I would just get a 2MB S3 Trio64V+, but Tseng are supposed to be about the best.
I have a S3 Trio64v+ in my 486, it's more than good enough for any 486 era to early Pentium era Dos game.
Plays Duke Nukem 3d smoothly at 640x480 with a Amd 5x86-133 installed.

I went with a Virge based card for my "fast 486" Namely a Diamond's Stealth3D 2000
S3 type compatibility and as a bonus you can mess around with S3D games.
None of the games you listed are overly demanding but if you have a 586 may as well realise its full potential!

How's the ThinkPad for gaming? old laptops screens are what kills them for me, be it ghosting, size, whatever.

My vote goes to S3. Vision, Trio32, Trio64, even Virge - anything would do well. Matrox Mystique and ET6000 are the cards to go for if you already have the basic S3 - they will show better picture, but won't be as compatible. That said, I couldn't get an otherwise working ET6000 to boot on a 486.

Matrox compatibility in DOS games is not that great, and Tseng cards are expensive and not really necessary if you have PCI.

Get an S3, Trio64, Mystique, whatever. Get one from a good brand, for output quality/LCD compatibility reasons.

I agree with the S3 trio64 or Virge, most cards have good quality output but you do need to watch out for cheap ones. You might also consider cards with Ark logic 1000/2000 chips like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hercules-Stingray-Pro … DwAAOSwA4dWIVa8 they perform great under DOS but windows drivers leave something to be desired and I couldn't even find WIN 3.1 drivers for them

Tseng Cards are only good, if you have a ISA based 386 or 486. And then only the speed is better. So yo want to play all older EGA and VGA games, go with the S3. If you want to play Doom, buy a Pentium 😉 Do not mess around with Tseng. And matrox shines only in high resolutions.

Well thank you guys for such a great feedback!

As you recommend, I'll try to get some S3 - Trio I guess.

As Stuvize said, there are some cheap S3 cards to avoid. Can you suggest any S3 that would be a pinnacle in terms of quality? I generally want to get the best pieces available.

Now about Thinkpad (chinny22) - The screen is a tragedy indeed. The black is almost white (well, grey), there are artifacts everywhere, you can easly notice as it refreshes, and what is mostly annoying - it's so uneven! Anyway, you can enjoy playing SOME games on this display. It's perfectly OK with Eye of Beholder, or even MSFS 4.0. No problems there whatsoever. But when I tried to play Castelvania, it almost made me puke.

But again, there is something very 'retro' in DSTN, which I find enjoyable 😉

I will have a second attempt with a 15$ (equiv) Thinkpad 760XL that I have found today. It has active matrix display (800x600) - I'll see how it works.

I think S3 Vision 968 cards should have good picture quality.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Stealth-64-Video-32 … nsAAOSw-vlVhEfM

And this one should have perfect picture quality but is more expensive.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Number-Nine-S3-Visi … WgAAOSwd0BVrpEQ

Or you can buy a stack of S3 Trio 64V+ for $5 each and use the one you find best.

Great, I found one on my local bidding portal for 22 USD (equiv), so I think I'll get it.

EDIT: I'll get the second :--) the cost is acceptable and I love the little IBM chip inside 😉

tikoellner wrote:

Great, I found one on my local bidding portal for 22 USD (equiv), so I think I'll get it.

EDIT: I'll get the second :--) the cost is acceptable and I love the little IBM chip inside 😉

I think you will be more than happy, Number 9 cards have really good reputation.

Unfortunatelly no such thing on Europe's Ebay (there is one very similar but with Imagine128 chip, which makes it something virtually different: http://www.ebay.pl/itm/NUMBER-NINE-IMAGINE-12 … Z4AAOSwuAVWyLQy). But do you think this TRIO (http://allegro.pl/pci-s3-trio-64-1mb-number-n … 6006426662.html) is worth a look? It's S3 Trio64 GACC2 Number Nine

tikoellner wrote:

Unfortunatelly no such thing in Europe's Ebay (there is one very similar but with Imagine128 chip). But do you think this TRIO (http://allegro.pl/pci-s3-trio-64-1mb-number-n … 6006426662.html) is worth a look?

