Dark Forces 2 on Virge DX with 400x300 was my way to play it back in 1998 - many thanks for bringing back that memory. Currently I am actually playing that game again but on my Win98 monster P4 with GF5600FX and I don't need to tell you how "rich" I feel using that setup now, comparing to how poor I felt playing this on K5 100MHz and Virge DX in 1998. And this is why most of us do the retro PC hobby - to finally get the superior youth time games experience, using the machines which we could not even dream about back when Win95 or 98 were new 😊
I remember this time period, always trying to find video, motherboard, cpu combos that were fast enough and somewhat budget friendly to play the latest titles. Trident and S3 seemed to dominate the market. It was not until I got a Orchid Voodoo 1 and a 166Mhz Pentium 1 that gaming really became fun. Great video down memory lane, good to remember where we came from.
Your assessment is in line with my experience back then. I had one of these paired with a diamond voodoo 1 card to get the best of both worlds. The S3 was great for my collection of DOS games and for Windows, but the voodoo handled everything else.
ViRGE cards are kind of like the Sega Saturn. They're not great at 3D but they're epic at 2D and it's just taken everybody a really long time to recognize that because of the era in which they were originally launched. If you want the best DOS gaming card, a ViRGE DX or GX really can't be beat. They're just not great 3D accelerators.
Back in the day i had my S3 Virge hooked up to a Voodoo card when it was released, it was the sweet spot at that moment for DOS and Windows. Where the Virge shined in DOS the Voodoo did great on Windows. The first real 3D in Windows was awesome to see back then, if you look at it now it's weird that you have such good memories of something that looks quite terrible compared to what we have nowadays. But still, it was a great experience seeing all these kinds of technologies grow up!
I have had a lot of luck messing around with the S3 cards. I agree they are not the most performant, but I still have fond memories using the S3 Virge in my Pentium MMX 200 system I built.
@@philscomputerlab I haven’t tested much with the Savage yet, so I’m eager to see how much better it is. I’ve heard mixed messages about it though based on other videos and articles.
@@mesterak The Savage4 does habe something could, it's Metal support, a proprietary API similar to Glide. So at least you can build a machine with a few games in mind and enjoy them. Unreal is one as well as Rune and others.
I remember seeing these cards still sitting on the shelves of Harvey Norman in 2000, same store was still selling a 4400ti in 2008 lol. edit: also that swan dive in Lost Valley *chefs kiss*
I use this card in my retro build! What I will say about the DX is that it's got really good stability and compatibility. I'm pairing it with a Voodoo 1, works nicely
Hey, i still have that Sidewinder 3D Pro at 0:20 :) Had to repair it a couple of times over the years, but it's still going strong, and still is my favourite joystick to use on my retro machines
I have an S3 Virge On Board N1C3BD with 4MB RAM in my 486 build. I didn't run into any graphical bugs but I didn't even try any other video card in this build. It just works with the games. I had more issues with the sound card drivers and memory management, but MEMMAKER helped with the memory issue and I used UNISOUND as my sound driver and now my 486 machine is almost perfect :)
Mine was ruined by the Inter i740, it had terrible performance and it was super glitchy. Games kept freezing, I couldn't play 2 matches in Worms Armageddon in a row, couldn't play 2 maps in NFS3 in a row... All sorts of issues. I got a Riva TNT2 and sold the i740 quickly.
Thank you for this video. In my card collecton I have some Virge/325 and some Virge/GX2. I just checked... there ary so many versions of the S3 Virge. I love the combination of S3 for 2D and Voodoo for 3D.
Back in the day I overlooked that card and its predecessor and stuck to my ATI Rage Pro. A few years ago I got a bunch of old PCI cards and also the S3. I quickly again dismissed that card, knowing it would not exactly "meet my demands". It was because of one of your recent videos that I actually revisited that card and started to play around with it. As expected, it was slow. But playing around with it was so much fun! Another nice aspect of this hobby is, because much of this stuff now is not that expensive, you can always revisit the past and play "what if" games. Things I could not have done back in the day because of the cost in its day back then. Thank you so much for giving many fresh ideas of what to try out with the old stuff. I always enjoy your videos!
My dad had an S3 card when I was younger, I remember him being able to play quake with his 3d accelator and his computer having doom, duke 3d and quake 1 and 2. I don't remember what he had and neither does my dad. Sadly it's lost to time.
At that time I had a Rage Pro, if I recall correctly it was my first attempt at 3D: what a disappointment. Most games would not run on 3D, requiring driver updates or game patches. I ended going 3dfx, which became the reference for me: not only worked, but Glide was amazing. I recall the bad reputation from S3 for 3D cards, never even tried to get one. I stuck with 3dfx until bankruptcy, then moved to Nvidia Geforce 3 and later had some Ati cards: normally had the best performance/power consumption card. Also worth considering was the 3D card image quality, I recall there were some issues depending on the algorithm choices in the early 3D days.
I was in Salzburg for a couple of days once, but not recently at all. In fact it was as far back as 2005, so that has to count as semi-retro at the very least😁
@@BilisNegra Oh, that reminds me, I visited a retro museum in Vienna that's in the basement of an old WWII flak tower. So, that's relevant to the channel. 😅 Salzburg was especially beautiful. Castles, oh the castles. 😲
Yeah. The DB50xg and Orchid Righteous 3D were definitely my best purchases that year. I don't even know why I bought the DB50xg, but it was an amazing purchase. I still have them both!
@@philscomputerlab Wow! what a fancy setup that would have been! What CPU were you rocking in there? Was it the 133mhz Pentium you mentioned in a video?
Hello Phil! Thank you so much for another amazing video, full of useful references and great games. Speaking about that, glad to see you tested Terminal Velocity. I remember how amazed I was when I saw it for first time, actually amazed to run it with min spec on my humble AMD K5 133Mhz, 8MB of Ram and a Trident 9440 PCI with 1MB haha. Cheers from Argentina!
