Totempole wrote:

Anyway, it doesn't really make a difference as to whether I can enhance performance by upgrading or not, performance isn't the i […]
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Anyway, it doesn't really make a difference as to whether I can enhance
performance by upgrading or not, performance isn't the issue here.
I've experienced quite a few problems with the newer cards, particularly
in older games. the Geforce cards tend to be more compatible in DOS
than the Radeons, but they tend to cause severe tearing in Cryo DOS
games with panoramic view like Versailles. It's also worth noting that
you have to use really old NVidia Drivers to get Monster Truck Madness
to work in Hardware accelerated mode, which may explain the lack of
performance I'm getting from these cards.

Ha, Cryo and their Adventure games. Atlantis the Lost Tales has a special place in me, but every other game they created was downright weird. Atlantis actually produces corrupted graphics on anything newer than a Voodoo 3, there was a patch for that, go figure!

voodoo graphics doesn't dither? then what's that thing called by 3dfx the 22 to 16bit dac filter?

Play some 16bit games on a Radeon HD to see what it looks like when there is no dithering. 😁

This message maybe late but the Geforce 256/2 Vesa Generic drivers work and the ones that come with CDs of Shadow Warrior and BLOOD! But i am using right now a Geforce4/Voodoo 2 setup and other is Voodoo 5

My 2 cents... I had tested various ATI Rage and TNT2 M64 incarnations. 10 years ago, this is what I had in my computer, the epic Celeron 600 which overclocked @900 without any problem: 1 Rage 128GL 16 Mb or 1 Leadtek WinFast S325 TNT2 M64 32 Mb. Speed was about the same. Compatibility was better on the TNT, with the RAGE (and many other RAGEs since) I had troubles with Build engine games. With Rage IIc, Pro, 128GL, 128 Ultra and Radeons 7500, 9250 and 9550. I also have a Rage 128 Pro, which works perfectly with the same games. Theoretically, ATI VBE should fix those annoying issues, but I did not tried it yet.
I have a small Toshiba pizza box P2 which would be nice for DOS gaming, except for the video and sound chips... Video is a RageIIc or PRO, sound a Crystal 4236, AFAIR. Hope is an 4236 and not 4235, the last has some annoying bugs, including stuck notes in several games I tried with such cards, like Anvil of Dawn or Frontier Elite.

According the link: http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/ , there is nothing more compatible than S3 chipsets on the DOS/Win3.11 arena.
If you seach for a very compatible vga card that has drivers for Windows 3.11, you need to acquire with S3 Trio card (or newer).
Even DOSBOX and MS VirtualPC emulates S3 hardware (Trio 64) to ensure total VESA compliant for old DOS games.
If you need one with AGP bus VGA card, then you can go for S3 Savage 4 (and variants) ou Savage2000 chipset. The 3D accelaration is awful, Direct 3D and HW T&L is buggy but ensure full DOS compatibility. Thus, you can mount a perfect DOS rig with the pair S3 + Voodoo 2 sli.

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

voodoo graphics doesn't dither? then what's that thing called by 3dfx the 22 to 16bit dac filter?

3dfx does dither, it's just that you don't see most of it because of the 4x1 DAC filter that's sometimes in use 😀

Some games try to turn that off completely or can't use that filter at all, anything using their OpenGL ICD (not MiniGL) is a good start, you'll be able to catch the raw unfiltered dithering.

Also, I think Rage128's dithering could be customized to use Error Diffusion or Ordered, IIRC, but not sure anymore. I get the driver control panel pages for all the old ATI cards confused 🙁

fportela wrote:

If you need one with AGP bus VGA card, then you can go for S3 Savage 4 (and variants) ou Savage2000 chipset.

Why not a Trio 3D or Trio 3D/2X ? 😀

This is a good question. For hardware accelerated gaming in Windows 9x, I'd lean towards the Rage 128. Supports paletted textures, no 2d glitches with antialiasing (that includes Resident Evil with Matrox Mystique option), no glitches anywhere else I can remember, and 32-bit color can be fast with some titles. I don't think the dithering in 16-bit is that bad either; if you've played PSX games in RGB, that's pretty much what it looks like. Only downside I've had is having to reboot everytime I change vsync setting; yeah... It has the worst Linux drivers in existence right now BTW.

However, when it comes to DOS, it has no univbe compatibilty (even with ati's official mach 64 vbe tsr), and high resolution is extremely slow ( perhaps the only card in existence that is this slow AFAICT). If you play any games @ 640X480 or higher (Build engine games), fps will start dropping to 30fps or even lower at times, and bottleneck your CPU; it's only worth playing at 640x400 or lower in this case, IMO. Carmageddon is the only game that doesn't suffer this (don't know exactly how it's drawing but this game runs like an Arcade game @60fps on rage 128 without being too fast). Only reason I can see using this card in DOS, is on a really fast machine that's too fast for most older DOS titles. This card will act like a sort of throttle for those games.

For DOS, Riva TNT might be your best bet. For Windows 9x, I recommend the Rage 128.

EDIT:
Wow didn't realize how old this thread is! Does the OP even care anymore?

GeorgeMan wrote:

fportela wrote:

If you need one with AGP bus VGA card, then you can go for S3 Savage 4 (and variants) ou Savage2000 chipset.

Why not a Trio 3D or Trio 3D/2X ? 😀

Actually very few chipsets worked flawless in all tests executed. Trio 3d had issues with hyper 3-D Pinball.
Nvidia chipsets (like TNT) had some minor issues too..