Yes, I would say so. Iirc the last cards from nvidia to have flawless vesa support out of the box were Geforce 3 series.

That being said there is probably a workaround that hopefully someone else here can point you to. I've dealt with this to some extent on older PCI cards, usually there is some sort of card specific VESA or VBE fix available in the form of an exe that runs at boot time, or something like uniVBE may be what you need (can't confirm as I haven't ever needed to use it personally)

GeForce 2 and 4 MX were very flashing friendly!
You could exchange an Mac/PC firmware (often on socketed 28pin EPROMs),
as long as the stored GPU and memory timings were within tolerances of the target card..
Otherwise, the firmware file had to be edited by utilities beforehand.

The GeForce 3 was a very advanced card, going beyond what Direct3D 8 was featuring at the time.
Basically between Direct3D 8 and 9, in terms of shaders.
It was quite beloved on Macintosh platform, too.

Getting a PC GeForce 3 properly flashed for Mac was tricky, though.
Because PC models didn't have big enough flash ROM chips or had low specs etc. Can't remember.

OK thank you foe answer. I understand I can try it with a GF2 MX card? Should it be ok?

What about ATI cards? Which cards don't have VESA issues? I think I remember the brand new Radon 9200?

junak wrote on 2025-10-31, 19:04:

OK thank you foe answer. I understand I can try it with a GF2 MX card? Should it be ok?

What about ATI cards? Which cards don't have VESA issues? I think I remember the brand new Radon 9200?

Rage Pro and Rage128 Pro would be safer bet for Vesa. They are supported by ATi dos vbe tools, but i like Radeon 7500/8500/9600XT as well for AGP.

junak wrote on 2025-10-31, 19:04:

OK thank you foe answer. I understand I can try it with a GF2 MX card? Should it be ok?

What about ATI cards? Which cards don't have VESA issues? I think I remember the brand new Radon 9200?

7th Legion being a Windows game, I don't know why VESA would matter here.
Only VESA related change in later Geforce 4 MX cards is the locking of refresh rates in DOS VESA, but again this does not affect Windows video driver functionality.
The game is also on GOG. So I wonder if they use a wrapper or if it just runs on newer Windows and Hardware as-is...

Problem in the screenshots could also be a refresh rate mismatch with a picky monitor.

gerwin wrote on 2025-10-31, 21:29:

Problem in the screenshots could also be a refresh rate mismatch with a picky monitor.

This is not a problem refresh rate mismatch with a picky monitor, because the same monitor displays the image correctly on another computer. I installed riva tuner and changed the monitor refresh rate and it didn't help. I also updated the drivers to newer ones, but nothing changed.

junak wrote on 2025-11-01, 18:31:

This is not a problem refresh rate mismatch with a picky monitor, because the same monitor displays the image correctly on another computer. I installed riva tuner and changed the monitor refresh rate and it didn't help. I also updated the drivers to newer ones, but nothing changed.

Got it. I was just guessing....

So this time I actually looked it up. This video shows the issue in your screenshot:.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAF5sSsxnZk

How to fix graphic problems in 7th Legion - YouTube
This video shows first what normaly happen with newer video cards when you try to play 7th Legion.

Alternative solution:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/327910/discuss … 569608582311051

The mentioned tools may require a more recent Windows version though. Not sure...

OK, I tried the first video with DDRAW.dll on 5 graphics cards, GF 2 MX and GF 4 MX, but it doesn't work on any of them. I installed the latest 81.98 drivers, nothing. This game simply doesn't work on GF 2 or 4 MX.

Better start 86 BOX hehe.

The strange thing is that it works great on Radeon 9250 😉