My swaps depend more on what OS I decide to run they flat out performance for gaming.

And for me DOS gaming cards (outside of the tail end PCI era when FPS shooters took over) were ISA and VLB.

Riva 128's are nice for DOS. I have a soft spot for Tseng Et6000 cards. Millenium/Mystique were decent cards with nice visuals, drivers for any OS you would want, and great refresh back in the days of CRT. Try a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI as well.

The only PCI card I've ever owned has been a Voodoo 3.

My only meaningful PCI swap was done in 1997 or 1998 on my first PC. It came with a shitty ALG2032 1MB card and to make things worse the builder didn't give me the driver for it, so I stuck with 16 colors under newly installed Windows 95. I saved enough allowance and got myself a boxed Trio64V2 1MB. Life improved.

Back around the Windows 7 from XP upgrade phase hit. Upgraded an old Celeron 478 emachines. Went from the 4mb Intel graphics to a Geforce 6200 256mb pci, a 2.9 celeron to a 3.2ghz ht p4, and from 512mb single channel ddr400 to 2gb of dual channel 400. It was able to play HD Youtube videos, run an anti-virus and do light photo editing no problem so I ruled that an epic refresh. Just now swapped her over to a second hand newer dual core machine for a Windows 10 upgrade.

I'm going to show my inexperience here . . . how can you get different levels of performance from a video card in DOS? My mental picture of DOS gaming is that with a few exceptions like 3DFX stuff, everything was software rendered on the CPU and the video card didn't do a whole lot beyond defining maximum resolution / number of colours.

I previously swapped a 1MB Trio64V+ for a 4MB Mystique 220 + 12MB Voodoo 2 SLI in my MMX 233 PC.

I will soon swap out a 4MB Virge/GX2 for either a 32MB G450 DVI PCI, or a 32MB Radeon 7000 DVI PCI (not decided yet).

The latest PCI video card swap I did was for my DOS/Win95 system. And it will sound almost insane for everyone who didn't read about that in my retro system reconfiguration thread 😉

Originally, this system contained an S3 Virge/DX 4MB together with a Diamond Monster 3D 4MB (3Dfx Voodoo Graphics). I removed both and put in one of my 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI.

The reason was a change of the system's intended use; away from being a general purpose late DOS/early Win9x system to a system dedicated to running all of my favorite Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games on a single machine. And for the last two of those games (Grim Fandango and Escape From Monkey Island) I wanted to have the unmatched FSAA of the VSA-100. The Voodoo5 delivers 4x FSAA for those two games while maintaining enough DOS compatibility to run all the older DOS games. Currently, the system is not yet finished, but I hope for completion within the next few weeks.

So, a very unusual swap. But unavoidable to achieve what I have planned 😎

WildW wrote:

I'm going to show my inexperience here . . . how can you get different levels of performance from a video card in DOS? My mental picture of DOS gaming is that with a few exceptions like 3DFX stuff, everything was software rendered on the CPU and the video card didn't do a whole lot beyond defining maximum resolution / number of colours.

I tested Quake with three PCI cards a while ago: a 1 MB ATI mach64 card, 4 MB Matrox Millennium, and 32 MB Matrox Millennium G450. Speeds ranged from 41 FPS for the ATI to 49 FPS for the G450. That's a considerable difference. More memory and faster chips make a difference.

However with DOS, compatibility is a bigger issue than speed. Certain games just wont work properly with certain cards and there's nothing you can do about this except to use another card.

My only systems that use a pci card are my p1-233mmx and my 486 pci.

The mmx i use as a platform for voodoo1 and i have had many cards sitting beside the voodoo. I currently use a Riva in it (diamond viper 330 4mb pci) but for no particular reason.

The 486 (5x86@160mhz) i wanted to see if it was able to run glide games a bit playable and after trying a v1, v2 and voodoo3 i settled for a v2 in that one as it was the fastest 🤣
It has a Virge GX 4mb next to it as S3 seems to be working well for dos. No complaints yet.

I have around 25 different pci graphics cards including almost every voodoo but i never use most them. The ones that are most used are v1 and v2 in sli.

