I am curious why nobody considers the ATI Rage Pro series. It's not the fastest video graphics card, but has overwhelming support for *all* operating systems, even modern ones.
If you're looking for software drivers, visit https://archive.org/details/500-cd-8 first (a CD image). Drivers for newer OS can be found easily, too just by googling.

Peter z80.eu wrote on 2025-02-03, 10:43:

I am curious why nobody considers the ATI Rage Pro series. It's not the fastest video graphics card, but has overwhelming support for *all* operating systems, even modern ones.
If you're looking for software drivers, visit https://archive.org/details/500-cd-8 first (a CD image). Drivers for newer OS can be found easily, too just by googling.

ATI Rage Pro and earlier ATI cards are nice for 2d Windows stuff and almost all DOS games > 1991. If that's all you do, then the Rage Pro is fine. They also have an MPEG decoder that can be nice if you wanted to watch DVD's on your retro PC for some reason. It was the go-to video chipset for servers for years. There are companies that still make a PCI version of the card, believe it or not.

But there are some well documented issues with the Rage Pro:

• Some DOS side scrolling games(notably Commander Keen) have stuttering issues. (https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/)
• If you are trying to do OPEN GL or DirectX games < 2000, the ATI Rage Pro cards are missing some hardware features that can affect visual fidelity, even if you use drivers that came out much later.
• If you are trying to do OPEN GL or DirectX games >= 2000, the ATI Rage Pro cards usually don't have enough muscle to play the games at all.

ATI Rage 128 cards are a noticeable improvement over the Rage Pro. Full DirectX 6 support, reasonable OpenGL, Support for Fog, Texture Filtering, etc. The fully 32-bit rendering path & 128 bit memory access also give these cards much better performance than the Rage Pro. The price difference between the Pro and the 128 is negligible. Save yourself some headaches and get the 128 if you want to get a Rage card.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/505/11

Guys, I read the entire thread and concluded that
the S3 Virge series cards are the most compatible with dos and win 3.x-9x. Right?

msdos9 wrote on 2025-04-28, 16:19:

Guys, I read the entire thread and concluded that
the S3 Virge series cards are the most compatible with dos and win 3.x-9x. Right?

I'd say they are among the top compatibility wise, as long as you don't intend to run anything 3d on them. An S3 trio64 would be very close if you dont care about the 3d cough cough"capability" or the extra 2mb the virge can offer.

One undesirable thing about virge/trio is the "high pedestal" card bios "bug" (well really it's a feature) - about 50% of the card's I've seen are like this. This manifests as 100% black color appearing as a very dark brown when you use an LCD monitor-it would be unnoticeable on a CRT. Afaik this has something to do with the brightness level set by the cards bios. Not sure if there was a software workaround (I didn't care enough to try and find out).

I actually consider Cirrus Logic 5464 "Laguna 3d" one notch up from the virge, again as long as you don't really need the 3d part. No black issue, perfect dos and windows compatibility, imho better image quality, somewhat newer then virge and faster in 2d in windows

Rage128 does not support Win3x. G200/400 are most compatible. S3 Savage3D seems to be conpatible too.
RagePro is also nice . If we are talking 3D in Win95 then G200/400 are best. G450/550 only supports Win3x in WinOS/2.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2025-04-28, 18:55:

Rage128 does not support Win3x. G200/400 are most compatible. S3 Savage3D seems to be conpatible too.
RagePro is also nice . If we are talking 3D in Win95 then G200/400 are best. G450/550 only supports Win3x in WinOS/2.

Omores recently wrote on another thread that he got the G450 to work in Windows 3.1x using the G400 drivers. I don't have a G450 to test, but I plan to buy a PCI G450 soon to test with WfW and Windows NT 3.51. It would be a nice upgrade from my G200.

Happy to be corrected, but I don't think you can top G450 + Voodoo.

Happy to be corrected, but I don't think you can top G450 + Voodoo. If you are constrained to one slot then I would seriously consider Rush/Banshee/Voodoo3. My reasons are the same.

For frame rates the thing to watch is L2 cache and driver bloat. Ideally, you want a complete driver stack that's small enough to stay cached, and that means not depending on the D3D abstraction layer. Matrox and 3Dfx both invested heavily in optimising their drivers, but for 3D the Matrox is going to depend on what was recognised as a bloated D3D layer.

I don't think there is any DOS/Win3x 3D accelerator that has digital output.

G450+Voodoo both have analogue output, so cable quality matters. The G450 workstation adapter cable is several times thicker than a consumer 3Dfx passthrough cable, much like industrial VGA cables are several times thicker than consumer ones. If you use only those extra thick cables for analogue transmissions then image will equal or better than digital.

