I understand that S3 Virge is a good chip. Even though I have no experience with Virges in a 486, I have used several Virges in other computers and they are quite compatible 😉

I'd have to say a ViRGE or anything based on the Trio64. Any cards designed for 3D gaming are not well suited for a 486, unless if you just use the machine for non 3D-acceleration.

What they've said.

I'd say S3 Trio 64v+ (which is what i'm using now), but I really want to get my hands on a PCI Riva 128 or TNT. Those are apparently awesome 2D performers

Matrox Millenium is my favorite. I also found the PCI version of the Rage XL to run very nicely in Win 3.1 with the Mach64 drivers and it's DOS performance isn't bad. That card can also drive Windows in higher resolutions than most cards you'll find Win 3.1 drivers for.

I have a Virge 325 and it seems to be a great card as well.

Matrox and ATI are problematic with some DOS games.

What about Tseng ET6000?

i remember there were some pci version of geforce8600, although a bit rare.

noshutdown wrote:

i remember there were some pci version of geforce8600, although a bit rare.

You sure you aren't referring to the 8400GS? Anyway, that would be way past overkill for a 486. On top of which, the oldest Windows OS that the GeForce 8 series officially support is XP, which refuses to install on a 486 (and even if it was able to, it'd be only useful for laughs).

Later Nvidia Cards, like Geforce MX440SE and Geforce 6200A already cripple Vesa/DOS support a little compared to their predecessors TNT2/Geforce2/GeforceMX440 classic.
Using the first two I see garbled colors on the top and bottom of the screen when running PCPBench. Also these two types do not support Vesa CRT refresh rate adjustments (VBEHz).

I have found that Riva128 (and 128zx) cards are VERY compatible and fast cards, in fact during my testing I have found them to be as compatible as s3 cards: no modex probs, no weird colors in ega games (like voodoo cards) and VBE3.0 BIOS...
I highly recommend them for pentium machines that need a fast compatible VGA, on 486 they might not have a speed difference than s3 cards...

I was wondering the same thing about 6 weeks ago and started this thread,
Fastest PCI graphics card in a 486

If you go to page 2, vlask posted some great comparison bar graphs.