Though unsure if DX or GX or VX, I had one (replacing the older 1MB S3 Trio64V+) with 4MB of RAM installed by default. It could run the first Tomb Raider game smoothly, but only in low resolution - high res mode felt like a "swift powerpoint presentation". It also ran TR2 and TR3 games, but with (close to) lowest settings available (HW acceleration mode). However, in TRC it hit its limits for me, as it couldn't display water as see-through properly - instead, it displayed "a layer of thick oil" 🙂 However, for all the 2D apps a/o games (including the "fake 3D" ones) I've ever used it with, this card just delivered flawlessly and I still think it was worth the money, in this regards, at least. Later, my last graphics card I tried, was the S3 Savage 4, which was so much more powerful, comparatively - but also around that time, I started switching to notebooks (as I'm not much of a gamer anyway). Still, my memories of searching for the best drivers, installing them and then messing around with various settings in apps and games are amongst the best (of the PC era).
I always thought I had a Virge DX because my "Fast Driver" floppy said so. But the card definitely had 8mb of vram using a second daughter card. Now Im wondering if it was actually a S3 Virge VX??? Came in a Gateway G-200 Pentium Pro 200 48mb EDO Ram Ensoniq Sound Card 33.6k modem. The "Fast Driver" was the first time I understood how much a driver could improve performance. Monster Truck Madness was transformed!
My first computer had a S3 Virge DX, I remember a funky problem when I tried the Thief Demo back in the day. The performance was okay, but all the textures on the walls and floor was all gray, lighting was still done and seemed to work fine. Always wondered if that was a known bug with the S3 Virge.
For me, the Virge DX/GX2 are the ideal 2D cards to pair with a Voodoo 1/2 and a flexible (super) socket 7 with the aim of maximizing DOS compatibility. The 2D picture quality is quite good in the cards I have, it scores well on the problematic DOS games matrix by Gonar, and the handful of S3D exclusives are a nice bonus. It does suck at 3D so I really want a Voodoo card for DOS Glide games and early Windows games. In any case, you'd be hard pressed to find an unplayable DOS games with a setmul compatible CPU, a Soundblaster AWE32/64, a Virge and a Voodoo 2.
@@xsc1000 Sure, there were other good options for DOS compatiblity. One could argue that a Voodoo 3+ does well at everything. Too bad the Rage Turbo didn't do well with those DOS games, because the A3D API was probably the second best after Glide.
@@damienretro4416 Still, it can do 16 bit colors in games and texture filtering. At least in some games and at low fps. But for a kid struggling with a 2d video card in the late 90s, it would have been something to look forward to🙂
I actually had an S3 Virge bundled with an AMD 5x86 bare bones system in 1997. Back then I didn't know any better. Then I tried to play some modern 3D games...
I wonder if choosing the exact same upgrade chips as the pre existing ones would make overclocking more stable. Maybe a heatsink on the GPU as well ? Also maybe a full upgrade of the ram chips with the fastest possible, could be a fun challenge, making the fastest S3 Virge possible !
I would probably try to get a S3 Savage 4 Extreme with DVI from Number Nine rather than trying my luck with Virge. Savage 4 is probably about the same price as Virge but with slightly more ram and better 3D performance for earlier 3D games.
Well Phil, I must admit I almost considered upgrading my virge to a virge/DX in the opening few minutes. But I think this just confirms my current approach, which isn’t to bother with S3D and just stick to DOS games. Great to see S3 were able to improve but based on this it looks like too little too late. Thanks for testing this out for us!
Purchased an S3 in 1998 for my Gateway 166 MMX CPU. Shit for 3d accelerating. Kept it though and bought an Apocalypse 3D graphic accelerator. I overclocked the Apocalypse 3D to an Apocalypse 5D.
I wonder why old games, even at lower frame rates, seem smoother compared to modern. Lately, I've been playing Descent on an emulated 486dx2-80 (via 86Box) and even though I don't think it's doing more than 20fps, it's perfectly playable...Looks and feels exactly like I remember. However, in just about any game after the year 2000 (maybe earlier), if I can't get more than 50 or 60fps, it might as well be a side show. Something changed and I can't put my finger on it...I think a lot of it is input lag but how did that get introduced?
While ViRGE/DX's performance is kinda better than a regular ViRGE itself... I wouldn't like it that much either... However, I would prefer to combine that ViRGE for 2D and then 3DFX Voodoo 1 or 2 with 3D... That would be more like of a dream GPU setup for me.
The S3 Virge, along with any S3 prior to the Savage 3D, really wasn't an actual 3D accelerator, despite the claims that it was the first one S3 produced since it technically provided all key features. It was famous for very good 2D features and performance, but notorious for bad 3D performance. ATI had similar struggles with their "Mach 64" Rage and GX line of GPUs. The first 3D GPU that actually delivered was the Savage 3D ( and Rage Pro on the side of ATI ), but it was late on the market, could not keep up in performance, and had pretty buggy drivers. Still I heard the S3 Savage 4 has become something of a collectors item, and ignoring the bugged out Savage 2000, the later Savage XP actually finally ended up pretty good - just way too late.
One issue I've found with most S3 chips, is that black is not black. You can see that at boot time where the background is more gray than black. Try to compare with a Tseng or Matrox or any other vendor really. I think sometimes it can be fixed through flashing a BIOS on the graphics cards, but not always.
Yes, I see the same problem on my Virge DX. Black is gray and the image looks washed out. It's the "blanking pedestal bit" issue and there's a long thread about it on Vogons. Unfortunately, my card has no EEPROM, so I can't flash a fixed BIOS. The only solution is to run a tool to disable this bit in autoexec.bat.
It's just a VGA BIOS bug on some cards. The thread at Vogons forums that @Pickle136 mentions also features some small utilities that attempt to fix this problem at boot, by removing the pedestal switch that elevates the black level. If you don't know how to patch your specific VGA BIOS, look for s3pedest and also S3BRIGHT on the thread called "S3 AGP Cards (and possibly others) Too Bright".
It's just a VGA BIOS bug on some cards. The thread at Vogons forums that Pickle136 mentions also features some small utilities that attempt to fix this problem at boot, by removing the pedestal switch that elevates the black level. If you don't know how to patch your specific VGA BIOS, look for s3pedest and also S3BRIGHT on the thread called "S3 AGP Cards (and possibly others) Too Bright".
Why was the chip still so common? The virge is pin compatible with its 2D predecessors and so the old design could be used for the new chip and advertised with 3D. Many OEM manufacturers have done this.