MattRocks wrote on 2025-11-06, 21:59:

I don't think there is any DOS/Win3x 3D accelerator that has digital output.

I don't believe any contemporary 3Dfx cards from back then had DVI.

Anthony's 3Dfx reproduction cards do have HDMI output, they're expensive though.

Duffman wrote on 2025-11-07, 00:38:

Anthony's 3Dfx reproduction cards do have HDMI output, they're expensive though.

Is to make Voodoo1/2 compatible with newer GPUs that have only HDMI output?

sdz has made a voodoo1 with HDMI

https://sdz-mods.com/index.php/2024/12/06/voodoo-4440h/

They even shared the files needed if you wanted a PCB manufacturer to make some if you're so inclined.

I'd value HDMI input because that would enable the Voodoo glide accelerator to play with any new PCIe main GPU.

But a HDMI output needs explaining.

The thing is, the original 3Dfx Voodoo feeds its digital signals from RAM to RAMDAC (Digital-to-Analogue Converted) for analogue VGA output. The "problem" is that any RAMDAC adds some noise, and fuzziness, which is why so much money was put into using high spec DACs (particularly in high resolution pro workstations).

One possibility is that the added HDMI is being fed from the RAMDAC by converting the analogue signal back to digital via a ADC (Digital-to-Analogue converter). The "problem" with that is any ADC adds some noise and fuzziness. I'd be concerned that fuzzy*fuzzy=fuzzy^2.

Alternatively, the added HDMI could be tapping the signal before it hits the RAMDAC, which would be okay but.. the passthrough from the main GPU is analogue, so that is broken or fuzzy.

On the original topic, I found G450 and G400 DOS support are slightly different.

Both support VBE 3.0, high VESA resolutions, frame buffer, etc. If using LCD panels then DOS support is equally good.

The difference is the G450 does not have fully configurable refresh rates when driving a CRT monitor in DOS.

MattRocks wrote on 2025-11-06, 21:59:

I don't think there is any DOS/Win3x 3D accelerator that has digital output.

This seems digital if the name is digital, i have not used DFP/MDR.

VESA Digital Flat Panel (DFP)
20-pin Mini Delta Ribbon (3M MDR / 20-pin MDR)
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/ati- … -lt-pro-dfp-agp

ATi 109-47200-00
Dell Rage LT PRO DFP AGP
Gateway Rage LT PRO DFP AGP

marxveix wrote on 2025-11-08, 10:54:

This seems digital if the name is digital, i have not used DFP/MDR.

Oh! I forgot about MDR, but truth is MDR is the same VGA analogue signal in a different package.

Apple, ATI, and maybe some others felt they might look innovative if they replaced wonky copper VGA pins with a slick SCSI connector that saved space and was harder to break. Turns out the market ecosystem doesn't really care who is right or wrong - it just carried on doing whatever is most effective. Soon everyone (including me) forgot about MDR.

MattRocks wrote on 2025-11-06, 21:59:

I don't think there is any DOS/Win3x 3D accelerator that has digital output.

G450+Voodoo both have analogue output, so cable quality matters.

I have a G450 PCI with DVI. Also the Savage 2000 exits with DVI and has also Windows 3.1 drivers. Seems to be quite expensive, though.

As I have mentioned in the past, Matrox offered a DVI daughter card (G4-MOD/PLVI) for the G400 line of cards.

There is also an ELSA TNT2 Ultra model with DVI but it is such an early implementation that it's a bit picky about displays and requires a particular driver to make DVI work correctly. I don't know if the DVI port would be usable in Windows 3.x because I haven't been able to find any ELSA drivers for that particular OS. I kind of doubt they exist. I have used it in 98SE with generic Nvidia drivers though, and it works perfectly over VGA and has great output.

ElTentakel wrote on 2025-11-12, 21:04:

MattRocks wrote on 2025-11-06, 21:59:

I don't think there is any DOS/Win3x 3D accelerator that has digital output.

G450+Voodoo both have analogue output, so cable quality matters.

I have a G450 PCI with DVI. Also the Savage 2000 exits with DVI and has also Windows 3.1 drivers. Seems to be quite expensive, though.

Without Glide you don't have full support - which is what makes Voodoo relevant to the topic. DVI-D from a main GPU won't pass through the Voodoo. Adding a DVI out on the Voodoo doesn't fix that passthrough problem. So the best support for DOS-Win9x, I'd say, is analogue by default.

Yes, i agree, but also not. My experiences with Voodoos and the analogue passthrough or even the output with digital displays and adapters ist very mixed. It works good enough on CRTs, but fails the newer the display is. Thus I often don't use the passthrough and use both outputs in parallel.

And it's not only the age of the cards. I have one particular Voodoo 2, which i only use as SLI companion since back then, because it has such a bad analogue output.