I love those cards, and PowerVR in general, because they're very different from all other 3d accelerators.
I did a blog about some programming experiments on my PCX2 a while ago: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/just … it-real-part-6/

Their unique architecture delivers a great blend of performance and image quality, as long as you have good software support. MiniGL is limited (although Quake 1 and 2 work a charm), and D3D support isn't too great either. Games with direct PowerVR support are few and far between, but well worth it, such as Tomb Raider.

And yes, the unique architecture (tile-based deferred rendering) also means that you don't need a passthrough cable.
The card works by opening a surface via DirectDraw on the host card, and then blting each tile to that surface over the PCI bus as it finishes rendering. This card can even work without a z-buffer or backbuffer.

Nice testing on the blog! One thing I do remember was that in late 1998 I think this card was very cheap compared to the Voodoo1/2 and in fact at those times I was thinking buying one. But I went for a just released Voodoo3 AGP for my K62-350. Certanily fast but cpu-limited even when I upgraded later to the 500Mhz version. Ahhhh K62.... 😁

You should definitely try some of the games with direct support. See here for a list: 3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
Since you mention Quake and HL you could also try Unreal, the K6-2 might even be the bottleneck here.
You might also want to read through PowerVR Fun Thread

you might enjoy powervr fun thread

386SX wrote:

I was thinking buying one. But I went for a just released Voodoo3 AGP for my K62-350.

You dodged a bullet!

Scali wrote:

I did a blog about some programming experiments on my PCX2 a while ago: https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/just … it-real-part-6/

Great read!

As I see it, the card is nice for two reasons, which are Tomb Raider and MechWarrior 2 non-Titanium. And that's about it. 😀

firage wrote:

As I see it, the card is nice for two reasons, which are Tomb Raider and MechWarrior 2 non-Titanium. And that's about it. 😀

I did some comparison testing and went through all the different API versions of Tomb Raider and the Power VR version is certainly the best IMO

There was also a car game with nice high resolution graphic.. 😉

Ultim@te Race Pro? That's what I use to test out my PCX2s.

Artex wrote:

Ultim@te Race Pro? That's what I use to test out my PCX2s.

Yeah I didn't remember the title! I remember it was one of the advertised games for this card (maybe also in the retail box images..)..

The PCX2s shipped with Ultim@te Race not-pro, which is SGL exclusive. though it can play the Pro version well too

don't forget it can play the only accelerated Virtual On PC port. 😁

Doing some testing with:

Athlon 900 Thunderbird
1,5GB DDR400 on Nforce2
Mystique PCI
and obviously the Matrox M3D

It's incredible how fast this card is (for its time obviously) with a fast cpu. Half life runs (in its own way 😁) almost at 1024 and still quiet "smooth". Too bad for the blocky illumination points but still interesting result. Quake runs amlost flawless.

My favorite use is probably Mechwarrior 2 because the fogging used in the PowerVR version is neat.

Sorry to bring back such an old thread, but I thought it would be appropriate to not start a new thread for a simple question. I have a Matrox M3D accelerator in my Aptiva with a 133 Cyrix. I am a little confused about this accelerator card. From what I read it is only good for a few games and even then needs the PowerVR version of the game@ So does this mean even with the drivers that come with this card installed the card does nothing at all unless you have a proper version of the game and the game was specifically written for it@ A regular graphics card only needs the drivers and it works, is it different with this card@

I hope this makes sense, I just got off a long shift. Also my keyboard question mark does not work from a bad coffee spill so I have been using @ in its place 🤣. Thanks in advance!

Tommaso72

Tommaso72 wrote:

Sorry to bring back such an old thread, but I thought it would be appropriate to not start a new thread for a simple question. I have a Matrox M3D accelerator in my Aptiva with a 133 Cyrix. I am a little confused about this accelerator card. From what I read it is only good for a few games and even then needs the PowerVR version of the game@ So does this mean even with the drivers that come with this card installed the card does nothing at all unless you have a proper version of the game and the game was specifically written for it@ A regular graphics card only needs the drivers and it works, is it different with this card@

I hope this makes sense, I just got off a long shift. Also my keyboard question mark does not work from a bad coffee spill so I have been using @ in its place 🤣. Thanks in advance!

Tommaso72

So you are correct when it comes to more modern systems. These days everything is either DirectX or OpenGL. But in the very early days of 3D acceleration every cards API was proprietary. Lots of games were available in the form optimized for particular cards. It was a form of marketing as far as I can tell. Sometimes you could buy a video card and it would come with a version of a game that was specifically designed to work with the card it was bundled with. Often you can find patches on the internet to turn a standard copy of a game into a 3DFX, or a PowerVR, or an S3D or whatever version of a game.

I used to have an M3D myself. I am really not sure whatever happened to it. It was really cheap and really good graphics for what it was.

Tommaso72 wrote:

with a 133 Cyrix.

"Accelerator" wouldn't be a word i'd use when you mix a PVR with a non-Intel of the 5th generation.

Rhuwyn wrote:

So you are correct when it comes to more modern systems. These days everything is either DirectX or OpenGL. But in the very early days of 3D acceleration every cards API was proprietary. Lots of games were available in the form optimized for particular cards. It was a form of marketing as far as I can tell. Sometimes you could buy a video card and it would come with a version of a game that was specifically designed to work with the card it was bundled with. Often you can find patches on the internet to turn a standard copy of a game into a 3DFX, or a PowerVR, or an S3D or whatever version of a game.

The PowerVR PCX2 (the chip used on the Matrox M3D) does support Direct3D though. So you should be able to run a variety of earlier D3D games (since it's such an early card, it isn't that fast and doesn't support that many features, so newer games aren't going to work).
You will have no problem running the first Direct3D benchmark Final Reality on it, for example (this is basically the first '3DMark' by FutureMark).
See this playlist of Direct3D software on PCX2 by leileilol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGv-YL-HlMw&l … 87622B165C5FD19

Thanks for the response, you both answered exactly what I wanted to know. When i said I had a Cyrix, it is actually a 686mx 133, or something like that. I guess a faster chip would be better but not really for the games I intend to play, like from early DOS to 1997 or there about. It came originally in my IBM Aptiva and I kind of want to keep it original. Thanks again!

Tommaso72

Tommaso72 wrote:

actually a 686mx 133

Speed on that won't be great either. The PCX2's drivers demand a strong FPU