Matrox cards leave a lot to be desired in DOS, despite their oft-reported excellent 2D quality. You can see a comparison of potential candidates for your needs here:

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

In my opinion, the best all-around card you're going to get is that Voodoo3 PCI. If you ever decide to run Terminator SkyNET or Future Shock in SVGA mode, you'll knock your brains out testing other cards which won't crash almost immediately or don't display properly. I went through S3's, Matrox's, SiS's, NVidia's, and ATI's (also trying UNIVBE and SciTech). Occasionally, I was able to get Cirrus Logic-based cards to run, but not with any sort of regular reliability. If you never plan to play these 2 Terminator games in SVGA mode, the sky is the limit. As an aside, it would be great if GONA updated the list to include testing of Terminator SkyNET/Future Shock (w/SVGA upgrade from SkyNET).

Yes, the Voodoo3 will be vastly underpowered by the CPU, but at least you'll have great VESA support and the ability to transplant it into a faster system should your retro needs change (and usually, they do...)

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-13, 17:27:

Matrox cards leave a lot to be desired in DOS, despite their oft-reported excellent 2D quality. You can see a comparison of potential candidates for your needs here:

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

In my opinion, the best all-around card you're going to get is that Voodoo3 PCI. If you ever decide to run Terminator SkyNET or Future Shock in SVGA mode, you'll knock your brains out testing other cards which won't crash almost immediately or don't display properly. I went through S3's, Matrox's, SiS's, NVidia's, and ATI's. Occasionally, I was able to get Cirrus Logic-based cards to run, but not with any sort of regular reliability. If you never plan to play these 2 Terminator games in SVGA mode, the sky is the limit.

One of the reasons I'm hesitant about the Voodoo 3, is because I already have a Pentium 3 677Mhz with one to cover those games.

I could go with a TNT 2 but I worry that some games will get confused about which 3D card to use since it also has a Voodoo 2. Is there no good 2D-only alternative?

If you're already covered by a Voodoo, then there are many options available on the previously supplied link.

Did you install DirectX?

How does your system perform in other area's? Try benchmarking with Doom and CPUMark '99 😀.

red_avatar wrote on 2022-01-13, 17:32:

I could go with a TNT 2 but I worry that some games will get confused about which 3D card to use since it also has a Voodoo 2. Is there no good 2D-only alternative?

I've never had any games become confused between Direct3D cards when the D3D option is un-ticked for my Voodoo2 cards.

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-13, 17:34:

If you're already covered by a Voodoo, then there are many options available on the previously supplied link.

The problem is that DOS performance isn't the issue - Windows performance is. I can pick one from the list that works great in DOS but gives me even worse performance under Windows.

I'm not even sure WHY the Matrox performs so poorly. The correct drivers are installed and even 1998 3D games run quite smoothly but even a 2D game that should run butter smooth on a PC half its speed or less, can struggle whenever there's too many sprites on screen.

It may be that Matrox has poor Direct Draw compatibility but then the question is: what's a good alternative that can handle 1995-1998 2D Windows 9X games?

Thandor wrote on 2022-01-13, 17:35:

Did you install DirectX?

How does your system perform in other area's? Try benchmarking with Doom and CPUMark '99 😀.

It performs as expected in every other area - DOS performance is quite excellent, zero issues there. It's Windows games that are the problem and that's the reason I built this PC, to play early to mid-era Windows 9X games on.

What resolution are you playing? Do you have the latest drivers? When I owned a Matrox G400, it did great with Direct3D, but I had 16MB of VRAM. I was also running it with Pentium II/III's from 400Mhz - 1.4Ghz.

https://www.matrox.com/en/video/apps/drivers/ … previous/legacy for drivers.

red_avatar wrote on 2022-01-13, 17:47:

It may be that Matrox has poor Direct Draw compatibility but then the question is: what's a good alternative that can handle 1995-1998 2D Windows 9X games?

I am sure there are some Pentium 233MMX experts who can help you extract as much power as possible, but I'm afraid I am not that person. I gave up on original Pentiums a while ago. I'll say get another Voodoo3 and call it a day. You are covered in all scenarios. I realize this might not be the most fun if you like to experiment. Otherwise, life is too short.

And I'm sorry about the DOS advice. I was confused and thought you were having trouble in DOS. I don't why know I thought that when you clearly stated the game "Claw."

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-13, 17:55:

What resolution are you playing? Do you have the latest drivers? When I owned a Matrox G400, it did great with Direct3D, but I had 16MB of VRAM. I was also running it with Pentium II/III's from 400Mhz - 1.4Ghz.

https://www.matrox.com/en/video/apps/drivers/ … previous/legacy for drivers.

Well I realized I made a mistake - it's not a G200. I BOUGHT it as a G200 a year or so ago but clear the seller had no idea what the card was because in Windows it just shows up as Matrox Millennium II but it's really a Matrox MGA-2164W.

http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/palcal/matro … wp-c_top_hq.jpg

From what I read, it was a very common add-in card for Compaq and HP so from that I should assume it's not all that powerful ... .

Meatball wrote on 2022-01-13, 18:00:

red_avatar wrote on 2022-01-13, 17:47:

It may be that Matrox has poor Direct Draw compatibility but then the question is: what's a good alternative that can handle 1995-1998 2D Windows 9X games?

I am sure there are some Pentium 233MMX experts who can help you extract as much power as possible, but I'm afraid I am not that person. I gave up on original Pentiums a while ago. I'll say get another Voodoo3 and call it a day. You are covered in all scenarios. I realize this might not be the most fun if you like to experiment. Otherwise, life is too short.

