The mailman came today bearing gifts, and the G450 PCI is also in my posession.

One of these two cards will power the graphics of this PC, but I haven't been able to decide yet.
According to Gona's PCI/AGP Dos compatibility test chart, amazingly enough, the Radeon is a better DOS card than the G450 (can anyone verify this? There are also several G450 BIOS updates that may have fixed issues later on?). However, locating OS/2 drivers for ATI has so far proven impossible, so I'm in a conundrum. Either go with Radeon 7000 and do a DOS/Win98/Win2k build, or go with G450 and do a Warp4/Win98/Win2K build..

Ok, this badboy arrived today:

My final decision on the setup is:

PCI Matrox G450
PCI SB Live! Value
ISA YMF719 + Dreamblaster S2

OS: MS-DOS 6.22, OS/2 Warp 4, Windows 98SE, Windows 2000 Multiboot

Wish me luck 😎

Nice, I also have a GX110 laying around , together with a GX100 and a GX1 . Gonna do a similar system in the future.

Was wondering where you got that riser board with ISA slots for the GX 110 ? I only got one for the GX1, GX100 & GX110 ISA riser boards seem more rare ?

I got it on ebay and the seller has more though not with the assembly only the card. PM me if interested.

Well, I'm plugging cards into the riser, and I am totally torn with indecision. The original idea before I got the PCI/ISA riser was to just go with a Radeon 7000 PCI and an SB Live! Value and install Win98/Win2K. Now that I have the ISA/PCI riser, I got more ambitious; as this allows me to be more compatible with older OSes, I got myself a G450 PCI and an AWE64 Value, so that I can also install MS-DOS and OS/2 Warp 4. I really want this to be an all-in-one retro PC covering my whole experience between 1992 and 1999 (possibly 2000).

I can add up to three expansion cards to this board, 1 PCI, 1 ISA, and 1 shared ISA/PCI. The cards I have at hand are:

- Radeon 7000 PCI
- Matrox Millennium G450 PCI
- Onboard Intel 810 DVM AGP
- Sound Blaster Live! Value PCI
- Sound Blaster AWE64 Value + 32MB (SIMMCONN) ISA
- Sound Blaster 16 CT2290
- Yamaha YMF7199B-S + Dreamblaster S2X3M ISA

Now, I can

A) Ditch the DOS and OS/2 ambition, just install Win98SE/Win2K and go with a Radeon 7000 PCI/SB Live!/SB16 combination which would be a lot faster for later games but a lot less cool..
B) Follow my dreams and do the whole DOS/OS2/WinMe/Win2K thing with a Matrox G450/AWE64-32M/YMF719+S2X3M which would probably perform worse in 1998+ games but be a lot better for 1996- games..

What would you do in my place?

appiah4 wrote:

Now, I can […]
Show full quote

Now, I can

A) Ditch the DOS and OS/2 ambition, just install Win98SE/Win2K and go with a Radeon 7000 PCI/SB Live!/SB16 combination which would be a lot faster for later games but a lot less cool..
B) Follow my dreams and do the whole DOS/OS2/WinMe/Win2K thing with a Matrox G450/AWE64-32M/YMF719+S2 which would probably perform worse in 1998+ games but be a lot better for 1996- games..

What would you do in my place?

I would most likely lean towards option B, seeing as you have a separate system for 2000-era games this wouldn't really be a problem since you're mainly targeting games from 1992-99 on this system. Are you still banking on using Windows 3.1x on the DOS side or will that just be pure DOS? If the G400 Win3.1x drivers have problems on your G450 there's always a hacked VESA driver which should work fine assuming you're not prioritizing graphics intensive applications on the Win3.1x side (still beats standard VGA).

Is it possible for this system to use both the onboard Intel GPU and a dedicated PCI graphics card? If so you may be able to use the Intel GPU for Windows 3.1x because IIRC there are drivers for the 810 chipset graphics, but you'll probably need a way to manage two different video outputs at once (I'm thinking by the means of a KVM switch, a dual-input monitor (DVI on the G450, VGA on the Intel 810), or even dual-monitors).

I will try the G400 driver first but I have little faith it will work.. I was considering using the generic SVGA driver is this the same thing as the vesa driver you mention?

I have a Dell P2414H with unused DVI and VGA ports so I dont need a switch but I dont know if both graphics cards could work.. I would have to pick AGP or PCI at boot no?

Intel Onboard DVM 4MB is this something different than the i815e integrated gfx?

dr.zeissler wrote:

Intel Onboard DVM 4MB is this something different than the i815e integrated gfx?

According to this datasheet DVMT (Dynamic Video Memory Technology) covers both 810 and 815. Note that the 4MB onboard memory is named "display cache" and only stores Z-buffer and GDI data (not sure what GDI is here), and it still requires a portion of main memory even such 4MB onboard cache is present. 815 supports the 4MB display cache through the AIMM.

appiah4 wrote:

The mailman came today bearing gifts, and the G450 PCI is also in my posession.

One of these two cards will power the graphics of this PC, but I haven't been able to decide yet.
According to Gona's PCI/AGP Dos compatibility test chart, amazingly enough, the Radeon is a better DOS card than the G450 (can anyone verify this? There are also several G450 BIOS updates that may have fixed issues later on?). However, locating OS/2 drivers for ATI has so far proven impossible, so I'm in a conundrum. Either go with Radeon 7000 and do a DOS/Win98/Win2k build, or go with G450 and do a Warp4/Win98/Win2K build..

Between the two, I would vote for the G450, but that's because I'm a bit partial to both OS/2 and Matrox cards. The DOS compatibility problems are mostly scrolling errors in some very old games, AFAIK, and I've personally not run into serious problems.

Sorry, the IntelOnboard GFX of the 815 is excellent!!! The Image Quality is superbe! The performance is twice a voodoo1.
It has Win3x!!! drivers beside 95/98/2K/NT4.... and in my case the image is completely centered in most resolutions and bitdephs.

Doc

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/de/search?keyword=82815

We are ready to Rock 'n Roll..