That Trio64 will work perfectly but its not worth more than $5 or so and there is no way to know how good the picture quality will be.

The Imagine128 is a Number 9 chip and as you say a totally different thing.

Edit

I missed that the Trio64 also was a Number 9 card, if its genuine the picture quality should be good and the value more like $10-$15.

/Edit

Well, I'll take it just in case, as it costs around 4 USD (3.81 to be precise)... 😁

BTW - I found this spreadsheet in another tread: http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Guess it's worth sharing to avoid questions as mine.

Strangely enough, TSENG seems quite useless according to this chart.

And what about GXE64 Pro S3 Vision964? Is it worth to try? I can get it for 20 USD... http://allegro.pl/gxe64-pro-s3-vision964-jf9- … 6003480894.html (This is Number Nine as well!)

tikoellner wrote:

And what about GXE64 Pro S3 Vision964? Is it worth to try? I can get it for 20 USD... http://allegro.pl/gxe64-pro-s3-vision964-jf9- … 6003480894.html

The Vision 964 should be a good choice, its DOS performance is probably identical to the 968.

I did some benchmarking a few hours ago with a Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM S3 Vision 968 and a STB S3 Trio 64V+. The Trio64V+ was ~10% faster in DOS but this was with a K6-3+ @600 MHz and as the Vision 96x series is more high end they should have better picture quality, especially the Number 9 cards.

tikoellner wrote:

Unfortunatelly no such thing on Europe's Ebay

Oh, Europe! ELSA cards are great, generally. For the Trio64, this would be the Winner 1000, for example. Pay attention to the actual chip, ELSA had quite a few models with the name Winner 1000.

I also found those cards based on Vision chip, that are locally available to me:

- S3 VISION 968 4MB ELSA (Guess it's Winner 2000 AVI)
- S3 VISION 968 2MB V7 MERCURY
- S3 VISION 968 2MB DIAMOND
- S3 VISION 868 2MB SPEA MIRAGE

And plenty of Trios, Virges.

I am leaning towards S3 Vision 964 GXE64 Pro by Number Nine (btw - there are expansion sockets all over the card; do you think the chips are available anywhere?).

Do you think any of the cards mentioned above is a better choice than 964 GXE64 Pro? All of them are about 20$.

@oerk - yep, Europe. Want to visit US badly. BTW - there's on ELSA I can get right away for 18$ (listed above).

tikoellner wrote:

I also found those cards based on Vision chip, that are locally available to me: […]
Show full quote

I also found those cards based on Vision chip, that are locally available to me:

- S3 VISION 968 4MB ELSA
- S3 VISION 968 2MB V7 MERCURY
- S3 VISION 968 2MB DIAMOND
- S3 VISION 868 2MB SPEA MIRAGE

And plenty of Trios, Virges.

I am leaning towards S3 Vision 964 GXE64 Pro by Number Nine (btw - there are expansion sockets all over the card; do you think the chips are available anywhere?).

Do you think any of the cards mentioned above is a better choice than 964 GXE64 Pro? All of them are about 20$.

@oerk - yep, Europe. Want to visit US badly. BTW - there's on ELSA I can get right away for 18$ (listed above).

For a 486 it should not matter which of these S3 cards you choose, the ELSA and Number 9 cards are safer bets than Diamond when it comes to picture quality. The SPEA MIRAGE probably also has good picture quality but I have not used any of their cards my self so I cant give a first hand opinion on those.

I have a Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM S3 968 card on my test bench in this very moment but it's connected to a LCD screen so I cant say for sure if the picture quality is good enough, it produces a decent enough image with the LCD though. All those sockets on the Number 9 card is for upgrading from 2MB to 4MB video memory.

I would probably go for the ELSA S3 968 4MB card if the prices are similar, then you can run high resolution in Windows with lots of colours if you sometime in the future decide to use the card in a faster system.

OK. As skyscraper was (very gently indeed) suggesting my previous choices were a bit of an overkill for a modest 486 build, I finally went for Number Nine 9FX Motion 331 (S3 Trio64V+), 2mb.

It was 5$ incl. shippment, not too bad.