Hi,

Do you wish to use the cards under DOS or Win95 or both? I would assume DOS or DOS/Win95 by default as I like to pair Win9x only systems with at least a Pentium or in case of AMD an Am5x86, however a 486 at this clock speed should be capable of running Win95 acceptably. It would be easier to tell which one is ideal knowing the operating system(s) it needs to run with.

The Motherboard should have 5 Volt 32-bit PCI slots, so any card that can work with these specs most likely can be tried and benchmarked for performance. Also it has a Dallas RTC, so that should be either fixed with attaching a coin cell to it, like on the 3rd picture on the page that you linked, or replaced with a whole new Dallas RTC compatible module.

Fastest in what? DOS, Windows 3.1x, Windows 9x? I think the difference will not be that big on such a CPU either way. I would personally more look into compatibility.

I have half of the above GPUs (and some others) and in the end I choose the S3 Virge/DX for an AMD Am5x86-P75. It's very compatible with DOS games, more than fast enough and has Windows 3.1/9x drivers.

If you want (for whatever reason) want to run Windows 9x than a TNT 2 would be better of course.

S3 Virge DX for the DOS usage, i would use Rage Pro cards (Win3x support) but lowest i have used them are on K5-PR166 (107Mhz) and you cant play 3D games well on 486.

You could run some older 3d demos in Win95, but how would win9x 3d games run, probably below 10fps.

PCI bus on 486 machines is somewhat ancient. This excludes some modern PCI cards which require PCI 2.2 compatibility.
Also, all PCI cards that require a 3.3V voltage won't work unless you mod your board.
Some Win95 drivers for newer PCI video cards don't work on a 486 machine.
Best bet would be S3 Trio64 or S3 Virge, they are the most compatible ones.

I should clarify that I definitely won't run Win9x on the machine, and probably no Win 3.X either.

Basically, I know compatibility of the Matrox and ATI cards isn't great, I know the Cirrus Logic cards are highly compatible but I wonder about their performance relative to a Tseng ET4000 VLB, and I do not know how compatible OR fast the Weitek and ALI cards are, so I'm hoping there are some people here who can shed light on that.

Also it would be nice if a 2D speed ranking of the S3 cards existed, because there are so damn many different models that are only differentiated by a 2 character suffix and for some reason I believe many people say the Trio64V2/DX is the fastest for 2D DOS, while some of the cards that I believe are newer (but I might be wrong there) are slower.
Would be absolutely grateful for any info regarding the pecking order there.

The results collected by this youtuber might be of interest to you. He presents them around the halfway mark of this video. Unfortunately I don't see any link to view the data outside of the video itself.

https://youtu.be/wPRNyYKkW94

From your list, I would probably say one of the S3 cards, at least in terms of DOS game compatibility.

I have just about half of cards on your list (some AGP tho) and the S3 Trio64 is the "it will probably run fine" choice. It isn't the fastest (at least when I benchmarked on a Pentium MMX and PII-400Mhz. VESA 1.2 is also the other negative - I personally prefer VESA 2.0/3.0 native cards in DOS, so no need to mess around with UNIVBE.

Some of the others might be faster, if you don't need compatibility for the tougher games on this list:
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

It might be worth trying the Rage Pro Turbo and Riva TNT 2 M64 too.

The Matrox Mystique matches many others I benchmarked (at least on Pentium), with a very clean image, but I know it is hit-or-miss with software compatibility.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-07-05, 16:47:

Geforce FX 5200 64 bit won't work on the board... I haven't tried yet, but I am scared of frying them so I probably won't.

I directly compared and DOS benchmarked AGP versions of Geforce FX 5200 and Riva TNT2 M64. I saw almost the exact frame rates between them. I prefer the TNT2 actually - for some reason the FX 5200 struggled in Doom, and had image artifacts in PC Player benchmark at 640x480. (Could be my particular card)

I used a PCI S3 Trio64v+ (STB Powergraph 64) for my 486 (AM5x86@160MHz/120mhz) in the day. Works fine, benchmarks great, DirectDraw works, palette doesn't screw up, card did not burn out.

I just remembered my Guillemot Maxi Gamer Cougar (TNT2 M64 PCI) exists. I'm pretty sure that one is a 5V PCI card, not 3.3V, since as far as I know this is true for all TNT2 PCI cards. And the TNT2 M64 was also used on AGP cards (66 MHz default bus clock), so I guess there is hope for it working with high PCI bus speeds, too, I guess?

At the very least, if it runs, it supports VBE 2.0 or 3.0 depending on where you look it up, and its game compatibility rivals that of S3 cards - no issues like the infamous scrolling bugs in Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit and Prehistorik.

If there ever was a case to recommend an S3 Virge or the DX-model, this must surely be it.

I don't believe that TNT2 M64 will run on the UM8881 chipset. Modern graphics on a 486

From memory, I don't think the Gigabyte GA-486AM/S is entirely stable with a 66 MHz FSB. Few socket 3 motherboards are.

feipoa wrote on 2026-07-06, 09:26:

I don't believe that TNT2 M64 will run on the UM8881 chipset. Modern graphics on a 486

From memory, I don't think the Gigabyte GA-486AM/S is entirely stable with a 66 MHz FSB. Few socket 3 motherboards are.

I had no problem with the FSB so far, only with the cache modules that probably had at least a fake speed rating anyway. I bought 1M of cache (10x 128K 10ns modules) on Aliexpress for the lottery chance of itnot being fake, and 8 out of 10 actually did work, and a benchmark did in fact prove their capacity.
However, later two more of them died so I'm now down to 512K.