And I'm sorry about the DOS advice. I was confused and thought you were having trouble in DOS. I don't why know I thought that when you clearly stated the game "Claw."

No worries - thanks for the advice anyway. I think this card is just quite crappy. It's not much good for DOS in terms of compatibility (I knew that but I have a 486 DX2 66 for most of the games it has trouble with so wasn't too bothered) but the crappy Windows 98 performance means I'll have to find a better alternative. For now I'll actually try to run the same games using the internal S3 V64. If performance there is better ...

OK, I removed the MGA and tested the same games with the S3 Trio 64V+ and the only game that performs poorly still, is Puzzle Bobble 2X but only at 640x400. At 320x200 it performs beautifully. Get Medieval no longer has slow downs and neither does Captain Claw so the MGA has some real issues there. Guess I'll need to find a replacement ... If only the S3 Trio was the 2MB model because 1MB is not enough to run certain games.

I'm a little confused as to what's going on exactly that's causing these performance issues on the Matrox card. Matrox G200 PCI cards are somewhat tough to find and the 4MB VRAM was a dead-giveaway that you had something different entirely. Matrox G200 is an evolution over the Millennium II, but the latter is no slouch, so I don't know what could be going on here.

If 2MB VRAM is enough for you, are you sure you can't expand the 1MB of the onboard S3 Trio64? They usually have unpopulated sockets allowing you to upgrade the VRAM to 2MB. If the VRAM is strictly soldered, you could perhaps take it to someone that could replace the ram chips with higher capacity ones (perhaps from an S3 Virge).

If you're in need of something better, let me give you another alternative. Voodoo Banshee PCI. Not nearly as expensive as Voodoo3 (although still goes for some $$$) and not nearly as fast, but for an MMX 233 and at 640x480, it should be more than enough. In fact, I have my very own desktop system set up like this and I really dig it. A Voodoo2 or Voodoo3 could be faster for some games, mainly thanks to multi-texturing, but I find that most of these will not run acceptably for me on this CPU and platform anyway, so I get enough performance with the Banshee and great image quality as well. I think it's worth some consideration.

Also, system requirements are definitely an interesting subject. Get Medieval definitely does not run entirely smoothly on my end for example. As soon as the screen gets populated with loads of monsters, performance drops considerably and the controls start feeling a bit sluggish. Still very enjoyable, even with the cheesy and lame late 90's "comedy" 😜, but not quite constant 60fps. I have not tried the other two games on this system, I might give Puzzle Bobble 2 a spin tomorrow and see how it does.

Garrett W wrote on 2022-01-13, 20:32:

I'm a little confused as to what's going on exactly that's causing these performance issues on the Matrox card. Matrox G200 PCI cards are somewhat tough to find and the 4MB VRAM was a dead-giveaway that you had something different entirely. Matrox G200 is an evolution over the Millennium II, but the latter is no slouch, so I don't know what could be going on here.

OP said in the same post where they mention the Millenium II that it's actually a n MGA-2164W, which is the original Millenium. OK in its day, but not very powerful.

The original Millennium is 2064 / IS Storm.

My mistake

the link you posted to your motherboard looks like it has video memory upgrade sockets. populate them and then you have 2mb. seems to me thats cheaper and easyer than adding a pci card, that is unless you need more power than that.

Warlord wrote on 2022-01-14, 06:26:

the link you posted to your motherboard looks like it has video memory upgrade sockets. populate them and then you have 2mb. seems to me thats cheaper and easyer than adding a pci card, that is unless you need more power than that.

I got the chance to buy a Riva TNT from a local seller for €40 which is a good price (PCI version of this card is not even on eBay - only the TNT2 which is overkill and even that costs €150+) so I went for that - I noticed it has excellent compatibility in both DOS and Windows . I just installed it and the performance is really a LOT better in Windows - way better than either S3 or Matrox card. In DOS the improvement is minor - 10% or so - but that's still nice to have.

The only problem I have now (will be making a new topic) is that the PC won't reboot with the card. Whenever I reboot I get a black screen or "27k 62hz Frequency out of range" on the monitor. If I turn it off and on again, it works perfectly again. Odd.

I decided to try Puzzle Bobble 2x, which is the only version of the game I could find for Windows. This supposedly came out in 1998, but it looks far more likely to have been 2000 or even 2001 judging from the files on the disc and the fact that I could not find an earlier version anywhere. In any case, it's probably the version you have, the readme states the same system requirements as the ones you did.

Anyway, it's a pretty rough port to say the least. I tried it on a similar system with an MMX233, 64MB RAM, Voodoo Banshee, SB16 and Win95 and it runs like crap. It's very choppy,it's definitely not 30FPS or 20FPS, might be 16-17FPS. The audio is also in a very poor state, pretty much all of the sound effects are poorly ripped 11KHz samples. The music is in redbook audio format, but the image mounting utility I used didn't seem to want to play ball here, it sounded decent when I used an external audio player. It is a bizarre port to say the least.
What's funny is I tried the same game on Raine, albeit without audio because it couldn't recognize my sound card, it ran at 60FPS on the same system. I bet that it would run just as well with 22KHz Audio if not 44KHz.

So, this wasn't an issue with any of the videocards, it was the game itself. Just something to keep in mind for another time, always check to see how the game should be running on similar hardware, irrespective of what readme and system requirements claim.