          Document:  PCI Video Cards for OS/2 list
        Maintainer:  Patrick Duffy, duffy@theory.chem.ubc.ca
Last Revision Date:  May 29, 1995
       Archived at:  ftp.netcom.com, in directory /pub/ab/abe/
         Web pages:  http://warp.eecs.berkeley.edu/os2/workbench/work.htm

This is the PCI video card for OS/2 list. Remember that I depend very
heavily on your input, and of course feel free to correct any continuing
misconceptions I might have, or to insist that I should recommend a card
I don't, or to add a new card/piece of information to what's here
already. Your contributions and/or corrections are always welcome and
certainly appreciated.

General comments:

For any video card (and any operating system, really) it's potentially
to your advantage to pick a card which is either supported directly or
is backwards compatible with some standard supported directly by the
operating system vendor.  That way, if a new release of the operating
system in question breaks the drivers you have, you'll either be
guaranteed new drivers with the operating system, or at least have a
"fall-back" point, where you'll have higher resolution than VGA, though
likely not with all the accelerated features of the card.

For OS/2 2.1/2.11, you'll want standards supported by IBM.  There are no
PCI XGA cards (something for which I would give my eye teeth), so your
best bet is a PCI S3 801/805/928-based card which works with the IBM
drivers. These seem to be relatively few in number in North America
(though fairly common in Europe), so if you can't find one listed here,
a safe bet is the ATI Graphics Ultra Pro listed below, especially since
it is used (with the latest ATI drivers) in several OS/2-certified
systems. It has the added advantage of being 8514 compatible, which
means that you'll have higher-than-VGA-resolution drivers for it, even
if they don't support all available modes of the card, if a new release
of OS/2 breaks ATI's drivers.  Also a good bet would be any video card
which uses the ET4000-W32[i,p] chip, since the ET4000 (not -W32[i,p])
chip is supported by OS/2 out of the box, and the new W32[i,p] chips are
supposed to be backwards compatible with it.

For OS/2 Warp, driver support seems to be much better.  Support (either
by IBM or coerced by IBM) for almost all major video chipset types is
built in, so when picking your card a good criterion to search by is
driver maturity, followed next by speed.  Fast cards are all well and
good, after all, but mediocre drivers can take away all the advantages
they potentially offer.  I'll try (as best I can) to offer up opinions
where that's concerned.  Please feel free to contribute.

Useful Numbers:
---------------
ATI:             (905) 882-2600 (sales)
                 (905) 882-2620 (sales -- FAX)
                 (905) 882-2626 (tech. support)
                 (905) 882-0546 (tech. support -- FAX)
                 (905) 764-9404 (BBS -- N,8,1)
                 atitech.ca (FTP site)
                 76004.3656@compuserve.com (General Inquiries)
                 74740.667@compuserve.com  (Tech. Support)
                 GO ATITECH (CompuServe)

Dell:            ftp.dell.com (FTP site for S3/764 drivers)

Diamond:         (408) 736-2000 (voice)
                 (408) 730-5750 (FAX)
                 (408) 524-9301 (BBS -- N,8,1)
                 ftp.diamondmm.com (FTP site)
                 www.diamondmm.com (WWW site)
                 75300,3673   (CompuServe)
                 DIAMOND.TECH (Genie)

ELSA (Germany):    0241-9177-981 (mailbox)
                   0241-9177-7800 (ISDN port)
                +49/241-9177-981 (outside Germany)

S3:              s3.com (FTP site)

SPEA (Germany):  voice: +49 8151 266 240
                 fax: +49 8151 266 150
                 BBS: +49 8151 266 241, 300 - 14400 - N,8,1

             PART ONE:  Cards Supported Out-of-the-box by Warp
             =================================================

a) 64-bit Cards
---------------

Manufacturer           Model        Comments
------------------------------------------------------
   #9                  GXE64*        The GXE64 is based on the
                                     S3/864 chipset and uses up to 2 MB
of DRAM. A GXE64 is being used in combination with the Qlogic SCSI card
and the Intel 60 MHz Pentium motherboard without problems.  Note that
there may or may not be two versions of this card; when you order yours
make _certain_ that the card you're getting uses the S3/864 chipset to
get out-of-the-box support in Warp.

 Under Warp:  The drivers supplied with Warp apparently support all
modes of the card and work without problems.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Driver support seems pretty good from #9.  The drivers
(the last version of which supported all modes of the card) seem to work
well with few problems.

