Well, what kind of computer do you have (486, Pentium, K6)?
Does your Matrox G450 PCI has a DVI connector?

it's a 486 100MHz with 32MB RAM. The Matrox does have DVI out (as well a VGA) which I've used in the past but my monitor has DVI and VGA inputs.

Do you get a picture when putting it in your 486? Or does it just beep?

Are you using Windows at all? Or just DOS?

If you are using Windows 3.11 or Win95 I would try to get the MACH64 working as it has some nice high resolution modes.
If you are using pure DOS then I would use the TSENG.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2022-04-14, 21:18:

Are you using Windows at all? Or just DOS?

If you are using Windows 3.11 or Win95 I would try to get the MACH64 working as it has some nice high resolution modes.
If you are using pure DOS then I would use the TSENG.

2 MB was deemed very much adequate for the time but will not afford you any notion of modern Windows desktop, no matter the chip.

Video memory of 90s 2D cards is very easy to determine.
Look up the fine print of the RAM chips, you'll find the size.

But most likely, you'll have the slim beetles:
https://c7.alamy.com/comp/RFJ3B0/ati@600nm@fi … c182-RFJ3B0.jpg
- thats's 8 x 128 kB soldered on and sockets for the same, so, 2 MB max. (sorry for the disturbing photo 😉 )
Or the "flat beetles":
http://old.vgamuseum.info/images/stories/zaat … ach64ct_flq.jpg
- that's 2 MB as well.

What resolution and color depth will need what memory is also quite straightforward.
E.g. 256 colors is 2⁸ possibilities, so needs 8 bits, aka one byte.
1024 x 768 resolutions is 786432 byte or 768 kilobytes.
- that's what was accepted as a perfectly fine windows desktop into the mid 90s, if you could afford a fancy 17" monitor.
"High color" would be 16 bit and true color 24, which at 1024 x 768 will already require slightly over 2 MB.

High end cards of the time would do 1600 x 1200 in true color and eye-friendly frequency on the CRT.

For DOS games, it's merely a matter of certain quirks of some games, this list can help:
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS

All you cards should be quick enough for DOOM. Not quite sure about the Trident, those could be rather shitty.
Tseng ET4000 was an awesome ISA chip, the 6k was ok for windows and probably plenty fast for DOS.
Maybe Duke Nukem 3D would be more of a challenge, which obviously, if you play DOOM, you need to play as well.

Nice PCI cards of ca. 1995, the Matrox Millennium is an obvious choice for me. Four megabyte models are easy to find and still cheap in auctions. DOS speed hard to match at the time.
Your G450, some three generations later. But, Matrox being Matrox, I'd not be suprised if there are Win3.1 drivers for it. At least off label, like using the ones of the Millennium II or something.

Ich think the choice of PCI Controller for speed doesn‘t really matter for 486er use. Nearly any card is hold back by slow PCI performance and CPU speed. I tested some cards with a Am5x86 @160MHz in a 486SPM (SiS 496/497). I would chose the controller regarding driver support for Win3.1 and DOS compatibility. So i would take a S3 card or a Trident TGUI9440.

But I'm sure you haven't tested a Matrox G450 yet on a 486. Or a Virge VLB. xD

Yeah, the G450 is to nobel and refuse cooperation with a rusty 486. And the Virge VLB is … 😉

...a handmade unicorn? 😉
But it's not mine. It's one of the toys of mkarcher that's in my place.
At least the framebuffer performance is in the league of the ARK1000, perhaps a bit above.

And the G450 needed a handmade 486 BIOS patch too.

I remember a thread about G450 on 486, but fail to remember any specific outcome discussed there, also can't find it right now - the usual lost in space-time vogons thread. :}
What was the conclusion there - yeah or meh ?

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2022-04-14, 17:06:

I have the choice between: […]
Show full quote

I have the choice between:

STB Lightspeed 128 2MB PCI
ATI Mach64 CT (215CT22200) 2MB (?) PCI
Matrox G450 PCI many megabytes
Trident 9000C (the backup card)

I want to play 90s DOS games like Doom 2, SC2K, the Monkey Islands and also have W3.1 driver support for higher resolutions and colours. Which is the best card?

The Tseng ET6000 based Lightspeed 128's a potent SVGA card, while the Trident 9000c will be by far the most EGA/basic-VGA compatible card of these, if not the slowest and most limited in SVGA. According to https://web.archive.org/web/20210714184236/ht … r.hu/DOS_TESTS/, the ATI is less prone to screen tearing in certain SVGA games than the Matrox. In any case Doom2 should run okay on the ATI, Matrox and Lightspeed cards, but will be pretty slow on the Trident 9000C unless you use the FastDoom port.
Matrox may or may not have a Windows 3.1 driver available for that card, I haven't checked.

G450 is not fond of old motherboards without 3.3v rail.

Just be aware that the ET6000 has issues with games like jazz jackrabbit since it can't do mode-X properly.

^I had no idea. 😲 Thanks for the warning!

Btw, the difference between 24-Bit/32-Bit colour depth usually is the addition of an 8-Bit alpha channel for transparency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_dep ... r_(24-bit)

Jo22 wrote on 2022-04-16, 05:15:

Btw, the difference between 24-Bit/32-Bit colour depth usually is the addition of an 8-Bit alpha channel for transparency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_dep ... r_(24-bit)

The difference is mainly in data alignment because CPUs are better dealing with 4 bytes rather than 3. 24-bit color depth was used to conserve video card memory.