You could go for s3 Trio 64V+ and Voodoo2 card combo, that was very common in the late 90s and I can speak from experience myself that was a wide compatibility range there for the software of that period.

Don't bother with Riva128 - its 3d is a mess.

3 Trio 64V+ around £12.99 -£20.00 on ebay right now. I can get a mystique for just over £5.00 ... the problem there is that when running some games (such as hyperblade) I know from experience that the PC will automatically chose the Matrox to render the game. Same thing with Dungeon Keeper D3D.

I really need a 2D only card with good-great 2D for a small price. PCI ofc.

I'll put the 3 Trio 64V+ in my options box but are there any others for less $$$$$$?

Someone sell me a Matrox Millenium 2! 🤣

Why not just use the onboard video? It should be fine for 2D.

Lol, I didn't realize Diamond's old PCI cards were expensive; it seems that all the ones I have (I have quite a few Diamond branded PCI cards from the 90s) either came with a vintage computer I got cheap or were given to me by a person who just wanted the card gone.

I would avoid the Mystiques as the 3D support is practically useless and the higher quality Millenium cards can be had for a similar if not lower price.

I would actually say go with a Millennium or a Mach64/Rage PCI card but I've heard here that those cards aren't the most stellar from DOS. However, if you are not planning to do much with DOS, I'm sure you'll find the Matrox Millennium to be the best you can find as they have quite possibly the best 2D image quality and, in Windows, they run the GUI quite nicely. Also, the Millennium is capable of displaying in 32 bit color mode.

From what I've read here, your best bet for an old system would be a Rendition card or a Virge or Trio if you need a decent "all around" card for DOS and Windows.

Iris030380 wrote:

Someone sell me a Matrox Millenium 2! 🤣

I would sell one to you if I had a spare. Those cards are simply awesome. One thing I noticed is that Matrox cards are better than any other PCI graphics card I've used on an LCD monitor. On most S3 cards, there would be certain columns of pixels where the picture would be really blurry and the overall video output of the S3 cards(Trio 64V+ and Trio 3D On-board) was quite blurry. The Matrox Millennium II doesn't do any of that and the colors are much more vivid on the Matrox Millenium II than on any S3 graphics card I've used. The Millennium II might output a similar picture to my ATI 3D Rage II+DVD, but I'll have to try it again.

Either way, a Matrox Millennium II is definitely a good choice for a PCI graphics card.

Iris030380 wrote:

Someone sell me a Matrox Millenium 2! 🤣

I have a 4mb Millennium (the first model, not the II) I acquired from a fellow forum member. In spirit of the person I got it from, I'd be glad to send it to you for the cost of shipping. I'm sure you'll find it to be just as nice on the eyes as the Millennium II.

An old Matrox or S3 card should fit it fine. Even a Tseng ET6000/6100 would suffice too.

Iris030380 wrote:

3 Trio 64V+ around £12.99 -£20.00 on ebay right now.

Zomg WTH??

And to think a couple years ago I saw several crates full of this stuff which were considered useless. 😳

I actually had a Trio 64V some time ago and didn't have a use for it. I strapped a bunch of fire crackers to it and watched what they did to the card. If I knew I could sell the card for more than the cost of a pack of smokes, I would not have done that.

I used a GF4 MX 440 for a long time in a Compaq machine that had only PCI slots.

I think GF2MX PCI's are pretty nice cards to have 😉

Yeah but consider how bottlenecked they get by 200MHz, and the infamous blurry output of nvidia DACs in general, plus the Geforce line isn't known for their VESA friendliness.

Exactly!

A geforce card in a pentium 200MMX is far past overkill. I am looking for a 2D only card. The rage 2 c's are as expensive or even more so than the diamond stealths on ebay. I have a few cirrus logic cards lying around but I don't think they can hold up to a matrox for 2d quality. I would equate a cirrus logic PCI 2mb to be more of a 486 VGA card, not a 16bit windows 95 card at 1024.

And yes, obviously it has to behave under VESA. Although I do have SCi-tech display doctor which I seem to remember saved my life a few times back in the day.

I couldn't take your only millenium card. If you had 3 of the things then you would be greedy and I would feel as if it was your duty to give me one of them.

I'll continue to scan ebay. I think I saw a few S3's in small joblot PCI card auctions but the pictures are small and it's hard to tell if they really are s3's. But it will be a few weeks before I have the time to build the machine up so ... we shall see.

I really would love a Millenium 2. 😁

Small lots of hardware is the way to go I think.

If you're having trouble identifying pics in certain auctions, feel free to PM me the link and I'll see if I can ID them for you 😉

Problem Solved!

I booted up another recently aquired PC and as it turns out it has an S3 Trio 3D2X installed! So I'm removing that for the P200MMX.

The PC the Trio was in is a total gem. It's an AMD K6-2 500 with AGP2x support. My designs for this PC is my TNT2 Ultra and 2 VooDoo 2's in SLI. So the Trio is not needed.

Thats a load off. I didnt want to spend 2 hours pay on a card which is older than some of our readers.

BTW there is an Aureal Vortex in the K6-2 as well. What would you reccomend for the 200MMX win 95? The Vortex or a Soundblaster AWE 64...

Aureal cards were PCI and didn't have stellar DOS compatibility compared to that AWE64, so...

I would personally run a dual sound card setup on the 200MHz Pentium MMX, which would include either of these alongside the SoundBlaster AWE64:

-SoundBlaster Pro 2.0
-SoundBlaster 16 Value model CT2770
-OPTi 82C929A or 82C930
-SoundBlaster 32/SoundBlaster AWE32 models CT2760, CT3780, CT3930 or CT3980

These are for proper OPL3 FM Synthesis as the AWE64 uses CQM instead of proper OPL3. All the sound cards listed have either a real Yamaha YMF262 on the sound card or make use of Creative's CT1747 ASIC, which integrates the YMF262 with the YAC512 DAC and the ISA interface.

And if you want a really good AWE64, get an AWE64 Gold.

Sorry to revive an old thread, but that seems to be acceptable here?

@GXL750:

From what I've read here, your best bet for an old system would be a Rendition card or a Virge or Trio if you need a decent "all around" card for DOS and Windows.

As much as I like Rendition (my first 3D card was a V2200) I wouldn't describe them as good all-around cards. There were reasons to get one at the time, and they still have some unique points for retrogaming (special ports), but they have too many weaknesses. (Driver stability, less than stellar 2D performance in Windows, Mode-X slowed down to ISA speed, Drivers only for Win95/98)

@Iris030380:

Just aquired a compaq Pentium 1 desktop with a 200MMX CPU and 64MB EDO ram. It has 1 ISA and 2 PCI's on a riser card, all of which are empty. There is onboard video, but I was wondering, what would be an ideal PCI card to buy and install to run alongside a 3DFX voodoo 1?
...
I booted up another recently aquired PC and as it turns out it has an S3 Trio 3D2X installed! So I'm removing that for the P200MMX.

I'm not sure I understand - Trio3D's only exist as AGP cards.