I tested a couple of sound cards in a 440BX mainboard, a MSI MS-6163.
I limited testing to cards that support hardware-assisted ISA DMA emulation (that is no need to use EMM386 / DSDMA). The results match the consensus in the retro community:
The best DOS compatibility was provded by the ESS Solo1 and the YMF724 on a Yamaha Waveforce 192XG. The ESS Solo1 card uses DDMA, whereas the official Yamaha YMF724 initialization tool refuses to use DDMA on 440BX based boards with the YMF724C chip. Only newer revisions, like the YMF724F, support DDMA on 440BX-based boards. The Waveforce runs fine in PC/PCI mode (actually, that's the only choice offered for ISA DMA emulation in that system), if a PC/PCI-cable is installed. All DOS games I tested (The Settlers 2, The Need for Speed, Stunts 4D sports driving, Wolfenstein 3D) worked flawlessly on both of these cards.
The other two cards I tried are a ALS300-based no-name card and a Terratec DMX XFire-1024. Both of these cards need a TSR, not just an initialization tool, to provide soundblaster compatibility in DOS. The ALS300 did not work as SB16 in any of the games I tried. The DOS setup program (APSETUP) called the soundblaster emulation SB16, though. I don't know whether the games are just incompatible with 16-bit sound on DMA channel 1 (instead of 5, 6 or 7), the card is somehow set to SB Pro emulation only, the SB16 DSP emulation is bad enough to not be picked up as SB16 in most sound card detection routines, or the ALS300 was just in SB Pro emulation mode. Also, stunts (which is (mostly?) just OPL2-based) crashed on startup, with or without the TSR loaded.
The DMX XFire-1024, which is based on the CS4624 chip, provides the usual SB Pro compatibility without even claiming to be SB16 compatible. The driver version 4.06.00.2885 had a DOS setup program that failed on the first invocation (and didn't go resident), but worked on the second invocation. Most games worked, but again, OPL2 emulation totally failed with stunts, with some notes of the intro music being played, but silence afterwards, and again a system crash on the second start of stunts, just like with the ALS-based card.