retro games wrote:
To Set up a rig to play DOS games circa 91-97, DOS and Windows 3dfx games, and I have a number of LCD displays available for a multiple monitor scenario.
Mhmm... that's an important point, as LCDs generally interpolate the image which will nearly allways result in a quality loss. One reason is interpolation itself, the other the way interpoltation / expansion is done. Did you allready play some games on those LCDs?
I suppose 5u3 can tell you a lot about that, but perhaps my personal experience is of some use:
I have a Samsung 203b LCD that has an aspect ratio of 4:3 natively (1400x1050) which is also the "natural" aspect ratio of most dos vga games I suppose (there was a very vivid discussion about this topic here: True aspect ratio of VGA mode 13h (320x200)? ).
Still the display interpolates the (dos) image and - like most others - expands it over the whole screen, but the aspect ratio is allright and the image not compressed or streched (as with 19" or widescreen monitors).
Some people don't bother about that, so it might not be a problem for you at all. There are also highend LCDs where you can choose the way interpoltation is done in hardware (i.E. NEC LCD1990sxi).
The 203b turns out to do interpolation quite well (in my eyes) but I discovered that the graphics card is more important even with dos games than it was with my old CRT. So here's what I found out (out of my memory):
Current machine (Athlon64):
- Nvidia based PCIex card / DVI output:
Sharp, very good image in native resolution, good to very good interpolation / signal quality at every resolution that has 4:3 aspet ratio. The nvidia drivers let you choose the way interpolation is done (in windows / using the digital signal), the Ati ones don't. I didn't test the card in pure DOS, but it does a very good job in dosbox.
- Ati Radeon 9600 Pro AGP / Analog output:
Very good image quality in native resolution, good to very good signal quality. Driver does not allow to choose the way interpolation is done. Didn't test the card in pure DOS, only in dosbox.
Retro machine 1 (Socket 370, with VoodooSLI)
- Ati Radeon 7000 AGP / Analog / Digital output:
Good to very good image / signal quality. Yet it has the vesa issues you mentioned and I got several problems in dos, i.e. with WCIII, but also with standard vga modes so I do not use it, and didn't install it under win98.
- Diamond Viper II Ultra (TNT2 Ultra) AGP Analog:
Good to very good image / signal quality. Good dos and vesa support, but for an unknown reason this card forced my rig to crash constantly in Win98, and so I didn't use it either.
- Diamond Stealth III S540 ( S3 Savage4 pro) AGP Analog
Good to very good signal quality. But the image wasn't as good as with the TNT2, especially when I installed the Voodoo2 SLI. Very good dos and vesa support, the card still seems to have the "old S3 dos-core" that made former S3 models so compatible.
- Matrox Millenium G200 AGP Analog:
Good signal / image quality. Good dos & vesa support, but relatively slow in D3D. Don't know if it is able to display the 1400x1050 resolution properly.
- Voodoo5 5500 AGP Analog
Sharp image, very good signal, good to very good interpolation at every resolution that has 4:3 aspect ratio. Playing early Windows games with 4x AA is simply marvelous. Good dos and vesa support. Makes the Voodoo SLI obsolete. The downside is that I could not play my favorite dos based 3dfx game (Archimedean Dynasty) with it, so I put it aside for the time being
- Matrox G450 AGP Analog / Digital
This is an OEM low profile card that has the Matrox dual-head function, but only one DVI output, that could also be used as an analog one by the allready mentioned adapter. This card delivers the best image and signal quality with my retro machine, even with the Voodoo SLI installed. It is also the only card whose Matrox drivers came with a tool that allows me to use the native resolution of my LCD, the uncommon 1400x1050, right from the start without driver tweaking, registry hack or special shareware programs. Not the fastest card for D3D (OpenGL?) Good dos and vesa support, no problems so far.
Generally it seems to me that a Voodoo add-on card affects the image quality of the LCD display more than it did on my CRT. So I sometimes saw interferences, especially when using a Voodoo1 (maybe this has something to do with the RAMDAC?)
Only the G450 (apart of the V5 of course) had no problems with it.
I also have to mention that I use a KVM switch.
I also tested a few PCI cards, but only with standard vga modes, here's a brief summary:
- Matrox Millenium II / Mystique
Good image quality, nearly ahead with the newer AGP models. Should have good dos support, might need some software fix for Vesa 2.0
- NoName S3 Virge DX:
Is supposed to have good dos and vesa compability, but has only mediocre image / signal quality with the LCD display. Sometime the image shows interferences.
- Hercules S3 Virge DX
Slightly better than the above, but still not good
And finally - planning to build a third machine that has only ISA slots - I tested the LCD with some really old ISA VGA cards (dos only):
- Western Digital based SPEA V7 EGA/VGA card:
Surprisingly good image, but only 256k video memory, so it has no SVGA support I guess.
-Tseng Labs ET4000ax
Very common chipset for ISA cards. Tseng had or has also a good reputation among retro gamers, I suppose because of its compability. Nevertheless I tested two different models with this chipset, and the image quality was poor.
- Diamond Speedstar Pro 1MB (!)
Surprisingly good signal quality, even in SVGA. This is a CL GD5426 based card, which is not supposed to be the fastest, but creates the best
image of an ISA card on my LCD so far...