I don't have a 486 experience, but Rage II is definitely the card to render graphics most properly.
Compatibility of Laguna3D, even 5464, is not that bad.

The 5464 is alright for that, I ran one on my 486 before upgrading to a matrox G200. It would play early 3d games like starwars jedi knight or outlaws, though it's definitely not the fastest and does have some graphics glitches. Note, only 1 version of driver worked for me (I can probably find out) AND I had to turn off bus mastering for the card to work on my pcchips m919 (the driver I used had that option) . This may be necessary on other motherboards as well, as the busmaster problem apparantly has something to do with how 486s handle L1 cache

If you have Rage2+/Rage2+DVD or Rage3, you can try my driver, original RageII did not work (Douglar tested)
Original RageII i do not have, cant test it. Lowest i have is Rage2+DVD 2MB and tested G-Police&Turok at 3D.
Find Rage2+ or Rage3 4MB PCI, then more ATi3DCIF demos and games work,dont recommend any 2MB card.
I would try to use minimal Win95a or Win95b and install Rage 2+ / Rage3 4MB + Tomb Raider with ATi Patch.

Rage2+ and Rage Pro you could upgrade to 8MB (4MB + 4MB) and that would be maximum with PCI
Lowest that i have used Rage Pro and Rage XL was AMD K5 PR166 and that worked at 3D.

Re: ATi RagePro drivers and software

one more question: as for the rage2 and rage2+dvd series(excluding the later rage2c), is it the only 8mb solution using model 37900 card with model 38000 expansion board?

noshutdown wrote on 2025-11-06, 02:18:

one more question: as for the rage2 and rage2+dvd series(excluding the later rage2c), is it the only 8mb solution using model 37900 card with model 38000 expansion board?

I think not. For example my Rage2+DVD card is 109-40100-00 and it comes with 2MB, but i have seen them with 4MB onboard as well.

109-40100-00 2MB + 2MB expansion
https://www.hardware-collection.net/Xhoba/en/ … d/ATI-Rage.html

109-40100-00 4MB without mem expansion
https://ru.pc-history.com/ati-109-40100-00-pci.html
Oh no, expansion card option is missing on this one.

Still my drivers at the moment are more optimized for Rage3 i think,i have less experience@Rage2,what atid3d.dll i should use for Rage2?
Rage2 is at least 2x slower than Rage3. If possible find Rage3 PCI card and use that with / without memory expansion 4MB up to 8MB ram.

Some Rage Pro PCI cards
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/3d-rage-pro-pci.c1717
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/rage-pr … turbo-pci.c1715
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/ati- … l-in-wonder-pro
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/ati- … ert-at-work-pci
https://www2.vgamuseum.info/media/k2/items/ca … 7e759e2e_XL.jpg

marxveix wrote on 2025-11-06, 07:48:

Still my drivers at the moment are more optimized for Rage3 i think,i have less experience@Rage2,what atid3d.dll i should use for Rage2?
Rage2 is at least 2x slower than Rage3. If possible find Rage3 PCI card and use that with / without memory expansion 4MB up to 8MB ram.

true, the rage pro is a true 3d card (unlike those primitive ones without opengl support) and a totally different design over the rage2, and i also think its approximately 3 times as fast.
but that makes it just something slightly inferior to the riva128, not something different that i wanna try.
the rage2 and trident9750, while primitive, can get a number of early d3d games running without major glitches, which in turn are far better than rage1, at3d and a few others that i mentioned.
the rendition1000 is also a true 3d card that i favored, and interestingly slow, but couldn't get it running on 486 machine so far.

noshutdown wrote on 2025-11-06, 08:35:

true, the rage pro is a true 3d card (unlike those primitive ones without opengl support) and a totally different design over th […]
Show full quote

marxveix wrote on 2025-11-06, 07:48:

Still my drivers at the moment are more optimized for Rage3 i think,i have less experience@Rage2,what atid3d.dll i should use for Rage2?
Rage2 is at least 2x slower than Rage3. If possible find Rage3 PCI card and use that with / without memory expansion 4MB up to 8MB ram.

true, the rage pro is a true 3d card (unlike those primitive ones without opengl support) and a totally different design over the rage2, and i also think its approximately 3 times as fast.
but that makes it just something slightly inferior to the riva128, not something different that i wanna try.
the rage2 and trident9750, while primitive, can get a number of early d3d games running without major glitches, which in turn are far better than rage1, at3d and a few others that i mentioned.
the rendition1000 is also a true 3d card that i favored, and interestingly slow, but couldn't get it running on 486 machine so far.

If you go with Rage2, then Rage2+ is bit better i think, i havent met Rage2c in PCI, but it exist.

3D Rage II - first version of the chip, launched in Sep 1996. PCI only.
3D Rage II+DVD - added hardware MPEG decompression and further optimised 2D and 3D performance. PCI only.
3D Rage IIc - a later version released as the budget card alongside the 3D Rage Pro. PCI or AGP.

https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturers/at … ti_3drageII.php

With my driver 3DCIF works@Rage2+ or Rage2+DVD.

Only advice, take at least 4MB Rage2+ and use low resolutions in 3D with 486.

