Matrox Mystique / Millenium is a beast quality wise with good driver support.
As already stated, beware of the missing low res VESA modes and maybe get a Mystique220 if you're into high res "window"ing.

I find compatibility issues with regards to Matrox cards in DOS to be incredible overstated. I have absolutely no nostalgia for crappy DOS platformers like Keen so I would take the IQ of a Matrox Mystique or ATI 3D Rage Pro over the vaseline filter and poor black levels most Virge cards have. Even the best of them have annoyingly soft image output in my experience.

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan on matrox! And the mystique onboard is set for my retro-mmx.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-08-31, 10:06:

I find compatibility issues with regards to Matrox cards in DOS to be incredible overstated.

I agree with this statement. Compatibility issues is blown out of proportion and those games that normally have issues is with earlier 1990-1993 games. If you have a Millennium card in your computer chances are its more suited for later DOS/Win9x games anyway and for that scenario the Matrix is excellent. I personally have both a 386 and 486 to handle those earlier games.

...and they are played best on 286/386 with ega-cards!

A lot of compatibility problems are tied to tearing in VESA modes which are fixable.

so I would take the IQ of a Matrox Mystique or ATI 3D Rage Pro over the vaseline filter and poor black levels most Virge cards have

I think it's not correct to compare high quality first party OEM and retail cards with some third party "noname" chinese S3 card almost literally made in a basement. High quality S3 cards like ASUS, Compaq, DIamond, ELSA have analog good signal quality. Not to mention professional S3 cards like Vision 968 or Virge VX.

red-ray wrote on 2020-08-31, 09:38:

dr.zeissler wrote on 2020-08-31, 08:30:

elianda wrote on 2015-09-01, 22:39:

What is much more important for DOS is that the Virge has support for low-res VESA modes as well as 15 bit modes (but not 24 bit).
The Matrox just support 8/16/32 bit starting at 640x480.

That is an interesting information! Is that why my onboard-mystique does not work in many demos with special 15/24 bit resolutions, even if I have loaded SDD with VESA3.0 support?

I thought that the Mystique supported low res modes and 24-bit colour so I checked and they do, but low res is only @ 85Hz. The system is running 2003 Server.

Interesting here is the VESA mode table of one of my Mystiques:

Super VGA BIOS extension version 2.00 is installed
OEM string is 'Matrox Graphics Inc.'
Device capabilities are 1

Mode Attr Window WindowA WindowB Mapping Bytes Resolution Char BPP Banks Type
Grn Siz Seg att Seg att Function /line Cell Planes

0100 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 640 640x400 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0101 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 640 640x480 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0102 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 100 800x600 8x14 4 4 1 EGA
0103 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 800 800x600 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0105 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 1024 1024x768 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0107 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 1280 1280x1024 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0108 I CT 32 32 B800 RW C000:7AC6 80 80x60 8x8 4 4 1 Text
0109 I CT 32 32 B800 RW C000:7AC6 132 132x25 8x16 4 4 1 Text
010B I CT 32 32 B800 RW C000:7AC6 132 132x50 8x8 4 4 1 Text
010C I CT 32 32 B800 RW C000:7AC6 132 132x60 8x8 4 4 1 Text
0110 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 1280 640x480 8x1616 1 1 06
0111 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 1280 640x480 8x1616 1 1 06
0112 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 2560 640x480 8x1632 1 1 06
0113 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 1600 800x600 8x1616 1 1 06
0114 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 1600 800x600 8x1616 1 1 06
0115 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 3200 800x600 8x1632 1 1 06
0116 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 2048 1024x768 8x1616 1 1 06
0117 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 2048 1024x768 8x1616 1 1 06
011C I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 1600 1600x1200 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0118 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 4096 1024x768 8x1632 1 1 06
0119 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 2560 1280x1024 8x1616 1 1 06
011A I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 2560 1280x1024 8x1616 1 1 06
011D I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 3200 1600x1200 8x1616 1 1 06
011E I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:7AC6 3200 1600x1200 8x1616 1 1 06

And this from a Matrox Millenium:
Super VGA BIOS extension version 2.00 is installed
OEM string is 'Matrox Graphics Inc.'
Device capabilities are 1

Mode Attr Window WindowA WindowB Mapping Bytes Resolution Char BPP Banks Type
Grn Siz Seg att Seg att Function /line Cell Planes

0100 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 640 640x400 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0101 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 640 640x480 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0102 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 100 800x600 8x14 4 4 1 EGA
0103 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 1024 800x600 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0105 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 1024 1024x768 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0107 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 1280 1280x1024 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0108 I CT 32 32 B800 RW C000:79A8 80 80x60 8x8 4 4 1 Text
0109 I CT 32 32 B800 RW C000:79A8 132 132x25 8x16 4 4 1 Text
010B I CT 32 32 B800 RW C000:79A8 132 132x50 8x8 4 4 1 Text
010C I CT 32 32 B800 RW C000:79A8 132 132x60 8x8 4 4 1 Text
0110 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 1280 640x480 8x1616 1 1 06
0111 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 1280 640x480 8x1616 1 1 06
0112 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 2560 640x480 8x1632 1 1 06
0113 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 1920 800x600 8x1616 1 1 06
0114 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 1920 800x600 8x1616 1 1 06
0115 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 3200 800x600 8x1632 1 1 06
0116 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 2048 1024x768 8x1616 1 1 06
0117 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 2048 1024x768 8x1616 1 1 06
011C I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 1664 1600x1200 8x16 8 1 1 VGA
0118 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 4096 1024x768 8x1632 1 1 06
0119 I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 2560 1280x1024 8x1616 1 1 06
011A I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 2560 1280x1024 8x1616 1 1 06
011D I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 3200 1600x1200 8x1616 1 1 06
011E I CG 64 64 A000 RW C000:79A8 3200 1600x1200 8x1616 1 1 06

So it is basically identical.

It might however be that the windows driver offers more modes.
I have not checked if one gets more modes (aka a different VESA BIOS) in a DOS window of Win9x.
I have seen this with the DSystems Papilio UltraCAD, that have no VESA ROM BIOS, but in Win9x there is a VESA 3.0 BIOS provided in the DOS window.

The MGA100 on my later D1026 (D1025 is with onboard mystique) seems to have a special VESA driver that offers lot's of resolutions and colordepths. I have to unload the Gx00VBE for my MGA100 befor starting Win3x, in Win9x there is no problem if Gx00VBE is loaded before start via autoexec.bat.

Gx00VBE is a VESA VBE/Core V3.0 (otherwise known as VESA 3) implementation for the G100, G200 and G400 based cards by Matrox. Gx00VBE is a TSR, meaning that it won't flash your BIOS, only stay resident until the next reboot. It takes up just over 7k of basemem. I recommend you load it high manually since it doesn't do it by itself. It works with both PCI and AGP boards. Development has ceased. The latest 1.0b4 seems to work fine though.