WildW wrote:

I'm going to show my inexperience here . . . how can you get different levels of performance from a video card in DOS? My mental picture of DOS gaming is that with a few exceptions like 3DFX stuff, everything was software rendered on the CPU and the video card didn't do a whole lot beyond defining maximum resolution / number of colours.

Here's something that might be interesting to read:
PCI Graphics Roundup - DOS

Awesome, guys. This is pretty much what I was looking for. It also doesn't surprise me in the slightest that some of you have plans on the horizon - potential upcoming swaps.

appiah4 wrote:

I previously swapped a 1MB Trio64V+ for a 4MB Mystique 220 + 12MB Voodoo 2 SLI in my MMX 233 PC.

I will soon swap out a 4MB Virge/GX2 for either a 32MB G450 DVI PCI, or a 32MB Radeon 7000 DVI PCI (not decided yet).

Big jump. Are you moving to a DVI output for capture reasons, appiah4? (I may have read that in another thread)

voodoo5_6k wrote:

a system dedicated to running all of my favorite Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games on a single machine.

And that is an awesome reason! Is Day of the Tentacle on your list? It seems like that one definitely had some speed sensitivity issues - a 486 speed patch, some potential audio issues, and even freezes if things aren't "just right." I am going off of memory though.

Errius wrote:

However with DOS, compatibility is a bigger issue than speed. Certain games just wont work properly with certain cards and there's nothing you can do about this except to use another card.

Sometimes the very thing that causes us to cross that line that stops us just short of "I'll just build yet another retro machine!"

meljor wrote:

I have around 25 different pci graphics cards...

Admittedly - It is rather hard for me to hold back from just picking up more PCI graphics cards when I find them for cheap. Sometimes I get more interest from the research and experimenting than I do simply plugging in a card to play the games I want to play at the time. I imagine the nostalgia + the cheap nature of the little beasts now is a welcome door of endless possibilities vs reading a PC magazine in 1995/1996 and making a choice with a tiny wallet.

clueless1 wrote:

Here's something that might be interesting to read:
PCI Graphics Roundup - DOS

Annnnd...holy snapple, I actually have an ARK2000PV sitting here. I *thought* I picked up one earlier this year. That...complicates things a bit for my next swap! Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe that is now what will be next. Pretty sure I saw it in the wild and picked it up thanks to your thread, clueless1.

I went from ISA (CL-GD5426) to PCI (S3 Virge) to AGP (Geforce2 MX). So I've never really swapped PCI cards.

I have a bunch of video cards nowadays, but almost all of them are AGP. The S3 Virge and Trio are still the only PCI cards I have that are worth using, and those are nearly the same thing.

CkRtech wrote:

voodoo5_6k wrote:

a system dedicated to running all of my favorite Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games on a single machine.

And that is an awesome reason! Is Day of the Tentacle on your list? It seems like that one definitely had some speed sensitivity issues - a 486 speed patch, some potential audio issues, and even freezes if things aren't "just right." I am going off of memory though.

Oh yes, it is definitely on my list! I had already tested it and had no issues so far! However, I expected exactly what you described, because it is listed as CPU speed sensitive. The issues seem to be Adlib related and I'm using Roland MIDI together with Sound Blaster. This might be the reason I'm getting away with that one. However, Sam & Max is not on the CPU speed sensitive list and is not running at all on standard speed settings (using Roland GM and Sound Blaster). After unsuccessfully testing a lot of slowdown methods I had to switch from a Pentium Pro platform to a Pentium MMX and disable the L1 cache to get it running. But it is working now and that's all that matters 😀

Also don't have a lot of PCI systems in my collection.
Did get a S3 Virge DX few years ago, mostly to replace the ISA card in a PCI 486, but also will go into a P3 for a bit of S3D testing when I get round to it.

I had a virge before i swapped it for a Daimond Stealth II s220. Added a Daimond VooDoo II 12mb to it and later swapped the s220 for a Matrox G200 8mb pci. Think that was my last combo before i swapped to agp.