The CPU calculates and sends at least 27 PCI bus register values for every triangle drawn on the ViRGE. 13 are slopes requiring an expensive division each. This is why a fast CPU matters.
The loss of S3 and 3dfx killed competition and innovation in graphic cards Edit Forgot how much better Jedi Knight looks with 3d acceleration (been over 10 years since I've been able to use 3d mode)
@@oldschooldude8370 S3 became meh unfortunately. S3 was one of if not the most common chipset pre 3d acceleration era (one of the reasons why it's DosBox's defualt) and other then SLI Nvidia completely nuked 3dfx as soon as the deal was done
In my rigs never get S3 chip but that time any product coming with slow memory bug driver incompatibilty to any calls from early set D3D driver but the S3 968 vision have show a good video chip with a solid performance and accelerate video capacity
I bought the Diamond 2000 Pro brand new back in the day. I certainly did not buy it for DOS games, but it was what I could afford (and it promused faster 3D!) until i built a new PC with the newly released TNT card. I had no idea what i was missing until i played my first game on that TNT. So no, no fond memories of the S3 cards. The advertising got me and im still bitter about it, lol.
It's always worth to remember that PS1 and N64 had very low resolutions, so playing in 320x200 in 3D game should be ok back then - but of course everything changed with Voodoo and expectations were that 640x480 is that minimal resolution for PCs - and then Virge became immediately obsolete due to that.
For some reason, I still find myself returning to the S3 Virge 375 DX to push it into doing things it wasn't supposed to do. I've been doing this since 1997 and I still wonder why. I guess that I never got over all the wrappers and emulators that overpromised and underdelivered. Mostly it's about making OpenGL 1.1 and 1.2 titles work through the DirectX wrappers, but also there are some OGL to S3D-TK ones.
Hey Phil! What's with the little beeper on the back of your Gotek? Does it try to emulate the sound of a real floppy? If so I'd love to know what pins to use; mine is almost completely unlabeled.
3:50 "The legendary Laguna 3D" I think you mispronounced "infamous" :p An interesting variant of this series was the Trio3D. AGP support, at least physically, but breaking compatibility with some early S3D API games.
Still use one as my favourite test card. However i have two Mystique's that are WAY faster in text/2d than the virge but for testing, it is good enough so i can keep my diamonds in safe heaven ^^. Got an S3 Trio64 the last days but... i decided to go on with the virge and sold the Trio.
I really like the idea of this card. It would be perfect for someone who was really into dos and didn't play games in windows so much. A lot of the first windows games were crappy 2d games anyways. But for playing games in windows that are 3d this thing is a non starter.
At the time I had the diamond 2000 3D, in fact I still have it, I used it with a pentium 200 mhz mmx, for anything 3D I used the voodoo 1 at the time, it was a correct plate for 2d and not much else. I tried the Diamond with Interstate 76 with 3D acceleration at the time and it was not good at all. Doing a review two decades later on a 2 ghz Athlon are the typical delirious videos that are usually seen on UA-cam (that something can be done does not imply which is a good idea), it is evident that if you have an AGP socket you are not going to use a mediocre PCI board, the way this was approached makes no practical sense.
The S3 ViRGE chipset was wonderful at DOS & Windows 2D gaming and productivity for it's time. It's a shame the 3D performance was so terrible compared to the 3dfx Voodoo cards! I had a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 card back then. I stuck to 2D or software mode 3D games until the 3dfx Banshee cards were released and I purchased a Diamond Monster Fusion card.
I have one of those on display (yeah! finally my unused cards are on display, thanks to Tech Ambrosia's 3D printed GPU stands). Back in the day, I was already using the superb Diamond Monster 3D (I don't remember with what 2D card), or more likely the disastrous original Matrox Mystique which I swapped to because having video editing features with the daughter card (That one I still have). The Virge and Virge/DX were always at the bottom in all the charts indeed and no enthusiast was considering them. The Matrox range were not far in the lack of gaming performance (If I recall correctly, framerates for the Mystique where higher than the S3 but texture management, effects and filtering were indeed terrible). I remember with windows 3.1, when 3D acceleration was the hot topic, the Matrox Millenium and its professional 3D features, was always up in the podium and the Mystique alleguedly inherited that. I have later wondered about how or if, that impacted DOS games at all. Funny thing, a couple years ago an original Millenium landed in my hands gifted by a friend (in the same box than the S3). I should put together a working 486 and compare them in DOS. Well, I should but probably wont... I always say this kind of things after seeing your videos :) A great review as always. Thanks!
Never had a S3 Virge. Kept my S3 Trio and added a Voodoo1 with the WAU Effekt. P.S. Musste das Video wegen der Lektüre anhalten und die Artikel schnell lesen ;-)
It's funny how the cinematic 24 Fps was more than acceptable for so many of these old games. they play just fine and are just as fun. Don't get me wrong, locked 30 or 60 is phenomenal but back then? It didn't matter.
Hello Phil! I am going to make a retro test for myself. I am going to call it "What if the P6 architecture succed to be the next P4 processor and netburst not succed to go into production." You probably remember, that the mobile P4 processors with core name Banias and Dothan are true P6 architectural processors with additional SSE2 support. That processors has a S478-isch package, but it is elecrically not compatible to the desktop S478 motherboards. Luckily ASUS made a S479 to S478 adapter, which costs nowdays more than 250 Euro. With this adapter, and a Asus-478 moterboard I am able to build a true Pentium 4 (P6 - architectural) system. The FSB of the Banias and Dothan cores are from 400 to 533 FSB, which is very inportant boost, compare to the tualatin P3 1400MHz, which has only memory access of 133MHz on the front-side-bus. You probably remember, you made a test between a P3 1400MHz and a P4 1400MHz processor, where the conclusion was, that the P3 is faster, and the P8 must be more than 1,8GHz to reach the spead of the P3 even if the memory access of the P4 is much faster. Now I am going to take the slowest Banias first, and test the difference against the fastest P3. And then the fastest Dothan, maybe I am going to try overclock it from 533 to 640 MHz FSB.
Hi! I recommend this card when someone wants a cheap and fast card with a good 2D. I used to talk Virge DX + Voodoo2, but now I try a Voodoo3 or only the dx and a TNT2. Ps. I am the only guy who have seen very few units of a model TNT2 in PCI?
