Reply 20 of 68, by PC-Engineer
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I would recommend Cirrus Logic Cards (AVGA3) with GD542x chip. It has an integrated RAMDAC and support for True Color @640x480. You cannot make much wrong and you can get one easy for an affordable price.
Also like the S3 ISA Cards with S3 801 and 928, which are very fast and where sold with good DACs and True Color support in general, but rarer and more expensive … and faster in Windows like the GD542x. The 928 VRAM cards are very rare and high end for Windows, but a little Bit slower than the 801 (DRAM) cards in DOS.
The ATI Mach32, especially the VRAM variant, is also a very fast and compatible alternative with a very good 135MHz DAC and up to 2MB RAM (True Color @800x600 with 72Hz). But it’s rare and expensive. The extremely rare Mach64 ISA is a little bit faster in Windows and has „Video Acceleration“ but in general mostly on par with the Mach32 - VRAM vs. VRAM and DRAM vs. DRAM variant.
Also ET4000AX, WD90C31 and TVGA8900D/CL/RD can be fast and reliable ISA Cards, but you have to doublecheck the DAC before you buy it. There are a lot of variants with crappy DAC. The WD90C31 is the fastest option of these cards.
Top notch for ISA and DOS would be a Cirrus Logic GD5434 card with 2MB DRAM and an integrated 135MHz DAC - rare and very expensive. The VRAM cards from ATI and S3 (928) should be a little bit faster in the most Windows scenarios.
Last but not least there are some rare ISA cards with ET4000W32 chip with mostly „ok“ DAC which has nearly identical performance in DOS and higher performance in Windows regarding it’s little brother ET4000AX.
My personal favorite ISA cards in my collection are the WD90C31 (Paradise VGA) with a good DAC, the Mach32 VRAM (2MB) and the SPEA Mercury (S3 928).