Just use UniVBE with refresh utility.

after some digging i did find a tool from ELSA for this. according to readme it supports both automatic setup via monitor DDC polling (up t0 85hz) and manually setting refresh rates per resolution. only possible drawback is that there's no mention of the low-res VESA modes added by S3VBE20, so i'm not sure how it will interact with that tool.

edit: S3REFRSH also attached now, though i couldn't find its full readme.

Did you manage to solve the problem? I had similar problems but on a LCD monitor.

from quick testing, for the supported modes these tools do exactly what they say.

as i suspected though, the low-res modes added by S3VBE20 aren't affected by them. testing chasm: the rift on my winner 2000avi vision 968 card, i realized that the distortion issue with 400x300 appears intermittently, and wrote some numbers down from monitor OSD. correct timings are 48.9khz/73hz (which basically matches what is listed in S3VBE20.txt), and the wrong ones are 55.4khz/83hz. it appears that switching around resolutions in menu causes a higher chance for the wrong timings to stick, but there's a seemingly random element to it as well... sometimes it starts at 73hz and will stay there if not touching any resolution settings, sometimes it starts at 83hz, but switches to 73hz a few seconds later.

i think the conclusion is that S3VBE20 just doesn't play well with the stunts they pulled with the video BIOS here, and the only real remedy would be a modded BIOS with default timings, which should have been the way to go anyway given that these tools exist and are easily configurable.

facing the same issue. s3-virge-vx every game/demo uses another refresh-rate, very anoying on TFT...
can't set to 60hz standard on tft regardless what I do (regedit, hztool etc.)

Any chance for this or I pull out that slow 3d de-accelerator 😉

That's the main reason why I refrain from using LCD monitors on old computers even though several of them are capable of handling higher refresh rates as most of these stuff were designed to be ran with multi-sync CRT monitors used at the time.

The only way to be able to adjust the refresh rate below 640x480 on video cards lacking VBE 3.0 onboard outside of modifying the int 10h handler is loading UniVBE (at least version 6.53 because it will "upgrade" the VBE BIOS to 3.0) and from there one will be able to use UniRefresh or UNICENTR (not trivial with this one but the keys to adjust the refresh rates still works even though they aren't displayed on lower resolutions). However this won't work on video modes set in Windows.

The alternative is getting a card that supports VBE 3.0 BIOS onboard but one has to accept some compromises regarding DOS compatibility such as the lack of 15-bit color mode on nVidia cards.

First card that I have those issues. No Problem on ATI Rage Series, Matrox Mystique, Riva128. So the virge will be put out of that machine. Damn S3!

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-03-23, 16:02:

First card that I have those issues. No Problem on ATI Rage Series, Matrox Mystique, Riva128. So the virge will be put out of that machine. Damn S3!

You can use S3 Refresh for 640x480 and higher resolutions. And @Gmlb256 provided a workaround for lower resolutions.

I used my generic "no name" Virge DX on an LCD monitor without any issues.

What Win95 driver should I use? (for VX)

didn't go into the details but Elsa had a f*ckload of different utils back then
https://www.idealine.info/elsa/GRAPHICS/ELSAWARE/
just don't expect too much ease with a CRT product in a TFT world...

http://edv-janssen.synology.me/elsa.de/downlo … aware/index.htm

As fas as I know you need some tool from the ELSA disks to setup the refresh rates.
They are programmed to a kind of NVRAM / EEPROM on the card then.

currently loading that https://archive.org/details/elsa-victory-3d-a-97

Tested the original S3-virge-drivers from elsa and they are excellent. they fix the refresh-rate problems.
I thought I had a victory3d but it was WINNER2000 3D VirgeVX 4MB. Very nice card, excellent image, excellent colors, but poor 3D acceleration.

I did a couple of tests yesterday. Everything seems to be fine beside Jazz2 game-series. I did not get 70hz working and therefore no smooth scrolling possible.

jazz2 never scrolled smoothly for me on any kind of setup, for whatever that's worth.

auron wrote on 2022-07-02, 03:53:

jazz2 never scrolled smoothly for me on any kind of setup, for whatever that's worth.

Proper 70 Hz screen refresh rate is required to get smooth scrolling on Jazz Jackrabbit 2 due to the game engine having the tick rate hardcoded to 70 Hz.

nope, just forced 70hz in 98se dxdiag, confirmed this on the monitor and it's still stuttery as ever. i actually just reinstalled the game to test this as this would have been a really surprising discovery.

granted, i "only" have a p2 233 with a tnt2 at hand for this, but as 2x f9 shows a locked 70fps in 320x200, i don't think it's limited by performance. with hardware mode it's about the same except it briefly blips to 69 fps for some reason.

i guess there's a solution out there, if someone wants to play this on a modern PC: https://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=20402

Yep, it isn't perfect at 70 Hz and I also sometimes get scrolling hiccups even with a PIII-750 CPU. Hardware mode helps in terms of performance except in levels that has water, where it gets slower when it is visible.