Huh I never could get Descent II (with the original S3 ViRGE patch applied) to run under DOS with the ViRGE DX. Is there some later patch I don't know about?
0:13 unbelievable, the Yamaha DB50XG was under 200,- DM in 1996? That was a steal, most soundblaster alone did cost more. Just check out for what prices these Yamaha boards go now for. Yeah, the 2D cores of those S3 cards were always excellent, even under directdraw. Outcast ran smoother on my S3 Trio 64V+ than with a Kyro II.
Footnote number 2 probably points to the original press release by Diamond Multimedia, quote: ""Providing up to a three-fold increase in performance over first generation 3D accelerators, S3's ViRGE/DX delivers the high-performance multimedia acceleration required for entertainment, business and Internet applications," said G. "Ven" Venkatesh, executive vice president, S3 Incorporated. "Leveraging the capabilities of the ViRGE/DX, the Stealth 3D 2000 Pro is a powerful addition to the award-winning Diamond Stealth 3D product line."" Footnote number 4 points to a chart that was posted on said press release, which had the Virge/DX reaching above 70 million (and was compared to Matrox, etc). You can still find those old press releases using the wayback machine. I would paste the link if I could...
Don’t you talk about my Virge DX like that! After coming from an Oak Technologies 512KB card that thing was amazing. 2Mb. Two!!! That was half my system ram. Ima sulk in the corner with my hurt feelings.
How is a pci voodoo 3 for dos games? I used to have an agp card but cannot remember if it worked in dos properly or not. And how is the 2d performance? Prior to my voodoo3 3000 I was running a Matrox Millenium with Vram expansion and a 3dfx voodoo 1 (I think it was a diamond)
Hey Phil, where can I get them aftermarket gpu heatsinks from as seen in your videos? I have searched high and low but I only see 4 pin bracket versions and I need a 2 pin bracket version for a radeon 9600. Thanks!
Part 2: Add active cooling to the GPU and at least passive cooling to the memory for further overclocking. Make it shine or blow up. Keep a fire extinguisher close by.
PSX or PC for Tomb Raider? Definitely PC! Even if you don't have a 3D accelerator card, the software renderer is basically as good as the PSX, but on the PC you can save ANYWHERE! My 1st computer was a Pentium 166Mhz (not MMX) with an S3 Trio 64V+. I "upgraded" it with a Virge DX and PowerVR cards somewhere down the line, eventually I sold it to a friend. Good decision back then, not of the same opinion now...
I had PII233 with S3Trio3D agp, performance was terrible. Thief the Dark Project had all white textures. Rendering textures was not available. Would be great to see reviews on early Ati with 3D capabilities
I had one of these back in the day that I upgraded the memory on. I think I paid 30 or 40 for the card in another 10 or 20 for the memory upgrade. I remember playing tomb raider on it with the patch and it ran extremely well but that was on a 166 MHz Pentium. Still it was vastly superior to the version I played on my friend's PlayStation
very nice video phil, i remember having an some s3 cards at some point, integrated graphics too. even the modern ones like the chrome are ok at best. >3 times the performance! too bad 3 times 0 is still 0.
Aside form as a pure MS-DOS card, I don't really see any use for the Virge. There are better 3D cards that you can have for similar prices, and sometimes less, simply because the "good" Virge cards have gotten a sort of cult status due to good MS-DOS performance (which can also be had with the S3 Trio or Vision cards). Other than for period correctness, there's no good reason to go with a Virge/DX/GX/VX. And they existed in a time when hardware 3D on the PC wasn't much to write home about.
Dark Forces 2 on Virge DX with 400x300 was my way to play it back in 1998 - many thanks for bringing back that memory. Currently I am actually playing that game again but on my Win98 monster P4 with GF5600FX and I don't need to tell you how "rich" I feel using that setup now, comparing to how poor I felt playing this on K5 100MHz and Virge DX in 1998. And this is why most of us do the retro PC hobby - to finally get the superior youth time games experience, using the machines which we could not even dream about back when Win95 or 98 were new 😊
Couldn't agree more
Try to play DF2 HD remake - it looks awesome with unreal engine
@@MichaelKrishtopa thanks for the hint - I will definitely give it a try
Work DF 2 From 1997 on a AMD CPU ?
Example the Athlon 5000+ or 6400+
with 8800 GT, on XP 32 Bit ?
I remember this time period, always trying to find video, motherboard, cpu combos that were fast enough and somewhat budget friendly to play the latest titles. Trident and S3 seemed to dominate the market. It was not until I got a Orchid Voodoo 1 and a 166Mhz Pentium 1 that gaming really became fun. Great video down memory lane, good to remember where we came from.
Your assessment is in line with my experience back then. I had one of these paired with a diamond voodoo 1 card to get the best of both worlds. The S3 was great for my collection of DOS games and for Windows, but the voodoo handled everything else.
Whenever I watch you playing these old games it makes me go back to play them myself. It's contagious. Thank you.
ViRGE cards are kind of like the Sega Saturn. They're not great at 3D but they're epic at 2D and it's just taken everybody a really long time to recognize that because of the era in which they were originally launched. If you want the best DOS gaming card, a ViRGE DX or GX really can't be beat. They're just not great 3D accelerators.
Back in the day i had my S3 Virge hooked up to a Voodoo card when it was released, it was the sweet spot at that moment for DOS and Windows. Where the Virge shined in DOS the Voodoo did great on Windows. The first real 3D in Windows was awesome to see back then, if you look at it now it's weird that you have such good memories of something that looks quite terrible compared to what we have nowadays. But still, it was a great experience seeing all these kinds of technologies grow up!
I have had a lot of luck messing around with the S3 cards. I agree they are not the most performant, but I still have fond memories using the S3 Virge in my Pentium MMX 200 system I built.
They did try and nobody could have foreseen 3dfx. The Savage was already greatly improved but just couldn't catch the Voodoos.
@@philscomputerlab I haven’t tested much with the Savage yet, so I’m eager to see how much better it is. I’ve heard mixed messages about it though based on other videos and articles.
@@mesterak Yea it's a novelty also. It has strong competition and also some driver issues. S3 was simply outgunned from all directions 😕
@@philscomputerlab that’s too bad because I would have loved to see them rise above being an underdog. I could say the same about Matrox.