 Actix                 GE 64*        Another S3/864-based card, with
                                     1 MB (expandable to 4) of memory.

 Under Warp:  All modes of the card are supported, and the card
is reported to work well, with the exception that switching between
full-screen sessions which use the DOS/4GW extender and the MetaGraphics
library can result in the bottom half of the DOS full-screen being
corrupted.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  S3 has released drivers which apparently support most
modes of the card, up to 16bpp.

Deal of the week:  2 MB:  $299, from Treasure Chest Peripherals
                          (800) 677-9781/(504) 733-3890
                   4 MB:  $459, from Harmony Computers, (800) 441-1144

  Asus                 PCI-AV264CT   Here's an interesting one from
                                     Asus.  This card is apparently
based on the Mach64CT chip and has a 135 MHz DAC.  It is expandible to 2
MB of VRAM (and comes with 1 MB standard).  The really interesting part,
though, is that this card has in it a sound card as well.  The video
portion of the card has driver support under OS/2, but the sound card
portion does not seem to.  The card supports all of the following
refresh rates and colour depths:

Resolution         # of bpp         refresh rate
----------------------------------------------------
 640 x  480        8/16/24           90 / 100
 800 x  600        8/16/24*          90 / 100
1024 x  768        8/16*            100 / 100
1152 x  864        8/16*             80 /  80
1280 x 1024        4/8*              75 /  75

* - Indicates that 2 MB of VRAM is required.

  ATI                  G Pro Turbo** This card is based on the ATI
                                     Mach64 chip and takes up to 4 MB of
                                     VRAM.

  Under Warp:  All modes of the card are supported, and the drivers are
reported to work very well.  There are new drivers out from IBM (called
MAC64.ZIP, I believe), available from the IBM BBS, which apparently do
not fix many problems.  One person has reported that his mouse cursor
disappears when placed over an area on the desktop which has played an
AVI file in Galactic Civilizations.

  Under 2.1/2.11:  All modes of the card are supported, but the drivers
are not as mature.  Drivers (found as m64v94.zip on the ATI FTP site)
are available.  Apparently, however, they aren't much better than the
older 2.1 drivers, as they don't really fix all that much.  The
character loss problem is apparently solved by use of the SIO comm.
drivers.  It is also necessary to set video_switch_notification to ON
for your Windows and DOS full-screen sessions, or your desktop will be
severely corrupted on switching back from a Win-OS2 full screen session.

Resolution         # of bpp         refresh rate
----------------------------------------------------
 640 x  480        8/16/24          Up to 72 Hz
 800 x  600        8/16/24          Up to 72 Hz
1024 x  768        8/16/24*         Up to 72 Hz
1280 x 1024        8/16*/24*        Up to 72 Hz+

(*) Indicates that 4 MB of VRAM is required.
(+) The 24-bpp mode of this resolution will do no more than 60 Hz
    vertical refresh

Deal of the week (2 MB):  $365.75 from Vektron International, Inc.,
                                       (800) 725-0081/(214) 606-1278
Deal of the week (4 MB):  $579 from Harmony Computers ($539 for the
                          OEM version) (800) 441-1144

  ATI                  Winturbo**    This is a less expensive version of
                                     the Graphics Pro Turbo above, and
is the card which generally comes with systems which advertise a Mach64
card. The main differences between this card and the Pro Turbo are that
this card cannot be upgraded to 4 MB from the 2 MB it comes with without
purchase of a separate add-on board (the sockets have not been mounted
to do so), and the manual is a little less thorough and has less
information in it.

  ATI                  Xpression**   This is a DRAM-based version of the
                                     Graphics Pro Turbo card.  Drivers
as for that card, though refresh rates at higher resolutions and
colour depths are not as high as for the Graphics Pro Turbo.  (The card
will do up to 75 Hz at 1280x1024x8bpp.  8 bpp requires 2 MB of DRAM, of
course.)  This card will accept a maximum of 2 MB of DRAM.

 Diamond               SpeedStar 64* This card uses the Cirrus Logic
                                     CL543X chipset.

 Under Warp:  Driver support is reported to be good, and the card is
said to run without problems.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  The drivers for the 5428 chipset work with it, and
support most modes of the chip. Diamond has released functional 256
colour (only) drivers for this card.

 Diamond               Stealth 64    Based on the 864 chipset from S3.
                                     This card takes either 1 or 2 MB of
DRAM, but has been discontinued.  (This is the reason I'm not
recommending it.)

