GL1zdA wrote on 2022-01-31, 22:11:

Which OEMs used the PCX2?

At least of the mainstream brands, Gateway's D6 series from D6-233 to D6-300XL. I haven't looked into Compaqs but wouldn't be surprised if their Presario lines had them (as Compaq had the Midas earlier), or even western NEC PCs

leileilol wrote on 2022-02-01, 18:43:

GL1zdA wrote on 2022-01-31, 22:11:

Which OEMs used the PCX2?

At least of the mainstream brands, Gateway's D6 series from D6-233 to D6-300XL. I haven't looked into Compaqs but wouldn't be surprised if their Presario lines had them (as Compaq had the Midas earlier), or even western NEC PCs

Gateway Dimension D6-300XL - a $5000 PC with a 35" monitor... with a $100 3D accelerator 😁 Sound more nuts than some extreme retro builds on Vogons.
Found a press release, Compaq Presario 8000 series had them.

Okay, I've decided to lower the bar a bit and started installing demos from the m3D CD. These run fine in 640x480 or even 800x600 with a P200. By fine, I mean playable at around 15-20 FPS, what is fine for me. GLQuake is 18.7 FPS (compared to 27.0 FPS on a Voodoo). I guess I was a bit optimistic by throwing Unreal at the PCX2 (5,49 average FPS vs 15.36 on the Voodoo at 512x384)

The PCX2 had 2 advantages over 3dfx Voodoo (2); 1: 1024x768 2: No pass-through.

Reading about the technology back then, it seemed like a technical superior way of working, however the Voodoo cards just made more fps and were a lot more supported in games.

That said - I recently bought an M3D - hoping to find an image of the original CD, which had a couple of cool custom screensavers using the PowerVR chip 😀

I don't recall whether I had my original M3D in my Celeron 300A@450 build, or it was the older K6233 though.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2022-02-02, 07:32:

The PCX2 had 2 advantages over 3dfx Voodoo (2); 1: 1024x768 2: No pass-through.

3. internal true color 😀. PCX2 operated internally in 24-bit regardless of host color depth, and had hidden registry keys to enable support for 32bpp video modes (which are faster, somehow). This was way ahead of the 32-bit color support politics of 1999 as PVR resolved it in their spec like... around 96 (or possibly earlier).

Imho the overcome of the pass-through cable was the best thing when in that past I almost bought it once it was in the stores sold for a cheap low price but I remember I went for the Voodoo3 2000, not the best choice too considering it was like four times more expensive. Thinking back there're so many alternatives too I could have easily lived with like a the Riva128, a Blade3D, a Voodoo1, some Savage3D whatever cheaper solution.
Anyway as said mantaining the video quality using the PCI bus was a nice choice and quite unique compared to other add-in cards like some multimedia decoders using the pass cables too or the feature connector that was more complicated to hope for a compatible and stable result, as tested lately with different standards, connectors, compatibility tables, port management drivers etc..
But I suppose also the PCX2 choice as suggested here in the past, had its problem using the bus maybe with different chipset or o.s. config. On my past test I never had problems in Win 95 while I think I had problems in Win 98 configs.

So I'm finally getting round to trying out the m3d I have had for a little while but never touched it. It's currently in my IBM PC330 with a P200MMX in and still using the onboard S3 Trio64V 1mb graphics. It's running Windows 95 with DirectX6.1 installed. I'm using Matrox's drivers.

Final Reality sees the card but when I try to run it, I get this error:

zbuffer:draw->AddAttachedSurface
DDERR_CANNOTATTACHSURFACE

Any ideas? I've dropped the screen down to 640x480x16 bit but still no go.

Cheers,
Steve

Ha I was last to post here. Anyway it runs Final Reality on Windows 98 OK.
Should it be able to run 3DMark 99? It complains it can't.

Tommaso72 wrote on 2016-05-22, 07:09:

I have a Matrox M3D accelerator in my Aptiva with a 133 Cyrix.

Like others said thats beginners mistake with PowerVR cards. They generally required a beefy FPU (even Kyro cards), while non-Intel collector CPUs like 6x86 and K6 were notable for having underpowered math coprocessing.
I would even add that a decent Intel chipset, that has decent IO speed and PCI implementation also comes in handy.
So to play around with PCX cards and still have a playable framerate get a Pentium II / Celeron with an Intel chipset motherboard.

Ive been doodling around with i440FX(yep FPM/EDO RAM!) Slot 1 machines and memory speed doesnt seem all that important compared to processor/FPU speed (from Pentium MMX to Pentium II) , and even i440FX seems to be doing better than SiS620/Via 693 with same 66MHz FSB processor.

Tommaso72 wrote on 2016-05-22, 07:09:

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@

Nah. So PCX2 like other very early 3D chipsets of its time acts like a general 3D accelerator. Will work with most things you throw at it with some bugs and caveats (and sometimes lots ,or games that flat out wont work), and will excel in the handful of titles specifically written for it, and has a few techdemos and screensavers that will only run on this card. Its more powerful than a 3dlabs Permedia 2, and possibly on par with Veríté V2200, Rage Pro, and Voodoo Rush, but the Voodoo 1 and Riva128 high end will beat it badly.
As said PCX will need a better processor to start with, but will scale better than a Voodoo 1 or others in its generation. Again the 1024x and 24 bit shenanigans others mentioned.

leileilol wrote on 2022-02-01, 18:43:

GL1zdA wrote on 2022-01-31, 22:11:

Which OEMs used the PCX2?

