Makes one think they didn't test some of their games much at all.

What's the glitch like?

- if you are talking ISA then get a Cirrus Logic or a WDC card, they work fine
- if you mean PCI/AGP then you can't go wrong with an S3/Cirrus or even an nvidia card

these are the most common/cheapest compatible options

firage wrote:

Makes one think they didn't test some of their games much at all.

What's the glitch like?

Early Apogee/iD games had a problem where flashing garbage would appear that scrolled with the level.

If you ever see a "SVGA Compatibility" option in an Apogee/iD platformer (like Crystal Caves, Secret Agent, Commander Keen 4/5/6/Dreams), it's to fix that particular issue.

Some Matrox cards have other difficulties with these games (like jerky scrolling), for which there is no fix.

HTH

Read through this: http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/, it is very useful website, I used that to choose my PCI GPU for my socket 7 Pentium MMX, was considering Matrox and this proved me I chose poorly, so I went with S3 Trio64.

keropi wrote:

- if you are talking ISA then get a Cirrus Logic or a WDC card, they work fine
- if you mean PCI/AGP then you can't go wrong with an S3/Cirrus or even an nvidia card

these are the most common/cheapest compatible options

Hi keropi, I guess you know this already, but Western Digital once had a subsidiary named Paradise Systems
(they bought it in '86, got later renamed to Western Digital Imaging).

The PVGA1A (or PVGA1B) chips were quite similar to the later WD90C00 series. In fact, my Paradise drivers for Win 2.x do also work with them.
Some games like Wonderland also supported both of them in SVGA. I think there was also a Vesa 1.2 TSR available for both of them.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention this because it is an old and very compatible chip (mode switching utlity can also set EGA/CGA/HGC). 😀

Here's the link to Wikipedia. it also says:
"[..]They did well (especially Paradise, which produced one of the best VGA cards of the era),
but storage-related chips and disk controllers were their biggest money makers.[..]"

Yes, I know the "compatibilty fix" in some games, but not all games have that
and it does not fix all issues. Like very slow "fade-in / out" of the intro, "jerky
scrolling", flickering of objects.

My Diamond Speedstar VGA is a very nice card. It has a nice an sharp image-
quality and NO! vertical lines on my 15"LCD like most other ISA Cards have.

I am currently using it on the PC-Side of my A2000. I use a A2286/8Mhz BB
and it's astonishing how much software is working. If I "downgrade" the
card to a slower one for more compatibilty, I think I will lose some formely
working software, but I will test it.

So what chip should I go for? I prefer 1MB VRAM in order to get deluxepaint
and quickview up and running with 640x480@256colors.

Cheapest would be a Cirrus Logic card - it will get the job done - get something from the 5424 and above models.
WDC90C3x would be faster but it's really weird when it comes to screenmodes/depth, 1MB should do 640x480/256 just fine though.
I cannot remember if Tseng4000 cards are having issues or not , they are fast though

@Jo22
yes, WDC cards are paradise ones - it's easier to call them WDC though since it's what's written on the main IC 🤣 🤣 🤣

If the Speedstar works for you well, then just use that one 😀

I like my Speedstar 24x, but I prefer using a cheaper CL card because of the screen positioning between command promt and games. The CL card has them both centred, a small detail, but when I capture or film this matters to me.

Thx Phil! Yes the centering issue is also there with the Speedstar VGA.
Text is centered, 320x200gfx are not, or only sometimes. depends on
the game.