On CRT monitors the difference between cards isn't so significant.
I should add, that in my experience S3 Trio cards usually provide better image quality than S3 Virge cards. I have a bunch of S3 cards and the best picture I can see is on nonename S3 Trio 64V+ card.

I've read that a lot about the S3 Trio cards, yes. If I ever get one, preferrably from a good brand, I will definitely add it to the test.

Not all S3 Trio and ViRGE cards are created equal, some of them were made by terrible manufacturers and several variants do have a better RAMDAC. Notably the ViRGE/VX which was the successor of the S3 Vision968.

I do have a Compaq ViRGE/GX card (175 MHz RAMDAC) whose image quality was very good and has higher quality components than the usual fare.

Indeed. I'd really appreciate a like-for-like comparison between S3 and non-S3 from same brand. None of this has to do with digital signal processing, it's all analog signal quality. Now, the Virge has an onboard RAMDAC, so the analog source is indeed the chip, but chip A on board by brand X vs chip B on board by brand Y comparison doesn't convincingly make the case that it's really the chip itself that makes the difference.

That said, I've generally considered Elsa and Miro to be equally near perfect when it came to this and it's interesting to see the difference even between cards with the same chip from these quality brands.

From my experience, bypassing the output filter on VGA output makes for a very noticable improvement in image sharpness/clarity in every card I have touched, from low end ISA ones to even more modern stuff. I have broken the ferrites (so the core wire only remains) and removed the capacitors on some low end looking Virge cards and all the blur/smear disappears and higher resolutions start to look fine again. Similarly with many nvidia based cards that often had blurry looking VGA output.

dionb wrote on 2023-11-15, 20:39:

chip A on board by brand X vs chip B on board by brand Y comparison doesn't convincingly make the case that it's really the chip itself that makes the difference.

Why not? That is exactly what I would do to prove that the chip itself is to blame. Collect ten Virge cards from different brands, and put them against ten other cards with non-S3 chips, and if all 10 Virges lose on brightness, that would seal it for me. Or the other way round, find a Virge that has higher brightness than a bunch of other cards in a direct comparison.

We have already proven that there is considerable variance in the output quality between Virge cards from different manufacturers, what remains is a baseline low brightness that could be due to internal settings of the chip.

I also had another no-name Virge DX that was in fact so bad I threw it away. It looked exactly as in the first comparison made by vetz who started this thread. I genuinely thought it was defective, but after seeing his, I am not so sure anymore.

asdf53 wrote on 2023-11-16, 05:20:

dionb wrote on 2023-11-15, 20:39:

chip A on board by brand X vs chip B on board by brand Y comparison doesn't convincingly make the case that it's really the chip itself that makes the difference.

Why not? That is exactly what I would do to prove that the chip itself is to blame. Collect ten Virge cards from different brands, and put them against ten other cards with non-S3 chips, and if all 10 Virges lose on brightness, that would seal it for me. Or the other way round, find a Virge that has higher brightness than a bunch of other cards in a direct comparison.

That would be a good idea - I was referring to the present 2x S3 (Elsa and Miro) vs cards from unnamed board brands with Cirrus Logic and Trident and GF4 from a different brand. There are clear differences in output but there are also multiple variables. I strongly suspect the fuzziness of the Trident is caused by a crappy low-end card rather than being inherent to the chip.

I see what you mean, a set of three cards (S3, Cirrus, Trident) from the same brand, and then compare that to a set of another brand. My collection is too small for that unfortunately, but it would definitely be interesting. I would love to see a brand name Trident from that time, do they even exist? It seems that they were so cheap that no one from the bigger name brands bothered.