Try only 3DCIF dos game Actua Soccer
This game have a Win9x installer, but the game itself is a DOS game, needs DOS or DOS mode (with DOS CD-ROM and mouse drivers).
https://gona.mactar.hu/ATI3DCIF/

Yikes, I'd avoid a Rage anything from that era. Try a matrox G200. Up to 16mb (not that that would do you that much good, 8 is probably fine), a driver available known to work on 486 cpu

I find this interesting. I have used a newer RageXL with my Cyrix 5x86 in the past and was pretty satisfied with the performance.
Never went so far back as the RageII series.

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-11-09, 04:16:

Yikes, I'd avoid a Rage anything from that era. Try a matrox G200. Up to 16mb (not that that would do you that much good, 8 is probably fine), a driver available known to work on 486 cpu

ATi Rage3 are capable cards, Rage2 are slow for my taste, but if you lower resolution to 320x240 up to 400x300 and maybe some games 512x384,
they may work ok. I had better experience with Rage3, like Rage XL AGP 8MB 64bit / Rage Pro 8MB 64bit cards. I dont know how 486 plays at D3D.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2025-11-10, 16:35:

I find this interesting. I have used a newer RageXL with my Cyrix 5x86 in the past and was pretty satisfied with the performance.
Never went so far back as the RageII series.

You have Rage XL PCI card like this?
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/ati- … -xl-pci-8mb-sdr

With newer Rage XL PCI cards we may have one issue,
they do not work with older ati drivers if we talk about
Windows 9x, other than that they are good.

Since the OP said he's specifically looking for something older, this chart from VGA Legacy may be of interest (I've attached the chart to this post). There are all sorts of obscure accelerators out there from 1996. Some of the ones being mentioned here are a lot newer. The RageXL and Matrox G200 are both from 1998.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better non-Voodoo first generation 3D accelerator than the Rendition V1000, so if diagnosing the issues with that are out of the question you will definitely be making a performance and compatibility compromise... but there are still lots of interesting options to try!

How to look at the chart: On the left is the year... so, anything listed between the 1995 line and the 1997 line was released between the beginning of 1995 and the end of 1996. Several of these will be first generation 3D accelerators (though a lot of companies were still putting out 2D only cards too), or slight variants of them.

A couple that might be worth trying would be the 3Dlabs Permedia and Permedia NT. I'm not sure how good they are with a 486, but in general this line of cards (particularly starting with the Permedia 2 from 1997) were more usable than other early cards of that generation.

Also, you'll get a good idea of what to expect from various cards by reading through the "Reviews" section on Vintage3D:
https://vintage3d.org/index.php
Those are going to mostly contain the earliest accelerators, while "2nd Gen" will cover the next generation of cards that are, generally, massively improved over the first.

marxveix wrote on 2025-11-10, 16:54:

ATi Rage3 are capable cards, Rage2 are slow for my taste, but if you lower resolution to 320x240 up to 400x300 and maybe some ga […]
Show full quote

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-11-09, 04:16:

Yikes, I'd avoid a Rage anything from that era. Try a matrox G200. Up to 16mb (not that that would do you that much good, 8 is probably fine), a driver available known to work on 486 cpu

ATi Rage3 are capable cards, Rage2 are slow for my taste, but if you lower resolution to 320x240 up to 400x300 and maybe some games 512x384,
they may work ok. I had better experience with Rage3, like Rage XL AGP 8MB 64bit / Rage Pro 8MB 64bit cards. I dont know how 486 plays at D3D.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2025-11-10, 16:35:

I find this interesting. I have used a newer RageXL with my Cyrix 5x86 in the past and was pretty satisfied with the performance.
Never went so far back as the RageII series.

You have Rage XL PCI card like this?
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/ati- … -xl-pci-8mb-sdr

With newer Rage XL PCI cards we may have one issue,
they do not work with older ati drivers if we talk about
Windows 9x, other than that they are good.

I'm not sure what model they are. I have two of them, pretty sure they were pulled from some old Dell Poweredge servers. I do know that I used the card on my 5x86 running DOS 6.22/Win3.11 and Windows 95 OSr2.
I didn't have any driver issues, but I didn't try a ton of programs either.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2025-11-10, 16:35:

I'm not sure what model they are. I have two of them, pretty sure they were pulled from some old Dell Poweredge servers. I do know that I used the card on my 5x86 running DOS 6.22/Win3.11 and Windows 95 OSr2.
I didn't have any driver issues, but I didn't try a ton of programs either.

Most ati2drab and ati2drae drivers work and there are DX6/DX7/DX8 drivers for it, but zero drivers from MACXW4/ATI2DDAD driver releases.
3DCIF games not possible at the moment for Rage XL PCI (4752) cards. Tomb Raider ATi acceleration and other older CIF games, D3D/OGL ok.

Rage 2 on a 486 is a bad idea. ATI relies heavily on the CPU, so even the S3 Virge will likely be faster. But the Virge also loves a fast CPU. Outside of 3dfx, you're unlikely to find anything better suited to the 486 than the Rendition.

Kruton 9000 wrote on 2025-11-11, 22:59:

Rage 2 on a 486 is a bad idea. ATI relies heavily on the CPU, so even the S3 Virge will likely be faster. But the Virge also loves a fast CPU. Outside of 3dfx, you're unlikely to find anything better suited to the 486 than the Rendition.

How much better is K5 PR166 (117mhz) vs some fastest 486?

K5 and MotoRacer (3.22 update) was smooth with my 4MB card, it was faster Rage Pro.