So apart from some older scrolling games it's a mint card? The signal quality is meant to be really good. Might get one as well. Although I'm very with my Geforce and S3 cards.

EDIT: What about later Matrox cards?

I wouldn't take the reviews of the era so seriously regarding compatibility. They were focused in recent stuff of their time, noone would test Commander Keen on a 1995 VGA and report it did not have good compatibility. Likewise noone tests recent videocards with older titles to report any problems. 😉

Yeah, you are right keropi, there is no suite for easily testing VGA compatibility afaik... issues with different cards didn't get obvious until 3D acceleration came along.

Gona wrote:

I have finished my full test. I need to modify my early results: On CRT monitor you can use Voodoo chips (with 2d part) without […]
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I have finished my full test. I need to modify my early results:
On CRT monitor you can use Voodoo chips (with 2d part) without errors also
(Voodoo Banshee; 3; 4 and 5).
Same other chips will also work on CRT without problems:
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5440;S3 Trio32;64;64V+;3D;Trident ProVidia 9685
(These chips have color problems with some games on LCD/TFT monitors)

These chips are work without problem both on CRT and LCD/TFT:
Trident 3Dimage9750 (975)
Trident 3Dimage9850 (985)
S3 Savage4 Pro (86C397)
S3 Savage4 Xtreme (86C398)
S3 Savage2000 (86C410)
ARK Logic ARK2000PV (with UniVBE)

nVIDIA chips between RIVA TNT2 and GeForce3 Ti 500 are also very good (I have found only two game with light problem).

Detailed compatibility table on my page:
http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS

I'm curious how well Intel's integrated GPU on the sandy/ivybridge/haswell fare with what you test, they're faster than DOS era cards, do you have access to the Intel chips to test?

ih8registrations wrote:

I'm curious how well Intel's integrated GPU on the sandy/ivybridge/haswell fare with what you test, they're faster than DOS era cards, do you have access to the Intel chips to test?

I have an atom board with "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600" onboard gfx, is that interesting to test? any specific requests?

keropi wrote:

ih8registrations wrote:

I'm curious how well Intel's integrated GPU on the sandy/ivybridge/haswell fare with what you test, they're faster than DOS era cards, do you have access to the Intel chips to test?

I have an atom board with "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600" onboard gfx, is that interesting to test? any specific requests?

Testing from: http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

currently in my old rig i use a Diamond Steath II s220 with a rendition Vertite chip, 4megs PCI. I have no not had any problems with the card running any DOS programs or games, but one, No windows 3.x drivers. but I do love the card. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is awesome on this along with GLQuake.

Of course a Rendition card is nice, but it will slow down Mode-X games down to a crawl. Just try to run the original Doom.

IF you are going to build an old pc try finding an old S3 Virge card preferably a later variant (385) or the replacement the s3 Virge Vx which is much faster.Ofcourse you still need a set of 12mb each voodoo 2 boards but a lot of early 3d dos games support this old card.For example the only 3d version of screamer 1 supports only the virge range of cards! Still its my dream that someday this card will be featured in dosbox like the 3dfx is added as of lately!

I'm sure I remember seeing a horizontal bar graph on Vogons showing video speed (might have been FPS, might have been MB/s) with various AGP and PCI cards, but I can't find it anywhere. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

One of these?

idspispopd wrote:

One of these?

That benchmark of software Quake in 320x240 makes you see why all the gaming magazines were in praise of the Matrox Millennium back in 1995/1996. It was a big step up compared to its competitors at the time.

🤣 The S3 Virge seams to be the slowest of them all ! But really there are a couple early dos games that support only s3 virge range of cards...Btw that list reminded me of a different era as i or my friends had many of those cards and were always making them sound better then they actually were...!

idspispopd wrote:

Of course a Rendition card is nice, but it will slow down Mode-X games down to a crawl. Just try to run the original Doom.

I think you mixed up Mode X and 13h here. Doom doesn't run in 320x240, it runs in 320x200.

d1stortion wrote:

idspispopd wrote:

Of course a Rendition card is nice, but it will slow down Mode-X games down to a crawl. Just try to run the original Doom.

I think you mixed up Mode X and 13h here. Doom doesn't run in 320x240, it runs in 320x200.

So if Doom is not Mode X and is 13h, then renutil will work?
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=78
(the description is wrong in that case)

Best way is to try it and report! 😀

I know for a fact that Doom runs in 320x200 (and is designed to be played in a 4:3 aspect ratio, hence the wrong looking graphics in unstretched 320x200). As I understand it the 320x240 resolution is one of the crucial features of Mode X, so therefore yeah the description is likely wrong.

Hmm, I think this is it:

Wikipedia wrote:

Simply turning on unchained mode but leaving the resolution at 320x200 became informally known as "Mode Y" in the Usenet rec.games.programmer group.[3][4]

Going by this convoluted discussion, the consensus seems to be that it does use Mode X/Y after all...

zodpowercy wrote:

🤣 The S3 Virge seams to be the slowest of them all ! But really there are a couple early dos games that support only s3 virge range of cards...Btw that list reminded me of a different era as i or my friends had many of those cards and were always making them sound better then they actually were...!

S3 Virge isn't the fastest but it has the broadest compatibility with the most software of that time period and the later Virges like the GX.GX2, and Trio3D actually run some of the older games that earlier Virges struggle with fairly well due to incremental improvements and higher clocks. If you need more speed you can always park a Voodoo card next to it.

How is the Riva 128 in terms of output quality? Does it depend on the board manufacturer? I am thinking to stick one of these cards in a 486, but I would like something that will produce a reasonably sharp image when connected to an LCD.

Never tried my Riva 128 on an LCD, looked decent on a CRT from what I recall (my system isn't connected to anything at the moment to look).