 Under Warp:  The card apparently works very well with good driver
support.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Version 1.02 of the drivers now seem to support most
modes and all necessary colour depths.  One poster has reported that
Ultimotion works for him, so that warnings in the readme file that comes
with the drivers about playback not working seem to be spurious.

 Genoa                 Phantom 864   This card is based on the S3/864
                                     chip and takes up to 2 MB of DRAM.
The card is reported to misbehave under DOS, as it blanks the screen
after a hotkey return from PCTools.  (So I'm not recommending it.)

 Under 2.1/2.11:  OS/2 drivers exist and the card is reported to work
well.
 Under Warp:  This card should work with the OS/2 drivers supplied.  No
reports of success yet, though.

 Intel                 Cirrus Logic* There are two cards by Intel which
                                     use the 543X chipset.  One, the
PCICL54301MB, uses the 5430 chipset and comes with 1MB of VRAM.  The
other, the PCICL54342MB, uses the 5434 chipset and comes with 2 MB of
DRAM.

Under Warp:  The DRAM card is supported, but is reported to not be 100%
stable. The card has all the green features and apparently will blank
the screen automatically. However, occasionally when the card is
"re-awakened", the screen will either be a) totally garbled or b) will
give bold over/underscores on different letters. Starting an OS/2
fullscreen session and closing it fixes the problem. The card could be
responsible for instability on at least one .netter's system.
Apparently, on Warp beta II, the accel. drivers hung his system
regularly.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Driver support is said to be there, but is of unknown
quality.  Cirrus Logic has released 8-bit drivers for the card, so I
suspect that this is all that is available.

 Orchid                Kelvin 64*    This card uses the Cirrus Logic
                                     5434 chipset.  2 MB of RAM
                                     supports:

Resolution         # of bpp         refresh rate
----------------------------------------------------
 640 x  480        8/16/24          Up to 75 Hz
 800 x  600        8/16             Up to 75 Hz
1024 x  768        8/16             Up to 75 Hz
1280 x 1024        8*               Up to 75 Hz

 Under Warp:  The card and drivers are reported to work well.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Drivers are in the file KOS211.EXE (off the Orchid
BBS), but they only do 8 bit colour. Presumably also the 5428 drivers
will work with this card as they do the Diamond.

 Spider                Graphics*     This card uses the Cirrus Logic
                                     5434 chipset.  Driver support as
for the Diamond SpeedStar 64 and the Orchid Kelvin 64, presumably.

b) 32-bit Cards
---------------

Manufacturer           Model        Comments
------------------------------------------------------
  ATI                  GU Pro/2MB*+  This card is based on the Mach32
                                     chipset from ATI, and comes with 1
or 2 MB of VRAM.

Resolution         # of bpp         refresh rate
----------------------------------------------------
 640 x  480        8/16/24          Up to 72 Hz
 800 x  600        8/16/24          Up to 72 Hz
1024 x  768        8/16             Up to 72 Hz
1280 x 1024        8                Up to 72 Hz*

(*) Depends on the DAC installed:
    ATI68875B: 60 Hz N/I
    ATI68875C: 74 Hz N/I
    Bt481:     95 Hz I

 Under Warp:  The Windows and Win-OS2 drivers for the card seem to have
problems co-existing.  It's necessary to write a batch file to copy the
Windows driver into place when booting straight DOS as a result.
Otherwise, the card seems to run very well.  (The aforementioned video
problem should not be an issue with Warp+Win-OS2 when it's released.)

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Drivers exist for all supported video modes of the
card including true colour.  They (version 2.1) work fairly well,
although there have been problems reported with PMX and Ghostscript
which did not exist with the 1.2 drivers (which have no 24 bit colour
capability). This card is 8514-compatible.  The latest drivers
(m32v85.zip from ATIs FTP site, known as version 2.4) seem faster, but
do not seem to fix the bugs above to my knowledge.  ** IMPORTANT ** to
avoid complete corruption of your desktop when running full-screen
Win-OS2 settings, make sure you set video_switch_notification to ON (it
defaults to off) for your full-screen DOS sessions and your full-screen
Win-OS2 sessions. The version 2.4 drivers also introduce one new bug
having to do with not all of the fonts being made small when all the
spaces for the fonts are made small.  If speed is important, go with the
2.4 drivers. For my own part, I see no real compelling reason to switch
to the new drivers from the 2.1 drivers.