@@mesterak The Savage4 does habe something could, it's Metal support, a proprietary API similar to Glide. So at least you can build a machine with a few games in mind and enjoy them. Unreal is one as well as Rune and others.
I remember seeing these cards still sitting on the shelves of Harvey Norman in 2000, same store was still selling a 4400ti in 2008 lol. edit: also that swan dive in Lost Valley *chefs kiss*
I use this card in my retro build! What I will say about the DX is that it's got really good stability and compatibility. I'm pairing it with a Voodoo 1, works nicely
1998 ..4mb S3 Virge GX2 .. my 1st Agp card pair with K6-2 ..play Quake 2 in MS ddraw mode.. best memory in pc gaming .
Hey, i still have that Sidewinder 3D Pro at 0:20 :) Had to repair it a couple of times over the years, but it's still going strong, and still is my favourite joystick to use on my retro machines
I have an S3 Virge On Board N1C3BD with 4MB RAM in my 486 build. I didn't run into any graphical bugs but I didn't even try any other video card in this build. It just works with the games. I had more issues with the sound card drivers and memory management, but MEMMAKER helped with the memory issue and I used UNISOUND as my sound driver and now my 486 machine is almost perfect :)
S3 Virge ruined my childhood 😅
Mine too, but at least I could run Final Reality, NFS3 and TR2 in the slide show mode 😂
Mine was ruined by the Inter i740, it had terrible performance and it was super glitchy. Games kept freezing, I couldn't play 2 matches in Worms Armageddon in a row, couldn't play 2 maps in NFS3 in a row... All sorts of issues. I got a Riva TNT2 and sold the i740 quickly.
Haha same! 😅
@@Dukefazon I bought a TNT2 after a S3 and everything worked!
I grew up poor so it did not have a chance to ruin mine 😅
Everybody had a Virge, it was like the SB16 of video cards.
Thank you for this video. In my card collecton I have some Virge/325 and some Virge/GX2. I just checked... there ary so many versions of the S3 Virge. I love the combination of S3 for 2D and Voodoo for 3D.
Back in the day I overlooked that card and its predecessor and stuck to my ATI Rage Pro. A few years ago I got a bunch of old PCI cards and also the S3. I quickly again dismissed that card, knowing it would not exactly "meet my demands". It was because of one of your recent videos that I actually revisited that card and started to play around with it. As expected, it was slow. But playing around with it was so much fun! Another nice aspect of this hobby is, because much of this stuff now is not that expensive, you can always revisit the past and play "what if" games. Things I could not have done back in the day because of the cost in its day back then. Thank you so much for giving many fresh ideas of what to try out with the old stuff. I always enjoy your videos!
Hi @Philscomputerlab, what about the S3 Trio3D? Would love to see that reviewed 👍
Me too, since it's basically an AGP ViRGE, IIRC
My dad had an S3 card when I was younger, I remember him being able to play quake with his 3d accelator and his computer having doom, duke 3d and quake 1 and 2. I don't remember what he had and neither does my dad. Sadly it's lost to time.
At that time I had a Rage Pro, if I recall correctly it was my first attempt at 3D: what a disappointment. Most games would not run on 3D, requiring driver updates or game patches. I ended going 3dfx, which became the reference for me: not only worked, but Glide was amazing. I recall the bad reputation from S3 for 3D cards, never even tried to get one. I stuck with 3dfx until bankruptcy, then moved to Nvidia Geforce 3 and later had some Ati cards: normally had the best performance/power consumption card. Also worth considering was the 3D card image quality, I recall there were some issues depending on the algorithm choices in the early 3D days.
Unrelated to retro, I recently visited your home country of Austria and had such a great time! ☺
I was in Salzburg for a couple of days once, but not recently at all. In fact it was as far back as 2005, so that has to count as semi-retro at the very least😁
@@BilisNegra Oh, that reminds me, I visited a retro museum in Vienna that's in the basement of an old WWII flak tower. So, that's relevant to the channel. 😅
Salzburg was especially beautiful. Castles, oh the castles. 😲
I like when you show old magazines and articles, like a peek into the past 😂 I also lived that era
Nice video Phil! As always your retro inspections are well deep studied!
Yeah. The DB50xg and Orchid Righteous 3D were definitely my best purchases that year. I don't even know why I bought the DB50xg, but it was an amazing purchase. I still have them both!
I would still have lots of fun
Great video, possibly using a S3 in my socket 7 build. Would be nice with a video of the ATI Mach 64 and Rage II PCI cards as well :)
I'm sorry, but the ad on page 127 of that October '97 edition of PC Player stole your thunder. 😂
So out of place now but so in the right place then.
These always made for a great 2D paring with a 3dfx, also these are plentiful and normally pretty cheap! Good compatibility with Commander Keen
Yes I was one such person. I had a Trio 64 and then added a Righteous 3D.
@@philscomputerlab Wow! what a fancy setup that would have been! What CPU were you rocking in there? Was it the 133mhz Pentium you mentioned in a video?
Hello Phil! Thank you so much for another amazing video, full of useful references and great games. Speaking about that, glad to see you tested Terminal Velocity. I remember how amazed I was when I saw it for first time, actually amazed to run it with min spec on my humble AMD K5 133Mhz, 8MB of Ram and a Trident 9440 PCI with 1MB haha. Cheers from Argentina!
Currently learning German so nice to combine my hobbies!!! 😁
Though unsure if DX or GX or VX, I had one (replacing the older 1MB S3 Trio64V+) with 4MB of RAM installed by default. It could run the first Tomb Raider game smoothly, but only in low resolution - high res mode felt like a "swift powerpoint presentation". It also ran TR2 and TR3 games, but with (close to) lowest settings available (HW acceleration mode). However, in TRC it hit its limits for me, as it couldn't display water as see-through properly - instead, it displayed "a layer of thick oil" 🙂 However, for all the 2D apps a/o games (including the "fake 3D" ones) I've ever used it with, this card just delivered flawlessly and I still think it was worth the money, in this regards, at least.
Later, my last graphics card I tried, was the S3 Savage 4, which was so much more powerful, comparatively - but also around that time, I started switching to notebooks (as I'm not much of a gamer anyway). Still, my memories of searching for the best drivers, installing them and then messing around with various settings in apps and games are amongst the best (of the PC era).
