The Matrox has excellent image quality and most DOS games should work fine. Also great driver support with everything still on their website.

+1 for Matrox.

I would take a completely different approach and advise using the ViRGE board. The OP says he will run MS-DOS primarily. If he were running Windows primarily, I would probably agree with the Matrox.

For me, the key issue is compatibility first, then speed and image quality. The ViRGE runs just about any game fine. The Matrox has serious compatibility issues with many good games, including Commander Keen 4-6, Jazz Jackrabbit, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D (and probably any game built on those engines). The TSENG would be a better choice than the Matrox, even if it does have compatibility issues with Keen and JJ.

I have an Matrox Ultima 4MB and its dos performance is worse than using a sound card as an VGA adapter 😀
I would definitely be playing some games, and i can always swap the video card if i play Jazz Jackrabbit and Commander Keen.
I want to use Vectra for MIDI as well, thats why i want to run Windows for some things.

Would an Tseng Labs ET6000 with full RAM be a better choice in that bunch?

I use a S3 Virge 2mb in my NT4 system (dual ppro) and it works good, the image quality at 1024*768 16-bit is "good enough".

+1 for the Virge. Really good for DOS games, plus decent quality for Windows. The Matrox wouldn't be a bad choice either; as a matter of fact, I'd argue that it's actually better in Windows than the Virge. DOS games should be fine on the Matrox.

-1 on Matrox, it's a keen jerker.

If I were curious about this batch I'd head straight for the Rage II because of the 2d core and DirectX performance

+1 S3 for reliability and compatibility though, both of them

-1 on Voodoo Rush 😵

I would take the rush. No game pc without glide 🤣

+1 for the ViRGE
I run mine in DOS, 95, 98 and 2000 and it works well up to 1024x768. It is slightly blurry at 1280x1024
It also has good 2d acceleration and even supports texture filtering in some 3d

I also have a Matrox Mystique. It isn't a bad card, but the acceleration is less complete.
It beats the Virge at 1280x1024 for IQ but I don't notice it much at 1024x768

What ever you decide to use don't bother with the Voodoo Rush in non Glide games as the 2D chip sucks that much and that same chip runs Hot compared to the others. Still hunting for a Riva 128 pci >.>

Stojke wrote:

I have an Matrox Ultima 4MB and its dos performance is worse than using a sound card as an VGA adapter 😀

Matrox Ultima is indeed slow in DOS, later cards starting from Mystique and Millennium are really fast.

smeezekitty wrote:

+1 for the ViRGE
I run mine in DOS, 95, 98 and 2000 and it works well up to 1024x768. It is slightly blurry at 1280x1024

That's nice i have 2 Virge's s dx which is blurry even at 800x600 and a gx who's not blurry,but when i increase refresh i get some weird scan lines on screen,my s3 trio 64v+ has better quality then both virge's.

What is so special about Riva 128 PCI?

I have decided to try out different cards and test. I think i can find an Matrox Millenium II.

Matrox if you'll be playing SVGA games, the S3 if it's more of VGA games machine. The ET6000 chipset is fast but I've had trouble with Dune2 from memory, so I suspect it's not as copatible as an S3 for example.

S3 is the way to go for DOS. 😀