 Cardex                Challenger*   This card uses the ET4000-W32p
                                     chipset and comes with 1 MB
(upgradable to 2 MB) of RAM.

Resolution         # of bpp         refresh rate
----------------------------------------------------
 640 x  480        8/16/24          up to 72 Hz
 800 x  600        8/16/24          up to 72 Hz
1024 x  768        8/16*            up to 70 Hz
1280 x 1024        8*               up to 70 Hz

(*) Requires 2 MB

 Under Warp:  The card is reported to work very well, with no problems
and all modes supported in the 2 MB configuration.  With 1 MB on the
card, one person has reported problems with any resolution beyond VGA.
The Warp drivers apparently do not support a hardware cursor above 256
colours.  (Get the latest drivers from Tseng, which apparently fix many
of these complaints.)

 Under 2.1/2.11: All resolutions are supported, but only at 8 bpp.

 Cardex                Thunder64 Pro This card uses the Cirrus Logic
                                     5434 chipset and is PCI
2.0-compliant.  It takes up to 2 MB of 70 ns DRAM and has all the green
functions.

Resolution         # of bpp         refresh rate
----------------------------------------------------
640  x 480         8/16/24          74 Hz
800  x 600         8/16             74 Hz
800  x 600         24               60 Hz
1024 x 768         8/16             75 Hz
1280 x 1024        8                60 Hz

 Under Warp:  The card is reported to work fairly well (using the
updated drivers from the IBM BBS, with only minor bugs.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Driver support as for other Cirrus Logic cards,
presumably.

 Diamond               Viper         This card uses the P9000 chipset
                                     from Weitek.  I've seen a lot of
futzing with this card, and I've had reports from people that it will
not work with Asus SP3G motherboards (with BIOS rev. 3.12 on the card).
Other people have had no problems, though.  To be avoided.

Resolution         # of bpp         refresh rate
----------------------------------------------------
640  x 480         8/16/24          70 Hz,
800  x 600         8/16             60, 70 Hz,
800  x 600         24               60, 72 Hz,
1024 x 768         8/16             60, 70 Hz,
1280 x 1024        8                60, 70 Hz,
1600 x 1200        8                60 Hz

 Under Warp:  I've had a report of success with the card using an Intel
Premiere II (90 MHz) board with the 1.00.01.AX1 (!) BIOS, except that
apparently there is colour flicker (only briefly) when starting a
Windows application.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Diamond has released version 1.02 beta drivers which
fix a lot of problems with the older (1.01) drivers. They are reported
trouble-free initially, provided that you remember to use the "-d"
option when unzipping the driver files to disk if you use PKUnzip
(Info-Zip does this automatically). Resolution change via system setup
is not supported yet (this must be done via dspinstl), although refresh
rates above 60Hz for higher resolutions now are.

 Diamond               Viper Pro     This is a newer version of the
                                     Viper, based around the Weitek
P9100 chipset (the P9000 is in the Viper).  Driver support as for the
P9000, with notes and reservations as listed above.

 Genoa                 Phantom 2MB*  This card uses an ET4000/W32p
                                     chipset.

 Under Warp:  Driver support and refresh rates as for the Cardex
Challenger.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Driver support and refresh rates as for the Cardex
Challenger.

 Genoa                 Phantom 32i*  This card uses an ET4000/W32i
                                     chipset.  Drivers as above for the
                                     Phantom 2MB.

 Hercules              Dynamite*     Another ET4000/W32-based card.
                       Power         Drivers/support as for the Cardex
                                     card, with the exception that rev.
D of the card has problems with the Warp drivers (corrupted desktop when
it is first displayed).  A fix is available from IBM for this.

 Intel                 Mach32**      Intel has discontinued their
                                     generic S3/928 card in favour of
three new (also generic) PCI video cards.  This card is very likely the
best bet of the three, since it has the same chip as is in the Graphics
Ultra Pro above, and ATI has drivers that work for all modes and
resolutions of that card.  The card also comes with the ATI68875C DAC,
so you'll get good refresh rates at high resolutions and colour depths
out of it.

 Micro Media             ???*        This is a card based on the S3
 Technology                          P86C805 chipset which will,
                                     apparently, work with the IBM S3
                                     drivers.

