S3 Virge is a good Windows 95 card and it has something resembling 3D acceleration.

I remember when I had S3 Virge DX2 and S3 Trio 3D that software rendering was faster than S3 3D in games on K6-2 350. It was unplayable and I had to use software rendering all the time.

AlexZ wrote on 2021-08-21, 16:38:

I remember when I had S3 Virge DX2 and S3 Trio 3D that software rendering was faster than S3 3D in games on K6-2 350. It was unplayable and I had to use software rendering all the time.

Since you have a fast CPU, it was obvious that the software renderer was faster than the ViRGE 3D acceleration in your case. ViRGE was also quickly eclipsed by 3Dfx Voodoo cards and much of the later games that required 3D acceleration used features not available on ViRGE and Trio3D cards.

There's an interesting analysis about the S3 ViRGE around. The Trio3D familiy no longer supports S3D and the S3 ViRGE/GX2 was the fastest of the ViRGE series.

Could you share more system details? Target games/era?

A bit of a boring answer:
2D S3 trio64 / Virge + 3D voodoo 1

Or:
2D + 3D pci TNT (2) /GF2 (any edition) for acceptable performance of you don't have AGP

Or:
If you've got an AGP system make sure you get win 98 first. Get a Nvidia geforce 4 Ti for nice performance.

Where is the "Directx drivers disk" on Win95b ?
The S3 installation is asking for these drivers ?

waterbeesje wrote on 2021-08-21, 17:29:

Could you share more system details? Target games/era? […]
Show full quote

Could you share more system details? Target games/era?

A bit of a boring answer:
2D S3 trio64 / Virge + 3D voodoo 1

Or:
2D + 3D pci TNT (2) /GF2 (any edition) for acceptable performance of you don't have AGP

Or:
If you've got an AGP system make sure you get win 98 first. Get a Nvidia geforce 4 Ti for nice performance.

Most of the Windows 95 era machines were around the early Socket 7 CPUs and late 486 systems. So the boring answer is the most suitable and practical here.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-21, 17:36:

Where is the "Directx drivers disk" on Win95b ?
The S3 installation is asking for these drivers ?

You should point it to the DirectX runtime installation directory if you were installing the driver for the S3 video card that comes with it.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-21, 17:38:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-21, 17:36:

Where is the "Directx drivers disk" on Win95b ?
The S3 installation is asking for these drivers ?

You should point it to the DirectX runtime installation directory if you were installing the driver for the S3 video card that comes with it.

Where is this Directory ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-21, 17:55:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-21, 17:38:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-21, 17:36:

Where is the "Directx drivers disk" on Win95b ?
The S3 installation is asking for these drivers ?

You should point it to the DirectX runtime installation directory if you were installing the driver for the S3 video card that comes with it.

Where is this Directory ?

If you downloaded the older DirectX runtimes such as DX6 and extracted it, then it should be that directory where you extracted it (there should be a DRIVERS\ENG directory inside within). Sometimes the "DirectX drivers disk" is a misleading term.

Alternatively you could try these Win95 drivers if you are using a S3 ViRGE card: http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=588&menustate=0

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-21, 16:56:

Since you have a fast CPU, it was obvious that the software renderer was faster than the ViRGE 3D acceleration in your case. ViRGE was also quickly eclipsed by 3Dfx Voodoo cards and much of the later games that required 3D acceleration used features not available on ViRGE and Trio3D cards.

There's an interesting analysis about the S3 ViRGE around. The Trio3D familiy no longer supports S3D and the S3 ViRGE/GX2 was the fastest of the ViRGE series.

I just don't want anyone to have high hopes from S3 3D acceleration except for Savage 4. Back in the day S3 cards were cheapest and that's why I bought them. I had both GX/2 and Trio 3D and neither had acceptable performance in games (15-20 fps is not acceptable). After that I got ATI rage 128 as it was cheap and it turned out to be a very good card that outperformed both Riva TNT and Voodoo 2. S3 fell simply too far behind in 3D acceleration business.

AlexZ wrote on 2021-08-21, 18:28:

I just don't want anyone to have high hopes from S3 3D acceleration except for Savage 4. Back in the day S3 cards were cheapest and that's why I bought them. I had both GX/2 and Trio 3D and neither had acceptable performance in games (15-20 fps is not acceptable). After that I got ATI rage 128 as it was cheap and it turned out to be a very good card that outperformed both Riva TNT and Voodoo 2. S3 fell simply too far behind in 3D acceleration business.

