Hey op here: the goal was not to just get something working, it was to build it ourselves and learn along the way. And what's a better way to learn about how VGA works than to build a graphics card!

But for a little more context, we did purchase a few old AMD cards originally, but we were mostly interested in using modern hardware and possibly windows + webgpu (for certain games). We didn't want to rely on no longer manufactured parts and potentially unmaintained kernel drivers (like CRT emudriver).