First post, by T-Squared
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I know I posted this in the pinned topic, but looking at the last post in that particular topic, I thought it would be a while before anyone answered, so I made a separate topic.
I need some advice for a good card.
It needs:
- to be PCI (AGP is already taken up by an NVidia FX5500, and ISA does not work for video cards on my chipset.)
- to have a (WORKING) feature connector
- to have compatibility with the odd Mode X games (and the Multimedia PC version of Myst)
- to be $20-$40 (Cheap, but not so cheap that it seems too good to be true)
- to have between 2-16 MB of memory (16 is a stretch)
Extra features I could use are bonuses. Also, it doesn't matter if it can't be used in Windows XP, because the 5500 already has dual monitor support (although with VGA and DVI).
I've considered Matrox, but that seems to have trouble with a lot of games (including Commander Keen), as I've read, and I haven't been able to find a reference for use of the extra black DB connector on the bracket. (It says Media XL somewhere, but I haven't been able to find that standard anywhere in the internet yet.)
I've tried ATI, but it has slight trouble with Commander Keen, and two of my cards seem
to have a bad or deteriorating signal on the feature connector (but nothing bad on the normal monitor):
- Rage Pro shows a LOT of noise/static/missing pixels in brighter areas, and EGA is just-plain a mess, with horizontal streaks of colors, and wrong colors in certain places.
- Rage Pro Turbo AGP All-in-Wonder is similar, but more subdued, with consistently-missing pixels in 256-color 320x200 mode, but somehow I remember it was crystal clear before.
I tried S3 Virge (in the form of the ExpertColor 325), but expanding the memory (from 2mb to 4mb) breaks the feature connector capability,
using it with Doom/Doom 2 in Win98's DOS shell makes it crash with a temporary blue screen back to the desktop, and MPC Ver. Myst doesn't seem to like it,
no matter what I try to change in the settings (Heck, I even updated the video card's BIOS. It was an EEPROM.). I'm not sure if it's just a fluke with that particular brand, though. (And like below, isn't out of the question) If the S3 Trio is good, I'll go to that.
nVidia RIVA/TNT/TNT2 I'm scared of trying (but isn't out of the question), because the feature connector didn't seem to work on a 16MB TNT2 card I used 3 years ago (and the card itself is completely dead now, even after a well-intentioned solder reflow attempt).