The Trio3D was kept in production long past it's expiry date. You could still buy new cards or find it on motherboards even when you couldn't buy dedicated Savage cards anymore. I had a machine a long time ago with Trio3D video on board and I couldn't play a single game with it. They did 2D functions reasonably well, had a high degree of software compatibility, got along reasonably well with other hardware and were cheap, which is why OEMs kept buying them, but the 3D was worthless. Dedicated Trio cards are more a novelty than anything else. For games you're going to need a lot more power.

had a 8MB agp model on my pII/400 and later pIII/500 machine, only for 2D ofcourse... was using a voodoo2 (and later a sli v2 setup) to play games , the trio3D/2x was not that bad for 2D stuff back then

Yes, sure it won't keep up with any decent 3D card and is going to be annihilated by Rage (Pro and onward) or Riva 128. 😀 But I was under the impression that it would at least be a somewhat upgraded 3D part compared to the ViRGE-range, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Trio 3d is Virge rebranded as business accelerator. It fixed the blending bugs of Virge. The 2x version has its own drivers and can do better in some geometry tests, so I think small improvements happened. Direct3d games are rendered more or less correctly, but it does not have the clocks of Virge GX2 and falls behind by 10-15%. At some point wirebond packaging limits memory interface speed, but I guess Trio 3D was about lowest price possible.
When judged by market share and longevity, the Virge was probably best 3d architecture ever. Suck it up performance enthusiasts.

[GPUT]Carsten wrote:

I have recently got a Trio3D/2x card off of ebay. It is for AGP (2x), has 8 MB and an 81,5 MHz clock for it's SDRAM. […]
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I have recently got a Trio3D/2x card off of ebay. It is for AGP (2x), has 8 MB and an 81,5 MHz clock for it's SDRAM.

I've done some preliminary performance tests on my P3-S 1.4G (currently, my other retro parts are not in a fit state to run something...) and it seems like it's a slug almost equally slow as the Virge line.

Turok won't even render decently in 320 x 240 with all the options turned off, PCPD3D Bench v2.10 gives 27.5 fps in 320x240, and 11.7 in 512x384.

The S3-patched GLQuake is at a decently decelerated 33.8 fps in 320x240x16 and 14.8 fps in 512x384x24 (!, doesn't look like it though). The X Rolling Benchmark is at 20.969 fps (640x480x16).

DOS-performance seems very decent though. 3DBench2 is at 539 fps, with Fastvid applied even at 840,6 fps. Doom 19s demo3 measures in at 174,5 fps as per this method.

This all points toward Trio3D being not much more sophisticated or capable than the later ViRGE-models, right?

you are mostly correct, the trio3d is based and improved on the design of s3virge.
there are several versions of s3virge:
virge: original "standard" version
virge vx: supports 8mb vram but slower clock, all other virge supports only 4mb.
virge dx: improved and overclocked virge
virge gx: based on dx but supports sdram/sgram
virge gx2: agp version of gx
trio3d: further improved on gx2

as a result, trio3d can run 3dmark01 while virge can't. however, a third party opengl wrapper for virge based on s3d can't run on trio3d, guess its driver may have dropped s3d support and attempted to support d3d instead. 😎

in general, i never considered s3virge or trio3d as a real 3d card, as neither of them could support opengl. the rendition1000 is from the same year as s3virge but outperforms it by times.

noshutdown wrote:

virge dx: improved and overclocked virge

not overclocked

noshutdown wrote:

guess its driver may have dropped s3d support and attempted to support d3d instead.

There is no conflict between s3d and d3d, old s3d games simply may have compatibility problems with newer Virge/Trio 3D.
I think S3 just could not be bothered with opengl, their glquake wrapper seems quite efficient.

Well it seems there are also different versions around.
I got this card: http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/pics/s3_trio3d2x.jpg
It uses SGRAM and I think it's clocked 110 MHz core and 100 MHz RAM. But, what tool do you use that reliably tells you the clock speed of core/mem ?
From my experience it is at least twice as fast as a Virge/DX and render quality is without the artifacts seen on early accelerators.

Entech tools detects memory clock and core uses 2/3 divider. GX2 had 100 MHz RAM, so if it really has 110 you own the fastest Virge core.

I was using powerstrip 2.74 for clocks. I don't know how reliable it is with older cards, but it's the best option I've got.

elianda wrote:

But, what tool do you use that reliably tells you the clock speed of core/mem ?

You can try MCLK, it works fine with older virge/trio series, dunno about Trio3D... But its dos only...

http://reocities.com/SiliconValley/campus/649 … til/myutil.html

DOS isn't a problem 😀 but the utility doesn't support Trio3D as ist seems not to be able to detect the correct chip. Thanks for the suggestion though!

Only thing I could run okay on that thing (without any artifacts or anything like that) was Jedi Knight, but that runs on pretty much any 3D graphics card with D3D support. If you have access to the "ViRGE-accelerated" version of MechWarrior 2 you might wanna give that a shot too. Or see if any of the DOS S3D-accelerated games run any better at all (might have to patch those first).

noshutdown wrote:

virge gx2: agp version of gx
trio3d: further improved on gx2

Is this a good statement? Is Trio3D or Trio3D/2x better than GX2 ?

noshutdown wrote:

as a result, trio3d can run 3dmark01 while virge can't. however, a third party opengl wrapper for virge based on s3d can't run on trio3d, guess its driver may have dropped s3d support and attempted to support d3d instead. 😎

In other words, does this mean Trio3D / Trio3D/2X have basic DirectX abilities, that ViRGE does not?

In terms of a DOS only system, I'm trying to determine what the realities are about s3d gaming. Would a system with both a GX2 on AGP, and a 325 on PCI make sense? Would a Trio3D/2X be a better choice for the AGP slot?

I'd suggest you read through the S3 section of Putas' site www.vintage3d.org, especially http://www.vintage3d.org/trio3d.php
If you want to build an ultimate S3D system I'd recommend a DX or GX card with fast RAM on PCI (Nitro3D is easy to find and practically guaranteed to have fast RAM) and a GX2 (or if you can't find one a Trio3D/2X) on AGP.

(And could you stop posting about this stuff in so many different threads, please? Rather confusing. The thread you started was fine.)