At least of the mainstream brands, Gateway's D6 series from D6-233 to D6-300XL. I haven't looked into Compaqs but wouldn't be surprised if their Presario lines had them (as Compaq had the Midas earlier), or even western NEC PCs

I can confirm that, my PCX1 came with a Compaq. The machine was used for measuring waterhights.
The owner had no idea what the purpose of that card was...it simply was "factory installed".
I took it out before the machine got in the metal-press.

Hello everyone
Im waiting to arrive my matrox m3d card, so i started planning a peridically correct build around it.
Have klamath p2-300, asus p2l97 mb, i think this good choice.
But im confused which graphic card, and sound card is the best for this configuration.
AGP or PCI?
Matrox, or S3, or Tseng?
Maybe nvidia tiva128 or 128zx?
Or something from ATI?
Sound card ensoniq soundscape elite, or audiopci?
Or awe64 from creative, gravis pnp?
Microsoft dound system maybe?
Im planning install games with powervr support

Year 1997 was interesting year thanks to switch agp from pci graphic, and from isa to pci with audio.

AGP will be fine with it, in my experience the worst video card to pair with PCX2 have been nVidia cards - their drivers don't get along.

AWE64 was mentioned among the list, that'd be the one i'd pick here. MSS is more 94 budget card stuff, GUS had driver issues. AudioPCI in 97 was rough and still as CPU eaty as the later 128 models. PCI sound cards are more of a last resort thing if you don't have an ISA slot OR if you're going for A3D/EAX on later games.

envagyok wrote on 2025-07-07, 05:44:

Hello everyone Im waiting to arrive my matrox m3d card, so i started planning a peridically correct build around it. Have klamat […]
Show full quote

Hello everyone
Im waiting to arrive my matrox m3d card, so i started planning a peridically correct build around it.
Have klamath p2-300, asus p2l97 mb, i think this good choice.
But im confused which graphic card, and sound card is the best for this configuration.
AGP or PCI?
Matrox, or S3, or Tseng?
Maybe nvidia tiva128 or 128zx?
Or something from ATI?

If you read about 20 posts earlier, you'll see that nVidia sometimes gives issues so is not recommended. Other than that it doesn't really matter for the PVR as the main card only needs to display the overlay it gets from the accelerator. So choose based on any other requirements you might have for the system, such as being able to run DOS well (avoid Matrox/ATi) or support for other APIs (S3, 3DFx....)

Sound card ensoniq soundscape elite, or audiopci?
Or awe64 from creative, gravis pnp?
Microsoft dound system maybe?

Again, doesn't reall matter for the PVR, so choose based on whatever other requirements you may have, including price, as there's a factor 50 difference in what you pay for an AudioPCI vs a Soundcape Elite. An old Windows Sound System card is 1993-era so hardly period correct and also getting hard to find and pricey. An original Aureal A3D is period-correct and aimed at a similar market to the PVR. Unfortunately there's not a lot of overlap between the two in terms of game support, Unreal is the only example I can think of.

Year 1997 was interesting year thanks to switch agp from pci graphic, and from isa to pci with audio.

The latter was not an improvement and indeed more high-end cards continued being made for ISA for a few years more.

@Leileilol

Thanks for info.
What do you think about ensoniq audiopci is rough?

@dionb
I have every soundcard what i listed, have more too..
For DOS/S3/Glide gaming, i already built a p233/s3 virge/3dfx voodoo/Sb pro2/awe32/gus classic/Roland midi pc.

Videocard i think, i make a dual proprietary pc (but tseng 6100 seems good too) with Nvidia NV1, or ATI ragr /CIF/, or Rendition v2200 /speedy3d), maybe Matrox Impression plus/millennium/mystique (i have this cards) and with pvr card.

Think Rendition v2200+pvr is the best.

Audiocard i have early Vortex A8820 from terratec and turtle beach.
Then awe64gold with memory expansion + aureal vortex combined make the best result?

AWE64 and A3D do completely different things - AWE64 is 100% SB compatible at hardware level (no TSRs needed) and can do decent-ish MIDI with EMU8k and offers hardware OPL3-emulation via CQM. It only goes up to 44kHz, which can in some cases cause pitch issues with Windows sound. By contrast the A3D is designed around positional audio and does support WSS and so 48kHz, but is a pretty lousy DOS card needing TSRs. Combining both should work, and it would be interesting to compare which sounds better in which application.

I have excellent results using the s3 virge as the 2d host card for the pcx2

maxtherabbit wrote on 2025-07-07, 19:08:

I have excellent results using the s3 virge as the 2d host card for the pcx2

I think s3 is good, but already i built a pc with s3 virge, and 3dfx voodoo for s3d and glide.

Good info in this thread.

Can confirm you may have trouble with some nVidia drivers and the PCX2, YMMV. I just cycled through a handful of the "good" Windows 98 detonators until one worked OK. The system it's in has a few PCI cards, and I also had to swap them around a bit to make them coexist happily. Having the PCX2 next to the "2D" card seemed to be the key, but again, YMMV.

At the end of the day, the only game I would play on it is MechWarrior 2 non-Titanium. It's inexplicably the nicest looking of its contemporaries. It's a fun bit of esoterica if you can get one cheap, but making the decision today, I'd probably put that money towards something else.

With which nvidia graphic card and driver work together your pcx2?

Every MGA/ATI 😉