S3
S3 was one of the manufacturers of graphics cards for the IBM PC and its compatibles during the 1990s.
Its popular ViRGE (Virtual Reality Graphics Engine) chipset, launched in 1995, was one of the first 2D/3D accelerators designed for the consumer market, and it was the first to integrate it all into a single chip.
What started out to be very promising turned into disaster, with the company falling from top spot in 1996 to being run out of town by competitors within just 3 years. Their 3D engine continued for long after in the Trio line, but despite their bad form and possibly in a last attempt to turn their fortunes around, they acquired Diamond Multimedia in 1999.
These day S3's cards have a bad name and aren't a popular pick for retro gamers.
86C801CLaunched: 1993 The 86C801C was a great-performing SVGA chipset. It can be found on the SPEA/Video 7 Mirage and the Diamond Stealth 24. |
86C805iLaunched: 1994 The 86C805i supports up to 70ns DRAMs. The 86C805i can be found on: |
Vision864
Found on the following:
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Vision928
Rebranded versions of the Vision964 were sold as:
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Vision964
Maximum non-interlaced resolution 1600 x 1200. Max colours at this resolution = 65,536 (at 1024 x 768 the chipset supports 16.7 million colours).
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ViRGE
This card has excellent DOS compatibility via its Trio 64+ engine with 135 MHz RAMDAC. The 3D feature set is quite rich for its time and price, but performance is inadequate. The ViRGE series introduced S3's "S3D" technology, which was supposed to be an API that game developers could specifically use to draw out the power of the ViRGE - unfortunately only about 20 games were ever written to take advantage of S3D. When Direct3D took off, proprietary API support was dropped in favour of a single open one. One advantage of the 86C325 is that it can be overlocked by 50% and still remains very cool. It was also sold by other manufacturers as:
Tip: To speed up DOS games, try the S3VBE20 and S3SPDUP utilities if the specific games support VBE 2.0 and/or are compatible with S3SPDUP. |
ViRGE/VXLaunched: 1996 The ViRGE/VX clocked its core at 52 MHz (lower than the original ViRGE), but the card got dual-ported RAM so was able to read from the frame buffer without preventing communication to the graphics chip. The ViRGE/VX on average runs approx 6% faster than the original ViRGE, so this is still a slow card. Still, in 1996, the ViRGE and ViRGE/VX made up about half of all 3D cards on the market. Key features:
It was also sold by other manufacturers as:
Tip: To speed up DOS games, try the S3VBE20 and S3SPDUP utilities if the specific games support VBE 2.0 and/or are compatible with S3SPDUP. |
ViRGE/SMX
Comes with 15-pin DSUB and a DFP (Digital Flat Panel) output port. The image above is a Gainward-branded version, model 9811-11A. |
ViRGE/DX
On average the DX is ~40% faster than an original ViRGE. Sadly, this is still not on par with other 3D cards available in 1997. Key features:
It was also sold by other manufacturers, some with empty memory sockets ready for expansion from 4 MB up to 8 MB, others with 8 MB soldered directly onto the board, and others again with sockets populated with memory. Here are some of them::
Tip: To speed up DOS games, try the S3VBE20 and S3SPDUP utilities if the specific games support VBE 2.0 and/or are compatible with S3SPDUP. |
ViRGE/GXLaunched: 1997 The GX has a small performance improvement (5-10%) on the ViRGE/DX. Sadly, this is still not on par with other 3D cards available in 1997. The picture above is of an STB Systems-branded version, called Nitro 3D/GX. Key features:
As with most ViRGE series cards, the GX was also OEM'd:
Tip: To speed up DOS games, try the S3VBE20 and S3SPDUP utilities if the specific games support VBE 2.0 and/or are compatible with S3SPDUP. |
ViRGE/GX2
Despite being their flagship product, poor software drivers and poor performance compared to the competition meant this card was a commercial failure. Similar performance to ATI's Rage IIc. Key features:
It was also sold by other vendors as:
Tip: To speed up DOS games, try the S3VBE20 and S3SPDUP utilities if the specific games support VBE 2.0 and/or are compatible with S3SPDUP. |
ViRGE/MX
The MX was succeeded by the ViRGE/MXi which integrated 2 MB of 85 MHz DRAM into the chip for even greater power efficiency. Key features:
These chips tended to run a RAMDAC at 135 MHz, whilst memory speed was at 83 MHz and the core ran at 55 MHz. Compared to the GX, an MX is approximately 11% faster. The premium Toshiba Tecra 750DVD (1998) came with an embedded ViRGE/MX 3D graphics controller. For MX drivers, it's recommended to use a OEM Compaq driver v3009. |
Trio 3D/2X
Memory: 4 MB Unknown details.
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Trio 32
Unsure if S3 released a card of their own with this, but the Trio 32 chipset can be found on the Diamond Stealth SE graphics card.
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Trio 64 V2/DX
Chipset: 86C775 The picture is actually of a rebranded Trio 64 V2/DX, in this case a VideoLogic GrafixStar 410.
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Trio 64V+
Chipset:
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Savage3D
Chipset: It was designed to provide Voodoo 2 performance in 3D rendering for a much reduced price. In benchmark testing, Savage3D outperformed Voodoo 2, and scored almost the same as 3Dfx other card, Voodoo Banshee. Since Savage3D only has the one texturing unit, Voodoo 2 still does better when used with multi-texture fills. Furthermore, it does not fully make use of AGP 2x, with poor AGP transfer performance compared to Matrox G200 which makes full use of the AGP 2x greater bandwidth. Key features:
The Savage3D chipset was also released on:
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Savage 2000Having purchased Diamond Multimedia in 1999, the Savage 2000 was born. |