Yeah I think it's just advertising nonsense. Other companies like Neomagic also advertised their chips as supporting D3D software rendering.

I think Neomagic was a different story. They had real 3D accelerator, but they have some problems with drivers and hardware stability so they had enabled D3D driver only in early revisions of their drivers (and only ones for OEMs). I heard about people running hardware 3D with NeoMagic 256XD on their laptops (Toshiba and Sony) until they did a clean installation of Windows.

diagon_swarm wrote:

I think Neomagic was a different story. They had real 3D accelerator, but they have some problems with drivers and hardware stability so they had enabled D3D driver only in early revisions of their drivers (and only ones for OEMs). I heard about people running hardware 3D with NeoMagic 256XD on their laptops (Toshiba and Sony) until they did a clean installation of Windows.

Really? That's interesting. I only saw people asking about why there was advertised 3D but it didn't appear usable in any programs.....

diagon_swarm wrote:

... until they did a clean installation of Windows.

Which got them rid of the DirectX beta that was accidentally always showing d3d support. I did not find a difference among Neomagic drivers.
Cirrus was developing 3d accelerator for long time, so I spent some time on this, but somehow they really could not deliver until Laguna3D. I guess insiders could tell amazing stories about messy Cirrus before collapse.

swaaye wrote:

Really? That's interesting. I only saw people asking about why there was advertised 3D but it didn't appear usable in any programs.....

There were some people on the Internet who asked why their VAIO (with NeoMagic) lost a D3D acceleration when they reinstalled Windows (they said it worked well before). I had Toshiba T8000 (NM 256AV 2,5MB) and tried my hardest but never get D3D working. T8000 was one of laptops that had D3D and OpenGL 3D acceleration mentioned in every press release. Few years later all mentions disappeared and they answered with this:

Dear Sir, Attached is the Win 2000 & WIN ME latest driver.We cannot guarantee that this will resolve the problem you are experie […]
Show full quote

Dear Sir,
Attached is the Win 2000 & WIN ME latest driver.We cannot guarantee that
this will resolve the problem you are experiencing. Please also be aware
that by accepting the driver, you release NeoMagic of any and all
liabilities resulting from the use of this driver. You also agree not to be
release copies for this driver. The driver is to be stored for single use
only.
If you continue to experience problems, you should contact the notebook
manufacturer directly.
Please also be aware that Neomagic MagicMedia 256AV does not support 3d and
OpenGL because it does not have enought memory to support for that.

Thank you for your inquiry
NeoMagic Tech Support" (October 14th, 2000).

...this is funny because before this laptop I had a Toshiba 490XCDT with S3 Virge/MX (2MB) and used D3D and even OpenGL hardware accelerated.

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Putas wrote:

I guess insiders could tell amazing stories about messy Cirrus before collapse.

This is something I would like to read about 😀.