All I can say, is that in real life experience, I see no difference in speed and compatibility when running eighter 5446, Trio64v/+ or Virge-325. It is only in benchmarking I see the difference. So uhmmm.... Yeah... It all depends on what you can get the cheapest in the end.

What I do noice when running these cards (never had 5464, so I can not speak for that), is that running CL cards, you tend to get more vibrant/warm colors, compared to S3 cards. And S3 cards tend to output a more bright picture, less warm colors and sharper contrast. Paired with something like a Pentium1 at aprox 133 to 166 mhz (running MS-Dos 6.22), you really do not gain any speed advantage in eighter of the cards. I did however read something about them S3 needing vesa drivers and CL not having to use it. And loading any drivers in dos, might result in less conventional memory.

Personally I prefer to use CL cards on 486/5x86 systems with Pci slots. S3 cards if it is VLB. And using pure S3 on Pentium systems. That however, is my personal choice and preference.

Personally I'd snap the 5464 anyway if the price is reasonable. It's much less common and much more expensive than trios.

brostenen wrote:

I did however read something about them S3 needing vesa drivers and CL not having to use it.

Any seconds to this?

Depends on the card's BIOS really... there are S3s with VBE1.2 and others with VBE2.0 BIOSes... either one is a good choice in my book
you can also read about DOS compatibility here: https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

I'm guessing 'OK' means it loaded without any assistance. The S3 cards requires S3 VBE for quake, so that's probably the driver.

Alrighty then, looks like the claim is accurate -- at least for quake. I like the sound of not needing drivers.

Yeah.... Any Dos card, with compatibility and not needing any additional drivers loaded in order to work are a safe bet.

What about the 4mb of the 5464? Can, say, DOS-Quake in 800x600 actually take advantage of it?

The VBE aren't in ROM usually? That seems odd to me. A driver based solution sounds like a real kludge.

Paralel wrote:

The VBE aren't in ROM usually? That seems odd to me. A driver based solution sounds like a real kludge.

It is kind of a kludge... most stock S3 Trio 64 support VBE 1.2 in ROM, which is all well and good (no "driver" needed fot VBE 1.2) but for games that need/want VBE 2.0 (e.g. Quake) then a shim "driver" (in the form of a TSR) is required to provide the VBE 2.0 interface between the software and the card.