I always thought I had a Virge DX because my "Fast Driver" floppy said so.
But the card definitely had 8mb of vram using a second daughter card. Now Im wondering if it was actually a S3 Virge VX???
Came in a Gateway G-200 Pentium Pro 200 48mb EDO Ram Ensoniq Sound Card 33.6k modem.
The "Fast Driver" was the first time I understood how much a driver could improve performance. Monster Truck Madness was transformed!
My first computer had a S3 Virge DX, I remember a funky problem when I tried the Thief Demo back in the day.
The performance was okay, but all the textures on the walls and floor was all gray, lighting was still done and seemed to work fine.
Always wondered if that was a known bug with the S3 Virge.
Silky smooth video as always
4:24 When your 3D "accelerator" has half the performance of the already very slow Cirrus Logic Laguna 3D. 😅
For me, the Virge DX/GX2 are the ideal 2D cards to pair with a Voodoo 1/2 and a flexible (super) socket 7 with the aim of maximizing DOS compatibility.
The 2D picture quality is quite good in the cards I have, it scores well on the problematic DOS games matrix by Gonar, and the handful of S3D exclusives are a nice bonus. It does suck at 3D so I really want a Voodoo card for DOS Glide games and early Windows games.
In any case, you'd be hard pressed to find an unplayable DOS games with a setmul compatible CPU, a Soundblaster AWE32/64, a Virge and a Voodoo 2.
I had Riva 128. It was good in 2D and 3D too.
@@xsc1000 Sure, there were other good options for DOS compatiblity. One could argue that a Voodoo 3+ does well at everything.
Too bad the Rage Turbo didn't do well with those DOS games, because the A3D API was probably the second best after Glide.
@@xsc1000output quality was not the best. Obviously, it depends on the model...
I would have given anything to have a 3d accelerator in '97-'99. Even a bad one.
The Virge was often described as a 3D decelerator.
@@damienretro4416 Still, it can do 16 bit colors in games and texture filtering. At least in some games and at low fps.
But for a kid struggling with a 2d video card in the late 90s, it would have been something to look forward to🙂
I actually had an S3 Virge bundled with an AMD 5x86 bare bones system in 1997. Back then I didn't know any better. Then I tried to play some modern 3D games...
I wonder if choosing the exact same upgrade chips as the pre existing ones would make overclocking more stable. Maybe a heatsink on the GPU as well ?
Also maybe a full upgrade of the ram chips with the fastest possible, could be a fun challenge, making the fastest S3 Virge possible !
Thanks for the awesome video Phil!
Bleifuss 1 ViRGE/DX Patch hättest noch erwähnen können! Ansonsten super!!! 🙂
Pentium III based vintage PC is still the only system for all around vintage PC gaming platform for both Dos and Win9x.
Not long ago on eBay a STB Velocity 3D (Virge VX), boxed/sealed, showed up for $200.
Got bought up quickly, and sometimes I regret I wasn't the buyer.
My dad bought a video card once, and it was this weird AGP connection that didn't fit in to our motherboard. So we swapped it for an S3 ViRGE 🤦🏻🤦🏻🤦🏻
Ah, the legendary 3D decelerator once again. Still, a very interesting piece of history :)
I would probably try to get a S3 Savage 4 Extreme with DVI from Number Nine rather than trying my luck with Virge. Savage 4 is probably about the same price as Virge but with slightly more ram and better 3D performance for earlier 3D games.
Well Phil, I must admit I almost considered upgrading my virge to a virge/DX in the opening few minutes. But I think this just confirms my current approach, which isn’t to bother with S3D and just stick to DOS games. Great to see S3 were able to improve but based on this it looks like too little too late. Thanks for testing this out for us!
Purchased an S3 in 1998 for my Gateway 166 MMX CPU. Shit for 3d accelerating. Kept it though and bought an Apocalypse 3D graphic accelerator. I overclocked the Apocalypse 3D to an Apocalypse 5D.
I wonder why old games, even at lower frame rates, seem smoother compared to modern. Lately, I've been playing Descent on an emulated 486dx2-80 (via 86Box) and even though I don't think it's doing more than 20fps, it's perfectly playable...Looks and feels exactly like I remember. However, in just about any game after the year 2000 (maybe earlier), if I can't get more than 50 or 60fps, it might as well be a side show. Something changed and I can't put my finger on it...I think a lot of it is input lag but how did that get introduced?
While ViRGE/DX's performance is kinda better than a regular ViRGE itself... I wouldn't like it that much either... However, I would prefer to combine that ViRGE for 2D and then 3DFX Voodoo 1 or 2 with 3D... That would be more like of a dream GPU setup for me.
Great card to tinker with and also a great spare to use for testing.
Thank you for the hard work you put into this vid🎉
Danke für deinen Beitrag - Thank you !
Have you tried any of the agp varieties? I've got a pci Virge gx and agp gx2 and am curious about performance differences if any
The S3 Virge, along with any S3 prior to the Savage 3D, really wasn't an actual 3D accelerator, despite the claims that it was the first one S3 produced since it technically provided all key features.
It was famous for very good 2D features and performance, but notorious for bad 3D performance. ATI had similar struggles with their "Mach 64" Rage and GX line of GPUs.
The first 3D GPU that actually delivered was the Savage 3D ( and Rage Pro on the side of ATI ), but it was late on the market, could not keep up in performance, and had pretty buggy drivers.
Still I heard the S3 Savage 4 has become something of a collectors item, and ignoring the bugged out Savage 2000, the later Savage XP actually finally ended up pretty good - just way too late.
One issue I've found with most S3 chips, is that black is not black. You can see that at boot time where the background is more gray than black. Try to compare with a Tseng or Matrox or any other vendor really. I think sometimes it can be fixed through flashing a BIOS on the graphics cards, but not always.
yeah i recall a thread on vogons to modify the bios to fix this.
Yes, I see the same problem on my Virge DX. Black is gray and the image looks washed out. It's the "blanking pedestal bit" issue and there's a long thread about it on Vogons. Unfortunately, my card has no EEPROM, so I can't flash a fixed BIOS. The only solution is to run a tool to disable this bit in autoexec.bat.
