AFAICS, the Compaq documents merely adds a number of CAD cards, while the standard HCL already covers the mainstream stuff.
Ultimately the ideal card depends on what you want in terms of 2D and 3D abilities (3D usually means OpenGL) and what you can get.
In the "mainstream" around 1996/1997, you typically found three different chip makers: S3, Matrox and ATI. While the latter two built cards of their own and did not sell their chips to other manufacturers, S3 was exactly the opposite. Tseng Labs had a last interesting product line with their ET6000 series, but quickly disappeared once 3D became popular. Speaking of which, 3Dlabs Voodoo add-on 3D cards were popular then.
Let me give you a quick rundown of S3 chips, about chronologically:
801: Old DRAM beast.
911: Old VRAM beast.
805: Old DRAM beast, 32 bit.
924: Old VRAM beast, 32 bit, truecolor support.
805i: 32 bit, interleaved
928: Much like 924, but fixed (or with PCI support?)
---- Here it gets interesting.
864: 64 bit DRAM
964: 64 bit VRAM
Trio32 (732): 32-bit DRAM chip with integrated RAMDAC, used on budget cards
Trio64 (764): 64-bit DRAM chip with integrated RAMDAC, used on budget cards
868: Like 864, but with video acceleration features and EDO support
968: Like 964, but with video acceleration features and EDO support
Trio64V+ (765): Like Trio64, but with video acceleration features and EDO support
ViRGE: Trio64V+ with basic 3D acceleration; 135 MHz RAMDAC
ViRGE/DX: Same but faster and with faster RAMDAC (170 MHz)
ViRGE/VX: As /DX, but for (EDO-)VRAM and with faster RAMDAC (220 MHz)
I'm not too much into vintage ATI cards but it seems like there were Mach64 varieties for both VRAM and DRAM. I think there weren't any Rage based cards in the HCL yet.
For Matrox, check their driver archive. (Hmm, not too talkative, that one. You may be stuck with first-gen Millenniums.) At that time, Millennium models used WRAM (with 170/220 MHz RAMDACs) while the lesser Mystiques had SGRAM (with 170 MHz RAMDAC, 220 MHz for the Mystique 220). Pretty advanced stuff and arguably the fastest 2D cards on the planet at the time. 3D support, while present, still was basic.
Diamond cards were S3 equipped, and the Stealth Series came with 864/964/868/968 chips, depending on DRAM/VRAM and Video designations.
Later ELSA cards also seem to be supported, at least the 968-equipped WINNER 2000PRO/X-8 (8 meg VRAM monster) is (but apparently the driver also knows the lesser S3-equipped models). Don't think you'd see those too often though, German manufacturer. Could be quite spendy then.
The #9 cards listed should all be S3-based (they later came out with a 128-bitter of their own in the Imagine 128 series but quickly went bust when 3D became the new hot thing).
