PowerVR Kyro II didn't have bad dos support, it was certainly better for that than ATI and Nvidia at the time (2001)

Your S3 Virge GX is already one of the most compatible cards for DOS/VESA modes. The VESA BIOS on this one is not perfect, but better than many other video cards.
There is a VESA TSR specifically for S3 cards, called S3VBE (search for "S3VBE20.ZIP"). It adds more VESA modes than UniVBE and only needs 4 kilobytes when loaded (so it easily fits into UMB).

The 2D core on the Voodoo series cards (Banshee, V3-V5) is also quite good (and very fast), but the VESA BIOS lacks support for 15bpp modes. AFAIK there is no fix available. Fortunately the 15bpp modes are rarely used in DOS games.

Your S3 Virge GX is already one of the most compatible cards for DOS/VESA modes. The VESA BIOS on this one is not perfect, but better than many other video cards.
There is a VESA TSR specifically for S3 cards, called S3VBE (search for "S3VBE20.ZIP"). It adds more VESA modes than UniVBE and only needs 4 kilobytes when loaded (so it easily fits into UMB).

The 2D core on the Voodoo series cards (Banshee, V3-V5) is also quite good (and very fast), but the VESA BIOS lacks support for 15bpp modes. AFAIK there is no fix available. Fortunately the 15bpp modes are rarely used in DOS games.

Is there anything better than the S3 and 3dfx cards? You have to combine compatibility with reasonable speed. I only know of one game that uses a 15bpp mode, TES: Battlespire, and there is a patch to allow it a 16bpp mode. So the support for the 15bpp mode is guarding against the unknown. How do the nVidia RIVA and early Geforce compare in both areas to the S3 and 3dfx cards?

Great Hierophant wrote:

Your S3 Virge GX is already one of the most compatible cards for DOS/VESA modes. The VESA BIOS on this one is not perfect, but better than many other video cards.
There is a VESA TSR specifically for S3 cards, called S3VBE (search for "S3VBE20.ZIP"). It adds more VESA modes than UniVBE and only needs 4 kilobytes when loaded (so it easily fits into UMB).

The 2D core on the Voodoo series cards (Banshee, V3-V5) is also quite good (and very fast), but the VESA BIOS lacks support for 15bpp modes. AFAIK there is no fix available. Fortunately the 15bpp modes are rarely used in DOS games.

Is there anything better than the S3 and 3dfx cards? You have to combine compatibility with reasonable speed. I only know of one game that uses a 15bpp mode, TES: Battlespire, and there is a patch to allow it a 16bpp mode. So the support for the 15bpp mode is guarding against the unknown. How do the nVidia RIVA and early Geforce compare in both areas to the S3 and 3dfx cards?

That would be interesting to know, would like to get my hands on a Geforce 256 😁

Make sure it's not an Asus VIVO

I once tested a GeForce 2 MX (Asus V7100) for VESA speed and compatibility:
Turned out to be very similar to the Voodoo cards: no 15bpp modes, almost same performance (slightly faster than V5).

GeForce 2 MX cards are generally a good choice for retro PCs: They are cheap, easy to obtain, available in AGP and PCI versions, often have dual VGA connectors (very cool for bypassing blurry Voodoo 1/2 cards), and they only need 4 Watts of power. I don't know any other card as versatile as these. They are like ET4000 all over again. 🤣

The 15bpp issue is really unimportant for games.
However, if you like to watch scene demos, it can be quite annoying. Many early works experimenting with high-color presentation use 15bpp modes (popular on Tseng cards). Sometimes demos use 8bpp monochrome or dithering if no 15bpp mode is available, but often enough it just doesn't work at all.

Do these Tseng cards come as PCI versions?

Yes, they do, but when Tseng converted their highly reputed ET4000 cards to the PCI bus, they seriously dropped the ball.

ET4000 W32i PCI cards up to revision D are very buggy, revision D should be okay, but is rather hard to find, because there is no easy way to determine the revision just by looking at the chipset.

The newer ET6000/ET6100 series cards got rid of the PCI problems, are very fast and have a decent VESA 2.0 BIOS - but are ridden by a ModeX bug which scrambles the picture in many games.

There is more info about these cards on the second page of this thread.

5u3 wrote:

GeForce 2 MX cards are generally a good choice for retro PCs: They are cheap, easy to obtain, available in AGP and PCI versions, often have dual VGA connectors (very cool for bypassing blurry Voodoo 1/2 cards), and they only need 4 Watts of power.

Could you explain how the VGA connectors bypass the blurry Voodoo cards? I don't quite understand how that is supposed to work without a KVM switch. The dual VGA connectors are output connectors. When the Voodoo cards are called, they output through one of their VGA connectors. When the Geforce is called, it outputs through one of its VGA connectors, I don't see how the second Geforce VGA connector helps here.

Great Hierophant wrote:

Could you explain how the VGA connectors bypass the blurry Voodoo cards? I don't quite understand how that is supposed to work without a KVM switch.

I should've added "with the help of a KVM switch" then. 😉

A monitor with dual inputs would make this even simpler, especially if you have one that can switch between the inputs by only pressing one button.