Yeah, I see what you mean. I can at least vouch for Nvidia's Geforce FX, at least the cheapy 5200 version (I used PNY). It's got all the VESA features of the older Geforces as far as I can tell, although it doesn't seem to be able to switch to higher refresh rates above 65hz in real dos. Formerly you could use hacks like unirfrsh to do this (although this utility does not work on my Geforce 2 MX even though it supposedly should).
ANyway, the Geforce 5 (FX) card I have seems to be as compatible as the good ol' Geforce 2 MX in DOS games, and comes closer to fixing the "Trpile Buffering flicker-glitch" I've been racking my brains over. So I'm pleased with it.
There's a thread about this Triple Buffering thing in the ZSNES forum for anyone interested:
http://board.zsnes.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p … 626b10fe69dadea
Personally, I've found the real difference between Geforce cards that sets them appart for DOS gaming rigs (even the ATi cards at least up until Radeon 7000's) is their ability to show Text-on-graphics. I don't know what this mode/method is called. Most other cards I've tried (including the Voodoo Banshee recently, and several ATi cards, and every Matrox card I can find) cannot write text-mode over graphics.
Here's one utility you can use to do it:
http://www.pictview.com/showjpg.htm
If you use a utility like this, and have it exit without clearing the screen, you can have a bat file echo text over a graphic. Looks great as a custom bootup screen. However, I've only seen it work properly with TNT/Geforce cards and the strange onboard graphics chips of my P2 HP laptop (called "magicview" or something). If anybody knows how to hack this with other cards, I'd love to know.
Another drawback is Geforce cards don't seem to work with UNIVBE. Anyone know differently?
So the Geforces (from 5 back) seems to work great for me, but I haven't tested all modes yet since it's only been in here for a couple days. It's good to know that the 6's and beyond don't (although this totally sucks), since this rules it out as an upgrade.
**Don't forget to enjoy the sauce**