Danilo_Dias wrote on 2026-10-22, 11:59:

Is this card worst than a generic trident 2d card?

Can it run dos era games until blood or duke?

Itll run Duke and Blood just fine at 640x480 and possibly 800x600 too, itll need the memory upgraded for 1024x768.

what kind of memory it can be used to upgrade? is it too expensive? thanks!

Danilo_Dias wrote on 2026-10-22, 13:46:

what kind of memory it can be used to upgrade? is it too expensive? thanks!

What is the part number of the 4 chips to the left of the sockets, are they all the same? Post that part number and/or a high resolution image we can easily read and I suspect we will be able to find the chips you need, if you Google <that part number> dram are any found? In the past I have found similar chips on eBay.

How much memory does it report as having at the moment. When finding the chips effective price we need to know which country you live in, I added mine to my profile.

The S3 Virge, just like the S3 Trio64 cards, are actually really solid, fast cards for Dos gaming. It's an excellent choice for a PCI based Dos build.

Plus, you get crappy 3d support thrown in for free! 😀

its written vg264265bj waozdo -35
just tested on a windows xp machine here that had a lot of pci slots free. it shows 2MB on everest
S3 VIRGE/DX/GX 70MHZ core
ram sdr 70mhz
im from brazil
does adding more ram benefit 2d games on dos?

You need enough to have a linear framebuffer for vesa aware titles.

You need ~3mb of it for 1024x768 8bit color. (4mb in the card will satisfy)

You should be able to do 800x600 8bit color out of the box, as-is.

You might need to use a write-combining tsr to get good performance.

Danilo_Dias wrote on 2026-10-22, 17:24:

its written vg264265bj waozdo -35

AFAIK 4 x https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/940024558328 is what you need to get, brazil may be possible, check https://www.google.com/search?q=VIS+VG264265BJ-35+in+brazil

Each one is 265Kx16-Bit so 4 is 2MB and 8 will be 4MB.

With extra memory you can run higher resolutions/depths, my 4MB card supports as below, how does this compare to what is currently supported with your 2MB card?

Note: your card may be slightly different.

Danilo_Dias wrote on 2026-10-22, 17:24:

just tested on a windows xp machine here that had a lot of pci slots free. it shows 2MB on everest

wierd_w wrote on 2026-10-22, 17:32:

You might need to use a write-combining tsr to get good performance.

Note: Windows XP does not support a write-combining tsr, the XP driver should do the same job.

wierd_w wrote on 2026-10-22, 17:32:

You need enough to have a linear framebuffer for vesa aware titles. […]
Show full quote

You need enough to have a linear framebuffer for vesa aware titles.

You need ~3mb of it for 1024x768 8bit color. (4mb in the card will satisfy)

You should be able to do 800x600 8bit color out of the box, as-is.

You might need to use a write-combining tsr to get good performance.

That's a mistake I think.

1024 x 768 at 1 byte per pixel = 786432 bytes. Easily within the framebuffer of a 1mb card.

Linear framebuffer support for vesa modes was only introduced in VBE 2.0 - it wasn't part of the spec before then, and plenty of applications used Vesa 1.0/1.2 prior to the introduction of 2.0.

wierd_w wrote on 2026-10-22, 17:32:

That's a mistake I think.

Yes, well spotted and I concur. My 2MB S3 supports 1280 x 1024 with 8 bits per pixel and 16 @ 1024 x 786

thank you very much everyone!

Honestly much cheaper and less hassle to just buy another card with more memory if you really want/need more than 2MB. You mentioned DOS, for which you really don't need more than 2MB anyway.

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-10-22, 23:29:

Honestly much cheaper and less hassle to just buy another card with more memory if you really want/need more than 2MB.

Superficially yes, but the deciding factor is which OSes you wish to use the card with. I have "more GPUs than sense" and on NT V3.51 systems the easy option is to use my 4MB Matrox MGA-2064W Millennium (Storm) as the drivers are "built in". I make similar decisions for my Power PC NT V4.00 SP2 and Alpha PWS 600au + DS20 NT4 SP6 + W2000 RC1/RC2 systems.

Later, 2000s drivers for virges actually disable the 3d part so it goes into Trio64V+ tier

megatron-uk wrote on 2026-10-22, 21:41:

That's a mistake I think. […]
Show full quote

wierd_w wrote on 2026-10-22, 17:32:

You need enough to have a linear framebuffer for vesa aware titles. […]
Show full quote

You need enough to have a linear framebuffer for vesa aware titles.

You need ~3mb of it for 1024x768 8bit color. (4mb in the card will satisfy)

You should be able to do 800x600 8bit color out of the box, as-is.

You might need to use a write-combining tsr to get good performance.

That's a mistake I think.

1024 x 768 at 1 byte per pixel = 786432 bytes. Easily within the framebuffer of a 1mb card.

Linear framebuffer support for vesa modes was only introduced in VBE 2.0 - it wasn't part of the spec before then, and plenty of applications used Vesa 1.0/1.2 prior to the introduction of 2.0.

A lesson about posting while tired.

1024x768@8bit should be just under 1mb.

It's 1024x768@24bit that clocks in ~3mb.

The 2mb card should be fine for dos gaming. I still think something like mtrllfb (a write-combining tsr) would be prudent for higher resolutions under dos.