For SS7 choose quality motherboard (and PSU). There's a lot of 'juice' needed on 3.3V line - all PCI and AGP cards. Also AGP implementation is far from perfect on this early boards.

For graphics card I would say - choose the one which is most stable, and have best output signal. If you seek for less blurry signal, probably the best will be ATI (if it is card 'built by ATI', not third party), but less compatible in Windows - no palleted textures nor fog table. According to 'gona compatibility table' it is also less compatible in DOS.
Best compatibility in Windows (from the three) you'll achieve with TNT2, practically speaking in DOS its compatibility is close to 100%. Besides that it has Windows 3.11 drivers 😉

For DOS SB Live is not a very good choice, unless it will be only DOS mode inside Windows 9x.

Do you think matrox g400 is a better option?

Matrox cards used to have best signal quality between cards from this period. They should be also faster than TNT2/M64 and Rage128, and have unique features like environment bumpmapping. So it is good choice for Windows. I don't know if it has AMD 3DNow! optimized drivers.

S3 Savage is weakest in term of performance and Windows games compatibility. However it may be best for DOS (the advantage over nvidia is not too big though).

Best way is to check yourself 😉

zyga64 wrote:

S3 Savage is weakest in term of performance and Windows games compatibility.

I disagree. Savage 4 trades blows with Banshee and Voodoo2 in terms of performance and so far I have not come across a game that would not work properly on one.

Well, I meant - among the mentioned cards.

Uhm. Max Payne ? link
After some experiments you'll be able to find drivers which are most stable and compatible for you platform. That's some sort of challenge.

zyga64 wrote:

Well, I meant - among the mentioned cards.

Uhm. Max Payne ? link
After some experiments you'll be able to find drivers which are most stable and compatible for you platform. That's some sort of challenge.

It's not really weaker than an tnt m64. Also Max Payne is from 2001 and neither of the cards could run it properly.

Use a monitor with two input sockets - one for 2-, one for 3D thus avoiding the stinky passthrough cable.
The ATi Rage and M64 usually have a vibrant picture... though cheap cards like the G400 seem even better in this regard.

amadeus777999 wrote:

Use a monitor with two input sockets - one for 2-, one for 3D thus avoiding the stinky passthrough cable.
The ATi Rage and M64 usually have a vibrant picture... though cheap cards like the G400 seem even better in this regard.

if you don't have a second port available on your monitor I would recommend one of these

https://www.startech.com/AV/Switchers/2-port- … switch~ST122VGA

Auto-sensing so whenever voodoo2 is active it will automatically switch to that port and then switches back to primary video when voodoo 2 is inactive. Works great.