Normally, S3 chips have decent analog video quality, but it probably is fuzzy compared to a Matrox. They were King.

My Millennium G200 starts getting fuzzy at around 1152x864x85Hz. My Mystique 220 isn't so hot either. Matrox was overrated my friend.

Note that I do have all of their boards up to G400 Max. I can't tell the difference in 2D speed / quality between a good TNT2 or a Voodoo3. And the 3D of the other cards is more likely to work properly (particularly the Voodoo3).

Sounds like maybe the brightness/gamma/contrast need to be adjusted. While testing many older cards I've noticed that some are just "brighter" then the norm.

It looks a little better with some monitor adjustment, I guess it wasn't an issue in the CRT days.
I just remember reading that S3 cards were better in DOS but maybe it won't matter in the end.

I do know that the G200 has the keen scrolling problem though.

swaaye wrote:

I can't tell the difference in 2D speed / quality between a good TNT2 or a Voodoo3. And the 3D of the other cards is more likely to work properly (particularly the Voodoo3).

Matrox and 3Dfx (Banshee or better) had noticeably better 2D quality than the competition. ATI was next, S3 was decent and NVidia was the worst. This has been echoed many times during those years and this fact is easily searched on the Internet. If you can't tell the difference, something else is wrong.

Ah, I though it may be something wrong with the card.
I guess I'm just spoiled by now. 😁

valnar wrote:

Matrox and 3Dfx (Banshee or better) had noticeably better 2D quality than the competition. ATI was next, S3 was decent and NVidia was the worst. This has been echoed many times during those years and this fact is easily searched on the Internet. If you can't tell the difference, something else is wrong.

Yeah I was there too, and now I have just about all of the cards.

NVIDIA cards vary wildly. Some are terrible, others are excellent. I've seen both sides. They had quality control problems with their card manufacturers.

Oooohhhh the plot thickens!
The Win98 startup screen often has corrupt colours. And by often I mean twice since that's only how many times I've booted since.

That could be dieing video RAM.

Or bad contacts in case some of the RAMs are socketed. Or a dirty PCI connector.
Have you tried turning contrast/brightness down a bit on your monitor?