 Leadtek               T200*         This card can have up to 2 MB of
                                     RAM and will also hold a video
capture daughterboard.  The video card itself works with the current
ET4000/W32p drivers.  The video capature daughterboard (composite &
S-VHS input and 15-pin SVGA output) is only supported under Win/3.1 at
the moment, but apparently OS/2 drivers are promised "soon".  There is
also being developed an MPEG daughter-board for the card.  Support as
for the Cardex, presumably.

 STB                   LightSpeed*   Another ET4000/W32p card.  Driver
                                     support as for the Cardex,
                                     presumably.


             PART TWO:  Cards Requiring Third-Party Support
             ==============================================
a) 128-bit Cards
----------------

Manufacturer           Model        Comments
------------------------------------------------------
   #9                  Imagine 128   This is actually a family of three
                                     cards from #9.  The primary
difference between them is the RAMDAC they use, and the maximum amount
of memory which they will accept.  All cards have 128-bit internal
operations and have a 128 bit path to VRAM.  The 128-1280 has a 170 NHz
RAMDAC, the 128-1600 has a 220 MHz RAMDAC, and a newer version of the
128-1600 has at least a 220 MHz RAMDAC (by IBM) and will accept up to 8
MB of VRAM.  The other cards (with the different RAMDACs) will accept up
to 4 MB of VRAM.  OS/2 drivers (of reasonable quality, I'm told) are
included with the card.  The cards (in their various configurations)
support the following resolutions and refresh rates:

Resolution         # of bpp         refresh rate
----------------------------------------------------
 640 x  480        8/16/24          at least 100 Hz
 800 x  600        8/16/24          at least 100 Hz
1024 x  768        8/16/24          at least 100 Hz
1152 x  864        8/16/24          at least 100 Hz
1280 x 1024        8/16/24          at least 100 Hz
1600 x 1200        8/16/24*         60/100 Hz+

*The 24-bit colour depth requires 8 MB of VRAM.
+The 100 Hz refresh rate requires the 8 MB card with the IBM RAMDAC

Under OS/2 2.1/2.11:  Driver status unknown.
Under Warp:           Drivers exist and are reported to work well, with
                      the exception that refresh rates only apparently
                      work up to 80 Hz for the IBM RAMDAC-based card.

b) 64-bit Cards
---------------

Manufacturer           Model        Comments
------------------------------------------------------
   #9                  GXE64         The GXE64 may or may not exist in
                                     two flavours, one of which (this
one) uses the S3 Trio64 (764) chip.  If you get the card which uses the
Trio64 chip, make sure that OS/2 drivers come with the card to keep the
driver hunt to a minimum.

 Under Warp:  Drivers are available from the Dell ftp site, apparently,
though they are of unknown quality.  The latest drivers from S3
(at S3's FTP site, called S3_252.zip) are also reported to work
with this card.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  There are drivers at S3's FTP site, in the file
s3x6403a.zip and s3x6403b.zip.  I do not know whether the video drivers
are language-dependent or not, so be advised that the person who
informed me of their availability is Japanese and running OS/2 2.11J.

   #9                  GXE64Pro     The GXE64Pro is based on the
                                    S3/964 chipset and will take up to
4 MB of VRAM.  These cards will not work with the drivers which come
with Warp.

 Under Warp:  #9 has apparently released new drivers which fix install
problems.  Apparently most modes of the card are supported, and the
drivers are reported to work reasonably well.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Driver support seems pretty good from #9.  The drivers
(the last version of which supported all modes of the card) seem to work
well with few problems.

DEAL OF THE WEEK:  GXE 64PRO:  $355           (800) 554-9950/(414) 357-7814

 Diamond               Stealth 64    This card is based on the 964
                       VRAM          chipset from S3 and will take up to
                                     4 MB of VRAM.

 Under Warp:  Diamond has apparently released version 1.02 drivers
recently which, though not optimized, are reported to be fairly solid.
MMPM/2 is reported to be unstable, however (though whether or not this
is video driver-related is unknown).  You may need a BIOS upgrade (to
version 1.07) to get what Diamond calls "full OS/2 support".
(Apparently the BIOS you get depends on where the 964 chip used in the
card was manufactured -- very odd.)

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Version 1.02 of the drivers are now out.  No reports
of success or failure with them yet, though.

 Diamond               Stealth 64*   Based on the 764 chipset from S3.
                                     This card replaces the Stealth 64
in the list above, and comes with either 1 or 2 MB of DRAM.

