I beg to differ. I understand that most of you are into killer games were loads of blood and body parts fly through the scenery, but..
Old and slow OAK and Realtek cards might be fine for graphic adventures.
Especially, if they are supported by the games and support 800x600 in 16c (the original Super VGA mode)..

Edit: Also worth mentioning is that old ISA VGA cards have emulation modes for older graphics standards (except Composite CGA).
So they are kinda handy for a developer's 386 PC.

A good ET4000 or Cirrus Logic GD542x card is about the fastest ISA goes in DOS.

In windows, you can get some good improvements through ISA cards with graphics accelerators (Cirrus Logic GD5426/28/29/34 or S3 801) vs dumb frame buffer cards (ET4000, Trident 8900D, Cirrus Logic GD5420/22)

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-07-05, 23:41:

Basically their is no real difference if you just play dos games even 256kb is enough for gaming

Not really. Early and/or budget VGA cards suck so much, that it's not good idea to use them even on 386.

Which has nothing to do with being 256K though. Take the AVGA01/CL-GD5401 for example It's a very fast DOS ISA card with just 256K, for example.

Take the AVGA01/CL-GD5401 for example

That's literally the only 256kb card which has good performance. Then again, performance may vary due to build quality and AVGA01 may not even boot on particular system anyway.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-07-06, 14:00:

Take the AVGA01/CL-GD5401 for example

That's literally the only 256kb card which has good performance. Then again, performance may vary due to build quality and AVGA01 may not even boot on particular system anyway.

I remember reading about a particular VGA chip (can't remember which), not yet mentioned in this thread, having an 8-bit memory bus. That can't be great for performance . There likely many designs like it .

darry wrote on 2020-07-06, 14:17:

I remember reading about a particular VGA chip (can't remember which), not yet mentioned in this thread, having an 8-bit memory bus. That can't be great for performance . There likely many designs like it .

Realtek RTG3105i has been claimed to be like that - Re: Arrived ISA 8 bit RTVGA boards

As for the AVGA1/CL-GD5401, it should be noted it's from 1991 - very late for a 256KB-only chipset.
The original VGA was from 1987, and by 1988 there was already a bunch of 512KB chipsets (eg. ET3000, TVGA8800).
AVGA1 came as a low-end product, but - taking advantage of the 1991 technology - at least it provided nice speed.