awful lot of S3 owners in here. I'd really appreciate it if anyone who owns a Virge DX, VX (or any other S3 card) could try out the game Alien Logic. It seems to be abandonware, so it isn't hard to find.

I mentioned this before, but ended up being the last post on the previous page.

Man I hate it when that happens.

Anyway I did see your post and it made me curious as I have about 5 different Trio cards to try out. No probs finding the game but I can't get the bastard thing to run. I've been trying it on a slot A machine in Win 98 DOS mode because that's what I've currently got setup on my bench so maybe I'll try a pure DOS build instead.

brassicGamer wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

There's an awful lot of S3 owners in here. I'd really appreciate it if anyone who owns a Virge DX, VX (or any other S3 card) could try out the game Alien Logic. It seems to be abandonware, so it isn't hard to find.

I mentioned this before, but ended up being the last post on the previous page.

Man I hate it when that happens.

Anyway I did see your post and it made me curious as I have about 5 different Trio cards to try out. No probs finding the game but I can't get the bastard thing to run. I've been trying it on a slot A machine in Win 98 DOS mode because that's what I've currently got setup on my bench so maybe I'll try a pure DOS build instead.

Thanks for looking into this!

I installed the game in pure DOS mode but later installed Windows 98SE overtop and it still seems to work for me. I do own the actual game disc though, and it may be somewhat picky about that since it uses CD music. Not sure...

Let me know if you get it working!

Right, got the game working - all the exact same hardware except I switched back to Intel architecture from AMD. can you post up a screenshot of what I'm looking for? I've made a comparison with a YouTube playthrough and it's looking fine so far.

brassicGamer wrote:

Right, got the game working - all the exact same hardware except I switched back to Intel architecture from AMD. can you post up a screenshot of what I'm looking for? I've made a comparison with a YouTube playthrough and it's looking fine so far.

I don't have the card installed in my system currently, but the easiest way to tell that something is wrong is to get to the part where it shows the overview map of the forest, where you travel from one place to another. On that screen I get small patches of "noisy" pixels, almost like static or interference scattered across the screen. It almost looks intentional, except that it doesn't occur on other cards than my Virge DX and VX. Sort of looks like what I remember later 3D games doing when the GPU is overclocked too much. They aren't white pixels... just similar colors to the surrounding ones, shimmering and moving a bit.

Its pretty obvious if you're looking for it, so its possible that it either doesn't do it with the Trio cards or that its a combination of card+platform that make it arise.