 Under Warp:  Driver support (without ultimotion video, apparently) is
available.  The drivers are reported to be fairly solid.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Driver support is unknown, though the card should work
with the Warp drivers.

 Diamond               Stealth 64    This card is based around the
                       Video VRAM    S3 Vision968 video accelerator
                                     and uses the Texas Instruments
3026 220 MHz RAMDAC.  The card comes with 2 MB (upgradeable) or 4 MB
(nonupgradeable) of VRAM, and has available an optional hardware
MPEG/video capture daughtercard.  Drivers for OS/2 2.1 and Warp are in
the box (version 1.0).

The 2 MB card supports all the following colour depths and resolutions
(refresh rates unspecified):

256 colors:      640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024
65K colors:      640x480, 800x600, 1024x768
16.7mill colors: 640x480

 Under 2.1/2.11:  No reports.
 Under Warp:  The card is reported to work well with the supplied
drivers, although the install has some quirks:

Follow the manual's instructions and when dspinstl *fails*, go in to
\os2\install and copy dspinstl.sav (Warp's dspinstl.exe) over
dspinstl.exe (Diamond's that has the problem). Restart dspinstl, follow
the rest of the instructions and you're up and running. Note that Go95,
Diamond's monitor config utility (centring, refresh etc) doesn't work
properly in Warp. You *must* choose one of the pre-defined monitors
since the user-defined option is disabled.

In addition, if you are using this card with an AMI Atlas PCI
motherboard, you may need to upgrade the BIOS to get the combination to
work; AMI has a (flash) BIOS upgrade which is specific to S3-based
cards.

 ELSA                  Winner 1000   This card is based on the 864
                       Pro PCI       chipset and takes up to 2 MB of
                                     DRAM.  The current drivers support
                                     16 bpp.

 ELSA                  Winner 2000   This card is based on the 964
                       Pro PCI       chipset and takes up to 4 MB of
                                     VRAM.  The current drivers support
                                     16 bpp.

 Miro                  Crystal 20SD* The 20SD uses the S3 864 chipset
                       Crystal 20SV* and will take up to 2 MB of DRAM.
                                     The 20SV uses the S3 964 chipset
and will take up to 4 MB of VRAM.  Older versions of the 20SD may have
problems setting ergonomic refresh rates.  The latest revision of the
20SD supports all of the following modes/refresh rates:

Resolution         # of bpp          Max. refresh rate
------------------------------------------------------
640  x  480        8/16              59.9  / 60.4
800  x  600        8/16              56.0  / 75.0
1024 x  768        8/16+             87.0* / 75.0
1152 x  864        8+                60.0
1280 x 1024        8+                88.6*

+ - indicates that 2 MB of DRAM are required.
* - indicates an interlaced refresh rate.

 Under Warp:  Warp drivers for the 20SV were released January 11/95.
The card is, apparently, working very nicely, with all available
resolutions and modes of the cards supported, including 1152x864. One
person has reported running at 1024x768x100 Hz (colour depth
unspecified, however). Drivers for the card may be found at ftp.leo.org,
in the directory /comp/os/os2/drivers/display

 Under OS/2 2.1/2.11:  One person has reported getting 1280x1024x8bpp at
72 Hz with the 20SD card, and the drivers are reported to work well.
(How this was accomplished given the card specifications above is a bit
of a mystery, though.)

 Orchid                Fahrenheit    This card takes up to 4 MB of VRAM
                       Pro 64        and uses the S3/964 chipset.

 Under Warp:  Driver support is reported to be poor, as the drivers
provided routinely lose synch and do not display the correct colours.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Driver support as for other 964-based cards,
presumably.  (i.e. only 16-bit)

 Spea                  Mirage P64*   Also based on the new 864
                                     chipset from S3.  The card will
                                     take up to 2 MB of DRAM.

Resolution         # of bpp          Max. refresh rate
------------------------------------------------------
 640 x  480        8/16/24           100/100/95
 800 x  600        8/16/24           100/101/73
1024 x  768        8/16*             100/79
1152 x  864        8*                76
1280 x 1024        8*                75

(*) Indicates that 2 MB of DRAM is required.

 Under Warp:  The latest drivers are called osmip204.zip on the Spea
BBS. They explicitely support Warp, all resolutions, high refresh rates
and work flawlessly. There's also a tool included to switch resolutions,
color-depths, and refresh rates under PM. 

