Performance in what? I'm not sure if there will be a performance increase in any area. ViRGE/DX, /GX and later cards do have somewhat higher performance. VX has a faster RAMDAC so you can use higher refresh rates, though.

If you insist you could stay with Diamond, the respective model is called Stealth 3D 3000.

An ELSA Winner 2000 AVI/3D would be nice, too, but you probably won't find ELSA cards in the US.
I suppose VX cards have a better quality as other ViRGE cards in general because of the target audience (offices, high resolutions/refresh rates).

idspispopd wrote:

Performance in what? I'm not sure if there will be a performance increase in any area.

Mid-90's DOS games that use VESA, mostly. The ViRGE that's currently in my P233 seems slower than the Diamond Stealth 64 VRAM that was installed previously, but the Stealth 64 had incompatibility problems with my VFX1 VR helmet, which uses a 26- pin VESA feature connector.

Perhaps I should look for a ViRGE/GX card instead? From what I've read, GX has VESA 2.0 in hardware and should be substantially faster than the original ViRGE in 2D because it uses SGRAM instead of DRAM. Plus it should be broadly compatible with older DOS games. I just want to know which are the best cards that implement the ViRGE/GX chipset.

To reiterate, I'm not concerned with 3D acceleration, I just want a card that has good 2D DOS performance and broad compatibility with games that use VESA modes.

Anybody have any experience with the STB Nitro?

As far as I know, it gives better VESA speed results by addressing these points:
- Use MTRRLFB or Fastvid, but requires Intel Pentium Pro/2/3/4 or AMD K6
- Increase FSB speed.

I have a noname Virge GX (385) card which is faster and supports more VESA modes 'out of the box' than all my other Virge (325, 375) cards. It has the 34-pin VESA connector though.

VESA mode compatibility can be fixed with the S3VBE utility for all variants, and there used to be a clock utility (MCLK) to speed up lame cards.

My virges always seemed slower than my trio64 for pure dos usage, can't imagine the trio having faster memory, weird things

IIRC I have benchmarked both a Stealth 2000 and a 3000... the DX chipset was faster! I once thought the 3000 is better...

edit: here it is: Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PCI 4MB vs Diamond Stealth32...Head on..

VX uses VRAM memory, which is better performing for high resolution, high color depth GUI operation. It targets those Matrox Millennium and S3 Vision 968 people. It is slower for 3D than Virge 325. I think the Virge chip is clocked lower.

fyi I had a Stealth 3D 3000 and it got blurry at high resolution. Diamond typically built junk.

Hmm... would there at least be a noticeable 2D performance improvement in switching from the original Stealth 3D 2000 to the Stealth 3D 2000 Pro?

I guess the ultimate question is between the DX, GX, and VX chipsets, which would be best for high-res unaccelerated DOS gaming in titles like NFS, Quake, Flight Unlimited, EF2000, etc, while still offering broad VESA compliance and compatibility with older titles?

swaaye wrote:

It is slower for 3D than Virge 325.

depends

first gen Virge used Trio64V+
second Trio64V2 (30% faster, but no more VRAM)
third - added mpeg2 engine?

SiliconClassics wrote:

Hmm... would there at least be a noticeable 2D performance improvement in switching from the original Stealth 3D 2000 to the Stealth 3D 2000 Pro?

I guess the ultimate question is between the DX, GX, and VX chipsets, which would be best for high-res unaccelerated DOS gaming in titles like NFS, Quake, Flight Unlimited, EF2000, etc, while still offering broad VESA compliance and compatibility with older titles?

DOS VBE speed comparison
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/benchmark … tware-rendering

To jump right to the top of DOS and GUI performance, I suggest getting a NVIDIA or 3dfx card. You also get good compatibility for 2D and nice 3D capabilities.

Putas wrote:

depends […]
Show full quote

swaaye wrote:

It is slower for 3D than Virge 325.

depends

first gen Virge used Trio64V+
second Trio64V2 (30% faster, but no more VRAM)
third - added mpeg2 engine?

