Paradise PVGA, WD WDC90C31, OAK 037c; ISA | S3 ViRGE 325+Voodoo 1; PCI (currently, may change)

I play most of my DOS games under Win98SE with a Voodoo3 3500 AGP. That card is absolutely fantastic for DOS games. It's highly compatible, and very fast. Duke Nukem 3D at 1280x1024 runs at an average of 45 fps. Screamer in SVGA runs at a perfect 60. The black levels are perfect and the picture is nice and contrasty, especially on a CRT.

The remaining few games are speed sensitive, don't sound quite right under Windows, or both. I play those games on a 486-66 with a Cirrus Logic VLB card of some sort. Seems to do the trick, though I'm not sure how well it would handle the more demanding stuff.

GeForce GTX Titan =P

My only real DOS system has a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP.

CPU speed matters as well.

SETBLASTER wrote:

im not sure why S3 videocards are so bright on DOS.

Here is some information and fixes for the brightness issue:
S3 AGP Cards (and possibly others) Too Bright

My main dos PC has Tseng ET4000/W32P 2Mb VLB
(This thread should probably be in the video section of the forum)

I use these following cards:

- Cirrus Logic CL-5420 ISA (286)
- Tseng ET4000 ISA (486dx-33)
- S3-805 VLB (486dx2-80)
- Cirrus Logic CL-5446 PCI (5x86-133)
- S3-Trio64v+ PCI (Pentium-166)
- Geforce2-GTS (Pentium3-933)

Late DOS / Windows 98 (roughly 1997-2001): Gainward Geforce 4 4200Ti 64MB AGP on a Tualatin 1.4 (was an Asus 4600Ti before) with Voodoo 2 SLI

Not-so-late DOS / early Windows 9x (roughly 1992-1996): Voodoo3 2000 PCI on a Pentium MMX 233 (this PC is rarely used)

Pure DOS (pre 1992): Cirrus Logic GD5429 2MB ISA on a 486DX2-66 (this PC is not in active use)

To say the truth, I prefer to play gog.com versions of old games on my daily/modern PC if possible, so my most used card for DOS games is GTX770 🤣.

I use:

- TSENG ET4000 ISA with 80 MHz TC DAC
- SPEA V7 Mercury Pro (ISA S3 Vision928)
- Hercules Dynamite 128/Video (PCI TSENG ET6000)
- 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP and PCI with DVI
- Matrox G200A (AGP)
- ELSA Victory Erazor (PCI Riva128)
- Innovision Mighty Banshee (PCI Voodoo Banshee)
- ELSA Gloria III (AGP Quadro2 Pro)
- ELSA Winner 2000 Pro PCI 8 (S3 Vision968 250 MHz DAC)
- Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM VLB (S3 Vision968)
- Paradise PVGA1A (ISA in XT)
- miroCRYSTAL 20SD VLB (S3 Vision864)

These are the cards I primarily use in my builds:

- Voodoo 5 5500 AGP
- Voodoo 3 3000 AGP by Powercolor
- Voodoo 3 3000 PCI by Powercolor
- Voodoo 2 PCI by STB
- Voodoo 1 PCI by Diamond Multimedia
- Matrox Millenium PCI
- Tseng ET6100 PCI
- Cirrus Logic 5428 VLB
- S3 805 VLB
- Acumos AVGA2 ISA
- Prisma EGAMAX 860 ISA

I've used S3 Virge in some of my earlier builds. Didn't have any issues with it, but now I tend to use "fancier" cards like Tseng or Matrix whenever I need a 2D card in a PCI slot — simply because I can.

The only card on this list that gives me issues is Acumos — it produces 30hz refresh rate which causes noticeable flicker on my CRT screen. It's the best ISA videocard I have (others are cheap Trident and Realtek), so I'm going to upgrade to a newer Cirrus Logic card at some point.

For primarily late dos games - Duke Nukem 3D, Dark Forces, Descent II, TR1 and etc. :

Geforce2 Ultra
Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo2 SLI

Neither is of which is ideal, causing quite a bit of cursing on some of these to get working. That's why lately GOG comes to the rescue!

I play DOS games on 2 PCs; my UMC U5S has a CL-GD5428 2MB VLB, My P133 has an S3 Trio64 2MB PCI.

Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus: Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 1MB VLB integrated (will upgrade to 2MB)
Rusty case K6/2-300: VooDoo3 3000 PCI (added a fan since those things ran hot)
Fast and Furious Socket 370 (will put the Socket 462 back in): nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 (temporary until I solder on new caps for the VooDoo2 card) & GeForce 6200 PCI (disabled for the time being) or purchase a GeForce4 Ti 4200 AGP and hook up the VooDoo2 card to the card and see what happens

I mostly test games in DOSBox before using them on my retro machines to make sure the amount of memory is efficient for those games.

286 has an Oak 037C, 512KB
386 has a Trident 8900D, 1MB
486 has a VLB ET4000/W321, 2MB
PCI 486 has an ATI Rage3D II+DVD with 4MB SGRAMs
Pentium has a PCI ATI Radeon 9250, 128MB
PIII has an AGP ATI Radeon 9600XT, 128MB
C2D has a PCI-E ATI Radeon X550, 256MB

Oh man, what day of the week?

Currently I am mostly using an STB Nitro 3D, Dell OEM, S3 Virge/GX, 4MB video card.

Have several on hand and by far my favorite DOS PCI video card.

Here's what I have in my two "DOS Gaming" setups.

Pentium 1 rig: S3 Virge 325 (Number Nine OEM) 2MB PCI graphics card - Does not suffer from brightness problems at all.
Celeron-433 rig: ATI Rage Pro Turbo integrated 8MB GPU + 3Dfx Voodoo2 8MB PCI graphics card

The brightness problem with S3 video cards depends on the card manufacturer, no-name/reference models are more likely to exhibit it than name brand cards. Neither of the two Virge cards that I have (the 2nd one is a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000) suffer from it. I know ATI isn't the best choice for DOS because a few games have problems with their cards according to Gona's chart, but that Celeron rig is mainly for newer DOS games, so the games that have problems with ATI are most likely going to be played on the Pentium 1 rig.

GTX1060

Tseng ET4000.

I have a handful but my favs are:

ISA: Cirrus Logic 542x - it can be any of these, really. I've found them compatible and fast. Trident 8900D is fine too, except it doesn't look that good on my LCD. They all have VESA 1.2 BIOS with some high/true color modes.
VLB: Dunno. Perhaps S3 805 or Ark Logic 1000VL (I have an Octek one).
PCI: Asus V3000 (Riva 128). It has excellent VESA BIOS. Compaq S3 Virge/GX: not plagued by the common S3 black problem and relatively fast. Even better VESA BIOS than the Riva cards.
AGP: Asus AGP-V3000: Plenty fast for DOS and has the same BIOS as the PCI version. Compatible with most motherboards in Fastvid terms. Any Radeon 8xxx-9xxx: Very nice VESA BIOS but mysterious Fastvid malfunction in various mobo/VGA combos. LFB often doesn't get the expected boost so their high resolution performance receives a massive hit.
PCIE: Dunno. I don't often try DOS games/demos on such modern systems.