What surprises me in the thread you are mentioning is that I have definitely seen a Diamond Monster Fusion Voodoo Banshee run on the same chipset, while the thread says their board did not turn on.
So there is a possibility that it is a shortcoming of that thread's OP's board specifically.

Try playing Quake for an hour at 66 Mhz FSB on the GA-486AM/S.

Are you able to provide evidence of a 3dfx Banshee running reliably on a UM8881 based motherboard? Which motherboard?

feipoa wrote on 2026-07-06, 19:22:

Are you able to provide evidence of a 3dfx Banshee running reliably on a UM8881 based motherboard? Which motherboard?

No, I did not know I would have to defend this bold statement so I did not make a video when I was visiting a friend in Düsseldorf who used the Banshee for benchmarks with his overclocked AM5x86. I only remember it was the same chipset as my own board, (GA-486AM/S) but his was either from ECS or Lucky Star. I'd have to ask him, provided I won't get accused of making it up.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-07-07, 06:48:

feipoa wrote on 2026-07-06, 19:22:

Are you able to provide evidence of a 3dfx Banshee running reliably on a UM8881 based motherboard? Which motherboard?

No, I did not know I would have to defend this bold statement so I did not make a video when I was visiting a friend in Düsseldorf who used the Banshee for benchmarks with his overclocked AM5x86. I only remember it was the same chipset as my own board, (GA-486AM/S) but his was either from ECS or Lucky Star. I'd have to ask him, provided I won't get accused of making it up.

Some details are fuzzy. Were you saying that your own, in possession, GA-486AM/S runs with an Am5x86 at 2x66 and a 3dfx Banshee, or your friend's unknown motherboard model runs with an Am5x86 at 2x66 and a Banshee? You brought up the possibility of a Lucky Star motherboard for your friend, but which Lucky Star socket 3 motherboard used an UM8881 chipset? I can only think of SiS 496 on a Lucky Star socket 3.

I haven't run across a UM8881 based socket 3 that will work with a Voodoo3 or Banshee. Normally, a UM8881 based board would need to be paired with a Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 to run glide games, while most SiS 496 based boards will work with a Voodoo3 or Banshee. I have tested most popular UM8881 based socket 3 boards, with the exception of ECS boards. Thus, my curiosity is sparked. Is there a magic ECS UM8881 board which works with Voodoo3/Banshee cards? I would be pleasantly surprised if this was the case.

Looking into the notes of when I tested my GA-486AM/S,
"Needs 2 ws read @ 66 MHz, but gets errors in Windows"I believe is with an IBM 5x86c at 2x66. For Am5x86, I'd normally test at 3x60, not 2x66.

So your statement has me curious, but some finer details are missing.

feipoa wrote on 2026-07-07, 08:56:

Some details are fuzzy. Were you saying that your own, in possession, GA-486AM/S runs with an Am5x86 at 2x66 and a 3dfx Banshee, […]
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Some details are fuzzy. Were you saying that your own, in possession, GA-486AM/S runs with an Am5x86 at 2x66 and a 3dfx Banshee, or your friend's unknown motherboard model runs with an Am5x86 at 2x66 and a Banshee? You brought up the possibility of a Lucky Star motherboard for your friend, but which Lucky Star socket 3 motherboard used an UM8881 chipset? I can only think of SiS 496 on a Lucky Star socket 3.

I haven't run across a UM8881 based socket 3 that will work with a Voodoo3 or Banshee. Normally, a UM8881 based board would need to be paired with a Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 to run glide games, while most SiS 496 based boards will work with a Voodoo3 or Banshee. I have tested most popular UM8881 based socket 3 boards, with the exception of ECS boards. Thus, my curiosity is sparked. Is there a magic ECS UM8881 board which works with Voodoo3/Banshee cards? I would be pleasantly surprised if this was the case.

Looking into the notes of when I tested my GA-486AM/S,
"Needs 2 ws read @ 66 MHz, but gets errors in Windows"I believe is with an IBM 5x86c at 2x66. For Am5x86, I'd normally test at 3x60, not 2x66.

So your statement has me curious, but some finer details are missing.

My own GA-486AM/s was only tested with a Voodoo Rush (Hercules Stingray 128/3D), and only at 3x50 so far.
My friend's board, of which I only remember the chipset and the graphics card, was running 3x66 with sub zero cooling on the CPU and a 200mm fan blowing onto the general area around it. He then ran DOOM and Quake 1, nothing else with said Diamond brand Banshee. The details didn't matter very much to me at the time, as the interesting part was the immense CPU overclock running stable, so that is all I can tell you right now.
I shall ask him which board exactly it was.

GA-486AM/S + Voodoo Rush -----> I can envision this combination working.

Unknown model UM8881-based socket 3 + Voodoo Banshee -----> Curious & sceptical. I am looking forward to uncovering this information. I wonder if a Voodoo 3 would also work on this mystery UM8881-based motherboard.

I found the UM8886A to have more limited compatibility than 8886B--even a CL-GD5446 wouldn't work on the 8886A, but I'm not sure if that was truly a hardware issue, or a BIOS issue.
feipoa, or perhaps mkarcher, have pointed out that the PCI clock temporarily runs incredibly low during POST until it figures out the divider, if I'm summarizing that correctly. This means some PCI cards do not work even when they should.