Best & favorite pre-3D graphics chip lineup?

[Keatah]

With mid-1990's DOS computers making for great retro projects, what 2D video chip would you like to have in your (hypothetical or real) rig? Or what was your favorite?

 

Back in the day I never had much of a preference till I got a handle on what was all available. Matrox, S3, Cirrus Logic, ATI, TSENG Labs, and more - were some of the well known names.

 

So what was your favorite 2D chip of the day?

 

Back in the day I may have wanted an ATI chip, but it was always $50 or $100 too expensive, so no go there. And anything "Matrox" was uber-elite to me. Double no-go.

 

When setting up my 486 in 1993 I had to "downgrade" to a budget Cirrus Logic 5422, though I didn't understand these things at the time. Today however, I find it to be competent and compatible, stable and no nonsense. Back then it worked well enough in Windows 3.1, and played Doom sufficiently. It. Just. Worked.

 

In these last years I was surprised to find it was the most popular OEM on-board chip of its time. And I also loved the brochures they published. Nice foldout full-size pamphlets or folders.

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

I'm using an S3 Virge DX... kind of cheating since it's a 3D card... but that's what I'm using in my DOS PC...

 

Used to be using an ATI Mach64 PCI on my previous DOS PC but when I got my current tower it had the Virge DX in it... from what I have read, it's better than the Mach 64 so I left it in.

Edited April 5, 2020 by DragonGrafx-16

[wierd_w]

S3 had the Virge yes, but before that, they had the Trio64, which was straight up 2D, and was the same graphics hardware for 2D blitting as the virge.

 

I was a poor kid at the time, so I had to struggle with Trident based PCI VGA controllers, which were much cheaper.

[Keatah]

I believe there was a short period of time when the Virge's 3D rendering was slower than the faster processors (of the same timeframe). Giving rise to the moniker, 3D-Decelerator.

 

Another thing, though Microsoft's FlightSimulator had 3D graphics, they were fairly simplistic in versions 4 and earlier. If there was a 3D card at FS's inception it wouldn't have made any difference. The display was just a few polygons and lines. Focus was on flight model accuracy and such. And I understood the wireframe models used here.

 

But when Doom came out I could've sworn a standard 2D graphics chip had its internals rewired as a 3D chip. It was genuine advanced magic because it was beyond my pitiful understanding how it was done.

 

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

39 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I believe there was a short period of time when the Virge's 3D rendering was slower than the faster processors (of the same timeframe). Giving rise to the moniker, 3D-Decelerator.

 

Another thing, though Microsoft's FlightSimulator had 3D graphics, they were fairly simplistic in versions 4 and earlier. If there was a 3D card at FS's inception it wouldn't have made any difference. The display was just a few polygons and lines. Focus was on flight model accuracy and such. And I understood the wireframe models used here.

 

But when Doom came out I could've sworn a standard 2D graphics chip had its internals rewired as a 3D chip. It was genuine advanced magic because it was beyond my pitiful understanding how it was done.

 

 

The Virge DX that I have is only 30Mhz slower than my CPU... but it doesn't really matter as I play mostly 2D games anyway (and as you've hinted at Doom counts as a 2D game).