Its an analog card, So you just lowered the brightnes setting on your CRT monitor :-) Now it can be problem for some VGA convertors or flat panels.
It's just a VGA BIOS bug on some cards. The thread at Vogons forums that @Pickle136 mentions also features some small utilities that attempt to fix this problem at boot, by removing the pedestal switch that elevates the black level. If you don't know how to patch your specific VGA BIOS, look for s3pedest and also S3BRIGHT on the thread called "S3 AGP Cards (and possibly others) Too Bright".
It's just a VGA BIOS bug on some cards. The thread at Vogons forums that Pickle136 mentions also features some small utilities that attempt to fix this problem at boot, by removing the pedestal switch that elevates the black level. If you don't know how to patch your specific VGA BIOS, look for s3pedest and also S3BRIGHT on the thread called "S3 AGP Cards (and possibly others) Too Bright".
Why was the chip still so common? The virge is pin compatible with its 2D predecessors and so the old design could be used for the new chip and advertised with 3D.
Many OEM manufacturers have done this.
Great video and info. I have S3 virge dx onboard. Matrox Mystique please next. 😅🙏🏻
The CPU calculates and sends at least 27 PCI bus register values for every triangle drawn on the ViRGE. 13 are slopes requiring an expensive division each. This is why a fast CPU matters.
The loss of S3 and 3dfx killed competition and innovation in graphic cards
Edit
Forgot how much better Jedi Knight looks with 3d acceleration (been over 10 years since I've been able to use 3d mode)
S3 was meh. Nvidia bought 3dfx.
@@oldschooldude8370 S3 became meh unfortunately. S3 was one of if not the most common chipset pre 3d acceleration era (one of the reasons why it's DosBox's defualt) and other then SLI Nvidia completely nuked 3dfx as soon as the deal was done
In my rigs never get S3 chip but that time any product coming with slow memory bug driver incompatibilty to any calls from early set D3D driver but the S3 968 vision have show a good video chip with a solid performance and accelerate video capacity
I bought the Diamond 2000 Pro brand new back in the day. I certainly did not buy it for DOS games, but it was what I could afford (and it promused faster 3D!) until i built a new PC with the newly released TNT card. I had no idea what i was missing until i played my first game on that TNT.
So no, no fond memories of the S3 cards. The advertising got me and im still bitter about it, lol.
It's always worth to remember that PS1 and N64 had very low resolutions, so playing in 320x200 in 3D game should be ok back then - but of course everything changed with Voodoo and expectations were that 640x480 is that minimal resolution for PCs - and then Virge became immediately obsolete due to that.
For some reason, I still find myself returning to the S3 Virge 375 DX to push it into doing things it wasn't supposed to do. I've been doing this since 1997 and I still wonder why.
I guess that I never got over all the wrappers and emulators that overpromised and underdelivered. Mostly it's about making OpenGL 1.1 and 1.2 titles work through the DirectX wrappers, but also there are some OGL to S3D-TK ones.
Super Video virge war mein erster 3d Beschleuniger
There one very rare card on S3 Virge VX chip card - STB Velocity with 8MB of RAM. It predcessor to the S3 ViIRGE GX/GX2 & 3D/2D Card on AGP bus
That's a lot of VRAM, nice!
Hey Phil! What's with the little beeper on the back of your Gotek? Does it try to emulate the sound of a real floppy? If so I'd love to know what pins to use; mine is almost completely unlabeled.
3:50 "The legendary Laguna 3D" I think you mispronounced "infamous" :p
An interesting variant of this series was the Trio3D. AGP support, at least physically, but breaking compatibility with some early S3D API games.
❤️
My first 3D Accelerator was the Matrox Mystique. Have you reviewed that card? I think I had a Riva TNT after that, then a Voodoo 2000
I have a GX2 I've been planning to do a video on for literally years but just kept putting it off. Now its a race! Lol
🤗😍
so if you use a S3 for 2d and a voodoo for 3d, that could be a cool build?
I remember when Quake 3 came out. Needless to say, I tossed out my ViRGE GX2 for a Voodoo3 2000.
Riva 128 for life!
Still use one as my favourite test card. However i have two Mystique's that are WAY faster in text/2d than the virge but for testing, it is good enough so i can keep my diamonds in safe heaven ^^. Got an S3 Trio64 the last days but... i decided to go on with the virge and sold the Trio.
I really like the idea of this card. It would be perfect for someone who was really into dos and didn't play games in windows so much. A lot of the first windows games were crappy 2d games anyways. But for playing games in windows that are 3d this thing is a non starter.
At the time I had the diamond 2000 3D, in fact I still have it, I used it with a pentium 200 mhz mmx, for anything 3D I used the voodoo 1 at the time, it was a correct plate for 2d and not much else. I tried the Diamond with Interstate 76 with 3D acceleration at the time and it was not good at all. Doing a review two decades later on a 2 ghz Athlon are the typical delirious videos that are usually seen on UA-cam (that something can be done does not imply which is a good idea), it is evident that if you have an AGP socket you are not going to use a mediocre PCI board, the way this was approached makes no practical sense.
The S3 ViRGE chipset was wonderful at DOS & Windows 2D gaming and productivity for it's time. It's a shame the 3D performance was so terrible compared to the 3dfx Voodoo cards! I had a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 card back then. I stuck to 2D or software mode 3D games until the 3dfx Banshee cards were released and I purchased a Diamond Monster Fusion card.
It also worked very well in Linux for 2D.
Phil is back with more content. I'd say it's improved but you can't improve on perfection.
I have one of those on display (yeah! finally my unused cards are on display, thanks to Tech Ambrosia's 3D printed GPU stands).
Back in the day, I was already using the superb Diamond Monster 3D (I don't remember with what 2D card), or more likely the disastrous original Matrox Mystique which I swapped to because having video editing features with the daughter card (That one I still have). The Virge and Virge/DX were always at the bottom in all the charts indeed and no enthusiast was considering them. The Matrox range were not far in the lack of gaming performance (If I recall correctly, framerates for the Mystique where higher than the S3 but texture management, effects and filtering were indeed terrible).