I just meant that I've read in reviews that Virge VX is slower than Virge 325 for 3D rendering.

swaaye wrote:

I just meant that I've read in reviews that Virge VX is slower than Virge 325 for 3D rendering.

Yes, should have better separate it, because my findings regarding 3d are opposite.

I think we ned to consolidate information on all these bloody Virge cards. I am thinking of putting an S3 card in my PCI 486 system, but I am confused as hell.

If I were to buy say a Virge 325, can I rest assured that they all run their memory and core at the same speed? Or are some faster or slower than others? Are they backward compatible with Trio64V+ drivers?

If I went with something like a Virge 375 (DX), is it possible to patch all the S3D games for the original Virge 325 to run on it?

Is there any difference between an EDO DRAM based Virge 385 (GX) and a Virge DX?

Has anyone benchmarked all the variations in DOS?

As you intend to use the card in conjunction with your VFX1 helmet, I'd avoid VRAM-based cards and stick with DRAM for compatibility reasons. The FAQs on the internet suggest that VRAM has some compatibility problems with the VFX1. I can confirm that the Diamond Stealth 3000 gave strange problems with my helmet (all kinds of random red and green pixels in the image).

In the end I settled on a Tseng ET6000 based card, the Hercules Dynamite 128, which supports the maximum resolution and colour depth of the VFX1 on the VESA connector. Unfortunately, while it has good 2D performance in DOS, the ET6000 is not as compatible with DOS games as the S3 chips.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

If I were to buy say a Virge 325, can I rest assured that they all run their memory and core at the same speed? Or are some faster or slower than others?

There seems to be a "default" speed for each Virge chip, and most manufacturers adhere to the reference clocks. Cheap models are sometimes clocked slower.

If you're going to use the card mainly for DOS on a 486, none of the speed differences will have much of an effect.

I have 2 Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 cards, and 2 Stealth64 Trio64V+ cards. All 4 of them have problems syncing with an LCD monitor - they blink to black every few seconds. The Diamond cards aren't built right, or programmed right, or something. They work fine with CRTs though, which I guess is why they got away with it in their day.
If I was shopping for a card from that time period, I'd avoid Diamond.

Lennart wrote:

As you intend to use the card in conjunction with your VFX1 helmet, I'd avoid VRAM-based cards and stick with DRAM for compatibility reasons. The FAQs on the internet suggest that VRAM has some compatibility problems with the VFX1.

Thanks for the tip, I wasn't aware of that.

I think I'll go with a Stealth 3D 2000 Pro and hope that the ViRGE/DX chipset is faster than the original ViRGE. I'll post some benchmarks.

Putas didn't mention it and I forgot about it but he has done a lot of tests on the various Virge chips. See his site.
http://vintage3d.org/

Virge DX and GX are the second generation and improved but they are still not exactly good for 3D. You really just want to use S3D games with Virge. But then I should say that some S3D have problems on these - for example Mechwarrior 2 has mipmap problems.

I put nice comparsion of s3 cards on vogonswiki into S3 cards section.

Generally dos performance depends most on clocking of cards. You can find DX cards with 45MHz (almost all oems), but they can go to 72Mhz (in chart are 3 clocked dx cards too - 50&66&72MHz). Virge VX are slow because theyre clocked only to 45MHz. Trio 3D/2x and Virge GX2 cards are fastest because they have clocks 80+Mhz. But you can always find lower clocked cards.

Ofc you can try use MCLK to overclock them, but youre limited by used memory.

Fastest of mine DX cards is diamond. They made expensive cards, but mostly fastest, so you should try to get this one, if you go after DX.

Thank you vlask, that's the card I'll buy. There are several different revisions, with B seeming to be the most common. Are there any drawbacks to getting a revision D or G board? Some later versions have BIOS v1.14, which might be preferable to v1.01? Also, on your web site, revision D is the only one that has a TV output - did other revisions include it?