VivienM wrote on 2023-10-30, 21:50:

But Voodoo had to be PCI, if only because they probably wanted to also be compatible with all the large-OEM systems that had sol […]
Show full quote

songoffall wrote on 2023-10-30, 12:16:

But having an AGP Virge and a PCI Voodoo is kind of funny.

But Voodoo had to be PCI, if only because they probably wanted to also be compatible with all the large-OEM systems that had soldered-on-motherboard graphics. Lots of real IBMs, IBMs-nee-Acer, Packard Hells, Compaqs, etc without AGP slots. And this is an era where gamers were relatively young, and I'm sure it was seen as an important design goal to have something that an older teenager could afford and quietly stick into the family PC. AGP couldn't have delivered that.

The AGP Virge was aimed at a different markets - the white box clone shop or the Dell/Gateway/Microns of the world, both of whom shipped systems with a lot fewer things on the motherboard. (My 1998-era IBM-nee-Acer had on-motherboard audio and video, both very lousy. Only expansion slot used out of the box was an ISA slot, or at least I think it was ISA, for a modem. My 2000-era Dell had an AGP video card, a discrete SB Live Value, a discrete 3Com Ethernet card, and a discrete PCI modem. So... that's four cards, and I didn't even pick the optional TV tuner card or the optional SCSI card or... I'm sure Dell offered other ways of filling up slots.) And, well, if those guys are going to embrace AGP, why wouldn't they offer a range of AGP options? And it would be unnecessarily confusing for the low-end configurations to ship with a PCI video card and an empty AGP slot while the higher-end configurations had a populated AGP slot - one of the things Dell, at least, did back then was have a standardized slot order, so if I ordered a Dell and you ordered a Dell, both of our sound cards (regardless of which ones we picked) would be in the same slot.

And, I might add, look at it from an upgradeability standpoint. If you got an AGP Virge in your white box or Dell, and a few years later, something like the TNT2 or GeForce 2 GTS is out, you pull out the Virge, plonk the TNT2 in, and boom, done. If you got a soldered-on video chip on your IBM or your Compaq, you are... almost completely SOL... for those kinds of upgrades. (Well, I guess you are the reason why PCI GF2 MXes and other such things existed)

That's exactly what I said earlier - that I see the value of this card being an OEM option, because OEMs will go for something cheap and readily available and leave the upgrading to the customer. And put "next-gen AGP 3D accelerator" on the description.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-30, 22:15:

Many people never had AGP. A lot of systems from big OEMs may have used AGP internally to a soldered on-motherboard video chip, […]
Show full quote

midicollector wrote on 2023-10-30, 22:04:

At the time when agp first came out, everyone who owned a pc prior to agp only had pci (myself included). I think that’s a big reason cards were still made for pci, a lot of people still had pci machines.

Many people never had AGP. A lot of systems from big OEMs may have used AGP internally to a soldered on-motherboard video chip, but didn't give you an AGP slot. Then you have the rise of chipsets with integrated graphics like the i810, the i845whatever-it-was-that-was-used-on-the-Dell-2400/3000-type machines, etc - none of those were on boards with AGP slots either.

For a huge chunk of machines, PCI remained the only viable option. The AGP slots were mostly on the white box systems and the higher-end Dell/Gateway/etc systems.

Also, one other thing - AGP is limited to one card. Back when most cards could only drive one monitor even if they had both DVI and VGA outputs (I am trying to remember when the first cards to support multiple monitors came out...), if you were one of the rare people with dual monitors, you needed a PCI card to drive your second monitor.

Case in point, my Compaq Deskpro 2000 has a 440LX AGPSet chipset, but even the onboard chip is a PCI Matrox Mystique. It uses a riser board for expansion slots - 3 PCI, 3 ISA, you can only have 5 cards at the same time. It's a 1999 system.

songoffall wrote on 2023-10-30, 22:16:

That's exactly what I said earlier - that I see the value of this card being an OEM option, because OEMs will go for something cheap and readily available and leave the upgrading to the customer. And put "next-gen AGP 3D accelerator" on the description.

Yup! But isn't that a good thing compared to the alternatives?

I'm pretty sure some large retail OEMs talked about AGP in their description and didn't even give you an AGP slot, just a soldered-via-AGP video chip of some sort. And they probably weren't exactly soldering the best GPU money could buy...

It was only the good OEMs (e.g. Dell or Joe's Clone Shop) that were at least giving you a proper discrete AGP card. Even if it was something a little cheap and low end... it was a lot less cheap and a lot less low-end than many other options.

Same with, say, sound cards. The ~1999 lowest-end discrete sound card a Dell or Joe's Clone Shop would sell you was overwhelmingly likely to be better than HP or IBM-nee-Acer's pre-AC97 onboard sound.

songoffall wrote on 2023-10-30, 22:16:

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-30, 21:50:

AGP Virge

because OEMs will go for something cheap and readily available and leave the upgrading to the customer. And put "next-gen AGP 3D accelerator" on the description.