I remember with windows 3.1, when 3D acceleration was the hot topic, the Matrox Millenium and its professional 3D features, was always up in the podium and the Mystique alleguedly inherited that. I have later wondered about how or if, that impacted DOS games at all. Funny thing, a couple years ago an original Millenium landed in my hands gifted by a friend (in the same box than the S3). I should put together a working 486 and compare them in DOS. Well, I should but probably wont... I always say this kind of things after seeing your videos :)
A great review as always. Thanks!
Never had a S3 Virge. Kept my S3 Trio and added a Voodoo1 with the WAU Effekt. P.S. Musste das Video wegen der Lektüre anhalten und die Artikel schnell lesen ;-)
It's funny how the cinematic 24 Fps was more than acceptable for so many of these old games. they play just fine and are just as fun. Don't get me wrong, locked 30 or 60 is phenomenal but back then? It didn't matter.
Hello Phil! I am going to make a retro test for myself. I am going to call it "What if the P6 architecture succed to be the next P4 processor and netburst not succed to go into production."
You probably remember, that the mobile P4 processors with core name Banias and Dothan are true P6 architectural processors with additional SSE2 support. That processors has a S478-isch package, but it is elecrically not compatible to the desktop S478 motherboards. Luckily ASUS made a S479 to S478 adapter, which costs nowdays more than 250 Euro. With this adapter, and a Asus-478 moterboard I am able to build a true Pentium 4 (P6 - architectural) system. The FSB of the Banias and Dothan cores are from 400 to 533 FSB, which is very inportant boost, compare to the tualatin P3 1400MHz, which has only memory access of 133MHz on the front-side-bus. You probably remember, you made a test between a P3 1400MHz and a P4 1400MHz processor, where the conclusion was, that the P3 is faster, and the P8 must be more than 1,8GHz to reach the spead of the P3 even if the memory access of the P4 is much faster.
Now I am going to take the slowest Banias first, and test the difference against the fastest P3. And then the fastest Dothan, maybe I am going to try overclock it from 533 to 640 MHz FSB.
If you cross Sonic, Mario and Turrican, you get Jazz Jackrabbit.
Hi! I recommend this card when someone wants a cheap and fast card with a good 2D. I used to talk Virge DX + Voodoo2, but now I try a Voodoo3 or only the dx and a TNT2.
Ps. I am the only guy who have seen very few units of a model TNT2 in PCI?
Higher end PCI cards are indeed harder to find and command a premium...
Huh I never could get Descent II (with the original S3 ViRGE patch applied) to run under DOS with the ViRGE DX. Is there some later patch I don't know about?
Thanks for the effort Phil, but the S3, like the Matrox before the G200, only works for 2D cards.
0:13 unbelievable, the Yamaha DB50XG was under 200,- DM in 1996? That was a steal, most soundblaster alone did cost more. Just check out for what prices these Yamaha boards go now for.
Yeah, the 2D cores of those S3 cards were always excellent, even under directdraw. Outcast ran smoother on my S3 Trio 64V+ than with a Kyro II.
Footnote number 2 probably points to the original press release by Diamond Multimedia, quote: ""Providing up to a three-fold increase in performance over first generation 3D accelerators, S3's ViRGE/DX delivers the high-performance multimedia acceleration required for entertainment, business and Internet applications," said G. "Ven" Venkatesh, executive vice president, S3 Incorporated. "Leveraging the capabilities of the ViRGE/DX, the Stealth 3D 2000 Pro is a powerful addition to the award-winning Diamond Stealth 3D product line.""
Footnote number 4 points to a chart that was posted on said press release, which had the Virge/DX reaching above 70 million (and was compared to Matrox, etc).
You can still find those old press releases using the wayback machine. I would paste the link if I could...
Don’t you talk about my Virge DX like that! After coming from an Oak Technologies 512KB card that thing was amazing. 2Mb. Two!!! That was half my system ram. Ima sulk in the corner with my hurt feelings.
How is a pci voodoo 3 for dos games? I used to have an agp card but cannot remember if it worked in dos properly or not. And how is the 2d performance?
Prior to my voodoo3 3000 I was running a Matrox Millenium with Vram expansion and a 3dfx voodoo 1 (I think it was a diamond)
It works great!
Hey Phil, where can I get them aftermarket gpu heatsinks from as seen in your videos? I have searched high and low but I only see 4 pin bracket versions and I need a 2 pin bracket version for a radeon 9600. Thanks!
Practicaly my first gpu, paired with 433celeron and 256MB ram. Played mostly 2d games bcs all 3d games i had were barely playable.
Part 2: Add active cooling to the GPU and at least passive cooling to the memory for further overclocking. Make it shine or blow up. Keep a fire extinguisher close by.
PSX or PC for Tomb Raider? Definitely PC! Even if you don't have a 3D accelerator card, the software renderer is basically as good as the PSX, but on the PC you can save ANYWHERE!
My 1st computer was a Pentium 166Mhz (not MMX) with an S3 Trio 64V+. I "upgraded" it with a Virge DX and PowerVR cards somewhere down the line, eventually I sold it to a friend. Good decision back then, not of the same opinion now...
My first pc had this GPU.Just as Phil shows,it suited better for 2D games.
I had PII233 with S3Trio3D agp, performance was terrible. Thief the Dark Project had all white textures. Rendering textures was not available. Would be great to see reviews on early Ati with 3D capabilities
I had one of these back in the day that I upgraded the memory on. I think I paid 30 or 40 for the card in another 10 or 20 for the memory upgrade. I remember playing tomb raider on it with the patch and it ran extremely well but that was on a 166 MHz Pentium. Still it was vastly superior to the version I played on my friend's PlayStation
The alliance AT3D makes the S3 virge look like a good 3D card in comparison
very nice video phil, i remember having an some s3 cards at some point, integrated graphics too. even the modern ones like the chrome are ok at best.
>3 times the performance!
too bad 3 times 0 is still 0.
Thank you.
Aside form as a pure MS-DOS card, I don't really see any use for the Virge. There are better 3D cards that you can have for similar prices, and sometimes less, simply because the "good" Virge cards have gotten a sort of cult status due to good MS-DOS performance (which can also be had with the S3 Trio or Vision cards). Other than for period correctness, there's no good reason to go with a Virge/DX/GX/VX. And they existed in a time when hardware 3D on the PC wasn't much to write home about.