Now that I'm mainly based at home I've finally given in and replaced the 3 old ex work Dell 17" 5:4 screens I had.
I had my pick from monitors in the office and went for 3 HP EliteDisplay E201. Not the newest or biggest but had all 3 connections I wanted (VGA,DVI,DP ) That's 9 machines with a direct connection, or in my case even more with each VGA connection going to a KVM.

Wasn't expecting great results from boring office monitors but pleasantly surprised. Image quality is noticeably better and what surprised me it can keep the correct aspect ratio at 640x480 and up.
That some of the later dos games and windows sorted 😀

Of course a lot of dos games fall below 640x480 so are stretched out but even some of these don't look that bad, Warcraft 1 for example I don't notice after a bit. 3D shooters like Doom or Duke3d on the otherhand look terrible.

So wont be ditching the Dells yet (I've actually got a small stockpile) but do think I'll just be using them on the earlier machines and modern 16:9 on everything that spends most its time doing 640X480 and above.
Even the black bars don't bother me.