386 & isa 486 - Tseng et4000ax
pre386 - Tseng 3000
pci - anything matrox

luckybob wrote:

386 & isa 486 - Tseng et4000ax
pre386 - Tseng 3000
pci - anything matrox

Thanks for the info, are there any specific Matrox models that are 2d only. Everything I can find on matrox is a 2d/3d card

once you are into the realm of pci, the vast majority of cards are going to have some sort of 3d. that said, the matrox G200 and voodoo 2's go together like chocolate and peanut butter. plus they are cheap and plentiful.

I wouldn't go older than G200. The older cards can be troublesome.

I would probably recommend NVIDIA or S3 over Matrox though.
http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

I think your premise is somewhat extreme but certainly not impossible to fulfil.
Matrox cards indeed all have at least some rudimentary 3D, even Impression (which wouldn't be a good choice anyway).
S3 Trio is fine, image quality in high resolutions/refresh rates may be blurry. There is an issue with S3 968/868 cards and Voodoo, but that can be fixed easily.
ET6000 is certainly not very common, but not bad. Videologic Apocalypse 5D uses this for 2D so it should be a good fit for PowerVR (but so would be lots of other cards).
Ati Mach64 - certainly not bad, maybe worse compatibility with older DOS games than S3.

http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/history-tree might be interesting for you. I'd probably look at C&T, Cirrus Logic and Trident.
I suppose for 1992-1995 you don't have to worry about 3D. From 1998 on it's quite impossible to get a card without some 3D features.

The original Matrox Millennium doesn't have 3D, that's what the "Impression" add-on card is for. So if you wanna run a 2D-only Matrox card then it shouldn't be hard to find a "classic" Millennium.

I never had issues with my Cirrus 5446 when it worked (it died a few years ago and was recycled); the link swaaye provided seems to indicate that it (along with other Cirrus siblings) has decent compatibility as well. Can't comment on 2D quality versus Matrox or whatever, but it never looked noticeably "bad" to me.

LunarG wrote:

The original Matrox Millennium doesn't have 3D, that's what the "Impression" add-on card is for. So if you wanna run a 2D-only Matrox card then it shouldn't be hard to find a "classic" Millennium.

Now I'm confused. The English Wikipedia page on Matrox is the only source I can find that agrees with that. Every other source agrees with what I thought I knew, even the English Wikipedia page on Matrox Mystique.

• Impression was introduced in 1994. It was available as ISA, VLB and PCI. (IIRC vetz posted that he owns the ISA and PCI variants.) It has some 3D features, Gouraud shading, but no texture mapping. Fast card for Windows, very slow in DOS.
• Millennium was introduced in 1995. PCI only. Similar 3D features to Impression. Fast in Windows and DOS.
• Millennium II was introduced in 1997. PCI and AGP. Similar 3D features to Mystique (including texture mapping). Still fast.

I'm happy to be proved wrong, but do you have any other source that confirms your statement?

To get on-topic again: Matrox Ultima was another card that doesn't have any 3D features, just 2D. Unfortunately it is slow in DOS like the Impression.
Depending on how strict the OP is defining 3D one might consider the Millennium 3D only, and it would be an excellent card to use with 3dfx or PowerVR. But IMO the premise is somewhat arbitrary anyway.

Oh, I almost forgot. I'm currently building a late-486 machine. For a 2d card, the fastest available is an ARC 2000MT with upgraded ram. Now this is sheer memory throughput and 2d only. As for compatibility, I will see once I get the system u and going. the 2nd fastest i've found is actually a Diamond Monster Fusion, which is actually just a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee, so it will have some 3d as well as 2d.

idspispopd wrote:

Now I'm confused. The English Wikipedia page on Matrox is the only source I can find that agrees with that. Every other source a […]
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LunarG wrote:

The original Matrox Millennium doesn't have 3D, that's what the "Impression" add-on card is for. So if you wanna run a 2D-only Matrox card then it shouldn't be hard to find a "classic" Millennium.

Now I'm confused. The English Wikipedia page on Matrox is the only source I can find that agrees with that. Every other source agrees with what I thought I knew, even the English Wikipedia page on Matrox Mystique.

• Impression was introduced in 1994. It was available as ISA, VLB and PCI. (IIRC vetz posted that he owns the ISA and PCI variants.) It has some 3D features, Gouraud shading, but no texture mapping. Fast card for Windows, very slow in DOS.
• Millennium was introduced in 1995. PCI only. Similar 3D features to Impression. Fast in Windows and DOS.
• Millennium II was introduced in 1997. PCI and AGP. Similar 3D features to Mystique (including texture mapping). Still fast.

I'm happy to be proved wrong, but do you have any other source that confirms your statement?

To get on-topic again: Matrox Ultima was another card that doesn't have any 3D features, just 2D. Unfortunately it is slow in DOS like the Impression.
Depending on how strict the OP is defining 3D one might consider the Millennium 3D only, and it would be an excellent card to use with 3dfx or PowerVR. But IMO the premise is somewhat arbitrary anyway.

He just mistaken Impression for Mystique i think. Mystique was 1st matrox with texture mapping. Impression had only Gourard shading same as Millennium.

I never owned a Matrox card, but I recall reading that the original Millenium also had horrendous DOS performance, but it was fixed with the Millenium II and Mystique.

For ISA I recommend:
-S3 805i, 864 or 868 (if you can find them)
-Tseng ET4000W32i (graphics acceleration and interleaving)
-ATi Mach64 (Mach32 is also not bad)
-Cirrus Logic CL GD5434
It is said WDC is also not bad, but I never owned one. the WDC cards might be a little outdated compared to the ones on my list. All the above cards should be equipped with 2MB memory for optimal performance due to interleaving or 64-bit data path

For VLB I recommend:
-S3 anything with 2MB, though the 928 is probably a little dated
-ARKLogic Ark1000VL/PV
-Tseng ET4000W32p

For PCI I recommend:
-S3 anything prior to the Savage cards (I like the Virge GX myself)
-ARK Logic 2000PV/MT
-3dfx Voodoo3 or Banshee (Avoid the rush)
-Nvidia TNT or TNT2 (non M64/Vanta). But this one apparently doesn't work properly with Windows 3.1
-Tseng Anything. But avoid ET4000W32P prior to rev d.

There are probably many other PCI cards that would do the job. You have a lot more choices with PCI. I just listed the ones I personally have experience with.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I never owned a Matrox card, but I recall reading that the original Millenium also had horrendous DOS performance, but it was fixed with the Millenium II and Mystique.

The original Millennium had extremely good DOS performance when it came out. The gaming magazines were all very excited about the card. You are mixing it up with the Impression and Ultima cards.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

For VLB I recommend:
-S3 anything with 2MB, though the 928 is probably a little dated

The S3 Vision series (864,868,964,968) are the best of the S3 VLB cards. They have the equal DOS performance to the W32P (see my and Artex benches), cost less, easier to acquire and have better Windows performance than the W32p.