 Under 2.1/2.11:  The latest drivers are version 2.04 (osmip204.zip).
As noted above, the drivers support all modes of the card and high
refresh rates.

 STB                   Velocity64V   This card is based on the S3/968
                                     chip and will take up to 4 MB of
                                     VRAM.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Driver support unknown.
 Under Warp:  Drivers come with the card, but I've had no direct
reports of success with the card.  (I have had one indirect report.)

c) 32-bit Cards
---------------

Manufacturer           Model        Comments
------------------------------------------------------
 Diamond               Stealth 32    This card uses the ET4000/W32
                                     chipset, but will apparently not
work with the W32 drivers in Warp.

 Under Warp:  Presumably the OS/2 2.1/2.11 drivers will work with this
card, though I've had no reports of success.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Support for this chipset is limited to 8 bit colour.
Diamond has released what appear to be drivers of reasonable quality for
the 8-bpp modes of this card. Given Diamond's track record with drivers,
though, I don't think I'll recommend it until they have proven they'll
keep on supporting OS/2 for a while.

Deal of the week:  $195 from TC Computers, (800) 723-8282

 ELSA                  Winner 1000*  This card is based on the S3 928
                                     chipset and comes with either 1 or
2 MB VRAM.  This card will not work with the IBM S3 drivers.

 Under Warp:  Presumably the 2.1/2.11 drivers will work with this card,
though I've had no reports of success.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Make sure you have the latest install/driver disks for
this card to get all the available modes of the card which, in its 1 MB
configuration, will do up to 1280x1024x4bit at 60 Hz N/I.  Lower
resolutions offer more colours and higher refresh rates.  

 Miro                 Crystal 10SD*  This is another card based on the
                                     S3/805i chipset.

Under Warp:  The IBM S3 drivers are reported to work very well with it.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  The IBM S3 drivers are reported to work well with it,
although drivers specific to the card are available on on cdrom.com in
/pub/os2/2_1/drivers, as file miro110.zip.

 Spea                 Mercury LITE   This is supposed to be based on the
                                     S3 928 chipset.  Successful
installation requires that the V7MIRVBE TSR be installed in the
full-screen DOS session from which SVGA is run so that the SVGA
program will detect the card properly.

 Under Warp:  This card is *not* supported by IBM, but is supported by
native drivers from SPEA. Driver installation is reported to be much
improved over older versions, as the need for V7MERVBE is gone. SPEA
delivers an installation tool called V7setup.exe which will set
resolution and refresh rate in an OS/2 sesssion.  Rebooting will start
the card with those settings.

Under 2.1/2.11:  The Warp drivers and tools should work with it.

c) Other cards
--------------

Manufacturer           Model        Comments
------------------------------------------------------
 Hercules              Stingray      This card uses the Avante 2301
                                     chipset and comes with 1 MB RAM.
 Under Warp:  Video support is unknown, though 2.1/2.11 drivers should
work with it.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Beta OS/2 drivers are available for the Express
(below), which should presumably work with this card as well.

 STB                   Express       Another card with the Avante 2301
                                     chipset.

 Under Warp:  Video support is unknown, though the drivers for 2.1/2.11
should work with it.

 Under 2.1/2.11:  Beta drivers are available for this card which
apparently are fairly stable.  One bug reported is that in seamless
Win-OS/2, when the mouse pointer is clicked, the click does not occur
where the mouse pointer is, but seems to be down and to the right of the
pointer.  This has apparently been reported to IBM and is being
investigated (though I'm not sure by whom).


d) Just say no...

Manufacturer           Model        Comments
------------------------------------------------------
 Intel                 PCIMGAII      The last (and certainly least where
                                     OS/2 is concerned) generic Intel
offering is based on the MGA-II chip from Matrox.  Beware, as
explained below.

 Matrox                <anything>    New drivers (version 2.0)
                                     supporting 24 bit colour are
finally out for this card, and are reported to work reasonably well.
However, given the length of time it took to actually produce the
drivers and the mediocrity of the drivers resulting from the effort
(some cards are _still_ unsupported), I still maintain that this is a
card with a message on it, and the message is:  "Beware. This is not a
card for buying; this is a card for laying down and avoiding."  Given my
(rather horrid) experiences with the card, and the reports of others who
have mailed their troubles to me and what I've seen on the .net, though,
I'm not recommending it.  Maybe ever.

There's what I know.  Please E-Mail suggestions/corrections and I'll
post again.
