After quite a bit of testing, I concluded the best DOS video card is the Cirrus Logic CL-GD5446. Why?
- Fast. Faster in DOS then the S3 virge, Voodoo Banshee and all PCI matrox cards: DOS PCI Video Card Compatibility and Benchmark tests
- Great image quality in DOS. Clean and crisp on LCD monitors, no banding, no blur, and better colors then most other cards I've tried.
- Compatibility - any and all DOS games will run on it perfectly - even the buggier ones. No tearing, no stuttering, no scrolling problems.
- Price - it's cheap. You could probably get one cheaper then an S3 Virge.
- Availability - these should be pretty common. If you can't get the 5446, the 5440 should do fine, albeit a bit slower. The GD54M30 is quite a bit slower tough, so stay away from it if you're looking for speed. It should still do fine in a 486 machine tough.
It's hard for me to recommend the TNT2 since it's got some issues in a few games - namely stuttering in some scrolling platformers and I also had a tough time getting it to display more then 800x600 in dos. Also PCI TNT2 cards are rare in some parts (very rare in Romania) so availability is poor. I also had problems getting a TNT2 to run in older machines - it won't work in most PCI 486 boards and some socket 4 boards.