So basically a scam, bait and switch, exactly what Virge was build for in the first place 😀. "3D hardware accelerator" on paper only. Its AGPness is totally useless to anyone but system builder claiming that "AGP 3D accelerator" in marketing material. To user upgrading to proper graphic card, like titular TNT2 M64, it makes no difference where it was plugged as long as motherboard has AGP slot.

Virge is, in fact, a hardware accelerator which is about 3x faster than software rendering on high-end Pentium MMX. It was just not enough to suddenly render 4x times more pixels with linear filtering. And S3 didn't really improved performance significantly after DX variation.

Rage 128 was also often part of "128-bit graphics" OEM euphemisms

leileilol wrote on 2023-10-31, 03:35:

Rage 128 was also often part of "128-bit graphics" OEM euphemisms

Yeah, that card is like a cockroach - no matter what box of old gear I open, there seems to be a couple inside. I tried gaming on those. It was... discouraging. ATI really got good after Radeon.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-10-31, 03:27:

Virge is, in fact, a hardware accelerator which is about 3x faster than software rendering on high-end Pentium MMX. It was just not enough to suddenly render 4x times more pixels with linear filtering. And S3 didn't really improved performance significantly after DX variation.

Virge was an interesting card when it was first released. It worked best on fast MMX Pentium CPUs, but it wasn't fast enough to be the breakthrough 3d acceleration required. Then came Voodoo and made Virge obsolete as a 3d card.

songoffall wrote on 2023-10-31, 04:16:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-10-31, 03:27:

Virge is, in fact, a hardware accelerator which is about 3x faster than software rendering on high-end Pentium MMX. It was just not enough to suddenly render 4x times more pixels with linear filtering. And S3 didn't really improved performance significantly after DX variation.

Virge was an interesting card when it was first released. It worked best on fast MMX Pentium CPUs, but it wasn't fast enough to be the breakthrough 3d acceleration required. Then came Voodoo and made Virge obsolete as a 3d card.

I once tried a Virge DX on a Pentium 233 MMX system and performance was abysmal. It even caused MP3 playback to skip when scrolling or performing other draw operations on the Windows desktop. I did not get this with other era-appropriate graphics cards like those dreaded ATi Rage-cards or a Matrox anything - and both were faster in games and on the desktop. Maybe on a really early Pentium, like a sub-100 MHz this thing was good?

leonardo wrote on 2023-10-31, 12:30:

I once tried a Virge DX on a Pentium 233 MMX system and performance was abysmal. It even caused MP3 playback to skip when scrolling or performing other draw operations on the Windows desktop. I did not get this with other era-appropriate graphics cards like those dreaded ATi Rage-cards or a Matrox anything - and both were faster in games and on the desktop. Maybe on a really early Pentium, like a sub-100 MHz this thing was good?

I posted some of my experiences with the Virge DX here.

In short, the Virge's S3D performance is comparable to software rendering on a Pentium classic 133. On any CPU more powerful than that, software rendering will likely be faster, albeit less feature complete (no 16-bit color, no bilinear filtering etc).

songoffall wrote on 2023-10-31, 04:13:

leileilol wrote on 2023-10-31, 03:35:

Rage 128 was also often part of "128-bit graphics" OEM euphemisms

Yeah, that card is like a cockroach - no matter what box of old gear I open, there seems to be a couple inside. I tried gaming on those. It was... discouraging. ATI really got good after Radeon.

A quality Rage 128 Pro (not Ultra or some OEM nonsense) is really quite a decent card with mature drivers.
Those cards didn't take the huge penalty with 32bit colors like many cards from competitors....I'm looking at you TNT2.
People love to hate them as back in the day driver support was...not great. They also tend to lump all the Rage cards into one category.
There was quite the plethora of them, it's honestly hard to keep track of.
But a good Rage 128 with solid clocks and 128bit memory interface was quite a good performer.
They also had excellent image quality, and nice media options as well.
Like I said a bit of and unfair wrap, and they excelled at 32bit color.

1998 Rage 128 was the first proper fully working ATI 3D accelerator, no ifs no buts everything just ran without glitches. Coincidentally it delivers similar performance to TNT2 M64. For Matrox it was 1999 G400 where calling the card a 3D wasnt a fraud any more, prior 1998 G200 was sold with a promise of opengl support which didnt materialize for 2 years.

I recently just sold my TNT2 Ultra. It did Quake 3 @ 1024x768 max settings at 36 FPS average (demo001). Playable but better at 800x600.

I went from Quake 2 to Quake 3, Half-life with no graphics card update...

The best value cards for AGP though was probably the Geforce 4 MX 440. 128-bit, DDR RAM, high-ish speed, good price...

MikeSG wrote on 2023-11-06, 12:54:

I recently just sold my TNT2 Ultra. It did Quake 3 @ 1024x768 max settings at 36 FPS average (demo001). Playable but better at 800x600.

I went from Quake 2 to Quake 3, Half-life with no graphics card update...

The best value cards for AGP though was probably the Geforce 4 MX 440. 128-bit, DDR RAM, high-ish speed, good price...

What CPU were you using with the TNT2 Ultra?