For me around 30 FPS is the minimum acceptable, problem was that most of the video cards with 3D acceleration at the time weren't competitive with 3Dfx due to lack of expertise until nVidia made the Riva series and most of them were getting increasingly relegated into the low-end. ATI/AMD were lucky to survive due to OEM deals.

I agree about the mediocre S3 3D performance there though. I only use them for 2D stuff anyway and S3D never really got me interested. The only interesting thing was the S3TC texture format which later got adopted by other hardware vendors.

The game “Monkey Island 4” will not run because it complains that there is NO 3D acceleration.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-21, 18:47:

The game “Monkey Island 4” will not run because it complains that there is NO 3D acceleration.

They never offered a proper OpenGL ICD if that game uses OpenGL. There is an unusual OpenGL wrapper made by Techland for cards that doesn't support it such as the S3 ViRGE for their "Crime Cities" game, I've never tried these as I don't have this game.

Games from that era will require better 3D hardware than S3 ViRGE could offer anyway. The suitable games for the S3 ViRGE hardware dates from 1996-1998.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-21, 18:52:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-21, 18:47:

The game “Monkey Island 4” will not run because it complains that there is NO 3D acceleration.

They never offered a proper OpenGL ICD if that game uses OpenGL. There is an unusual OpenGL wrapper made by Techland for cards that doesn't support it such as the S3 ViRGE for their "Crime Cities" game, I've never tried these as I don't have this game.

Games from that era will require better 3D hardware than S3 ViRGE could offer anyway. The suitable games for the S3 ViRGE hardware dates from 1996-1998.

So what video card would you recommend ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-21, 19:08:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-21, 18:52:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-21, 18:47:

The game “Monkey Island 4” will not run because it complains that there is NO 3D acceleration.

They never offered a proper OpenGL ICD if that game uses OpenGL. There is an unusual OpenGL wrapper made by Techland for cards that doesn't support it such as the S3 ViRGE for their "Crime Cities" game, I've never tried these as I don't have this game.

Games from that era will require better 3D hardware than S3 ViRGE could offer anyway. The suitable games for the S3 ViRGE hardware dates from 1996-1998.

So what video card would you recommend ?

I would have recommended a 3Dfx Voodoo card but they are expensive so that's not an option. You could try with a nVidia TNT2 (not the M64 or Vanta variants if possible) or ATI Rage 128 as AlexZ mentioned (however ATI/AMD never got a good OpenGL implementation so YMMV there) if you can find them in PCI.

I think it depends on the platform also.

The original ViRGE 325 isn't bad, if the PC runs DOS only.
DOS games run hassle free on the old decelerator.
In fact, S3D games like Descent 2 or Terminal Velocity do look pretty on the old ViRGE.

The reason as to why the ViRGE was so poorly performing was all the feature creep.
The 325 was one of the most sophisticated chip in terms of features.
It could do filtering, scaling, texturing and so on.

And that's its main flaw! Games used all features - at once!
That's why it was so slow in the end often.

Windows 95 is another matter.
The 3D core inside the ViRGE 325 pretdated Direct3D, so the whole pipelining stuff/rendering inside the ViRGE was not really compatible with Direct3D.
Let's think of the Nvidia NV 1 - that one was never D3D compatible due the use of quads instead of triangles.
The ViRGE drivers for Win95 thus were never properly working.

So on Windows 95, the DX/GX ViRGEs are a much better choice.
The latest drivers will run DirectX 3/5 titles acceptable.

However, this doesn't mean these models are totally superior to the old 325.
DOS-based S3D games require patches for the newer models.

Unfortunately, these patches don't work for all S3D games, because there were many different EXE files out there which the patches won't recognize.

But even if you try a TSR and it loads successfully, the S3D games are not guaranteed to work on the DX/VX/GX models.
I tried myself long a go. 🙁

Could you finally stop feeding the troll please?

blurks wrote on 2021-08-21, 20:47:

Could you finally stop feeding the troll please?

To be honest I didn't know about that until I searched around this forum and read some of his posts.

blurks wrote on 2021-08-21, 20:47:

Could you finally stop feeding the troll please?

But seems like the Troll is very hungry, unfortunatelly...