Virge/DX 2mb vs 4mb \ VOGONS

Virge/DX 2mb vs 4mb

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First post, by kokornov

Posted on 2013-07-10, 12:41

kokornov Offline

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Building a DOS-only machine with the following specs:

-Iwill p55xb2 rev. 1.23 motherboard
-Pentium 233 MMX
-64mb PC100
-8gb CompactFlash through cf-ide adapter

Currently I have 2mb/50ns S3 Virge/DX video card. Does it worth to look for a 4mb version of Virge/DX (my card doesn't have memory upgrare sockets)?

AFAIR with 2mb memory there will be no Direct3d support under Windows, but i don't need it. There will also be no support for high resolutions and color modes, but for example BUILD games, despite of high resolutions support, are very CPU-intensive in such modes so my CPU just wouldn't take it. Are there any DOS games that can really take advantage of additional 2mb on my system?

Reply 1 of 4, by vetz

Posted on 2013-07-10, 19:52

vetz Offline

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Only reason I see for you to get 4mb is if you have a large monitor and wish to run in a higher resolution not supported with only 2 MB of memory. Since the signal output is not very good on S3 Virge cards there is almost no point having 4MB on a card for DOS usage.

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Reply 2 of 4, by gerwin

Posted on 2013-07-10, 21:54

gerwin Offline

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Using true color (24 or 32 bit) 1024x768 in windows 9X may be a motivation. If you want to do some imaging work. Otherwise 16 bit hi-color is fine. It has been long since I used 8 bit or 4 bit in windows 9X, it is a bit messy because everything gets converted to the windows palette.

The Build games like Duke Nukem 3D use 8-bit palette modes, like almost every DOS game.

I added the table, but you might already know that.

Filename: video_memory_resolutions.png
File size: 30.75 KiB
Downloads: No downloads
File license: Fair use/fair dealing exception

Hey.. the 32 bit color entry in that table is wrong, it is also just 16M colors like 24 bit.

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Reply 3 of 4, by idspispopd

Posted on 2013-07-15, 05:12

idspispopd Offline

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4MB are mostly important to have enough 3D texture memory. If you don't want to play S3D games in DOS (ie. games with native 3D support for ViRGE) then you don't really need 4MB.