Pentium 1 MMX with a Voodoo 1 or PowerVR PCX 2 , will give you a nice dos and early 3D gaming PC 😀

Bad 3d sure, but it's still fine for dos gaming and can be faster than the Trio64 for that.

^^ What they said. I have a PCI Virge (a 4MB Virge DX) in my P233MMX. It's compatible with everything, rock solid, and about as fast as you can get for a PCI framebuffer card for that system. Actually it's even good enough to make S3D "accelerated" DOS games acceptable. Not quick, but acceptable.

I'd be happy with just 2D games like One Must Fall anyway

Other than dos games, s3 virge is crap: only good use in 3d I found is Pod and Destruction Derby (dedicated releases).

Yeah, it's definitely not a 3D graphics card.
What I loved about that card is that when I used it in my Ultimate DOS PC, when I installed Windows 98 it got the gradients immediately 😁

Plug and Play for the win, I wish modern graphics cards were plug and play aswell...

Well, as others said and acording to some sources, the S3 ViRGE were one of the weakest 3D Acelerators of the history, it has very poor 3D perfomance, but is still gained popularity along OEMs due to the very good 2D perfomance compared to other high end 2D only cards mainly as a replacement of the 2D only Trio 64.

For 2D Windows games or DOS, S3 ViRGE is still a very good choice, the ViRGE would suit best with a fast PCI based 486 or a Pentium/Pentium MMX i think

just for curiosity, your S3 ViRGE is the ViRGE/325 model? i'm wondering since you said it has memory expansion slots probably like the older Trio 32/64 cards, something like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common … H3D2000-top.JPG

i only own 2 S3 ViRGE cards, an S3 ViRGE/DX PCI 4 MB and a S3 ViRGE/GX2 AGP 4 MB (wasn't a true AGP card though), also have some S3 Trio3D/2X which are technically an upgraded version of the S3 ViRGE/GX2 with 128 bit bus.

My tip: Save this GPU as failback card or if you end getting a Pentium 1 system

I haven't taken a photo of it yet, it's like the one in the middle here

But I have none of the chips that go in the brown sockets, they're all empty.

Just wait until you find a motherboard old enough not to have AGP in any form (integrated graphics included). One day you'll stumble upon a nice Pentium or 486 and your Virge will be the only card you can test it with.

Elia1995 wrote:

I haven't taken a photo of it yet, it's like the one in the middle here […]
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I haven't taken a photo of it yet, it's like the one in the middle here

But I have none of the chips that go in the brown sockets, they're all empty.

Is very likely a ViRGE/325 since it uses the same RAM as the Trio64. Btw, i have the same AGP ViRGE/GX2 as the photo

Speaking from personal experience, when I bought a Pentium 166 MMX in 1997, I paired that system with an S3 Virge DX card, but was very disappointed with its 3D performance.
In retrospect, my budget was a bit tight back then and I couldn't yet afford an expensive 3dfx Voodoo card. However, in 1998, I saved up enough money and bought a Creative Voodoo Banshee PCI card, which ran quite nicely in my Pentium 1 system.

I'm in agreement with the earlier comments made in this thread - it's a crap 3D card, but is a very nice 2D card for late 486 PCI or Pentium 1 based systems. I would hang onto it, even if you have no use for it now.

jesolo wrote:

Speaking from personal experience, when I bought a Pentium 166 MMX in 1997, I paired that system with an S3 Virge DX card, but was very disappointed with its 3D performance.
In retrospect, my budget was a bit tight back then and I couldn't yet afford an expensive 3dfx Voodoo card. However, in 1998, I saved up enough money and bought a Creative Voodoo Banshee PCI card, which ran quite nicely in my Pentium 1 system.

I'm in agreement with the earlier comments made in this thread - it's a crap 3D card, but is a very nice 2D card for late 486 PCI or Pentium 1 based systems. I would hang onto it, even if you have no use for it now.

But the VIrge DX wasn't more oriented for late Pentium MMX that previous? I bet it'd speed up a Pentium 0,60u or a 486 but it sound more a 97/98 low budjet card.

Did a S3 Virge (original) exist on ISA ever? Which was the last S3 ISA card?

386SX wrote:

Did a S3 Virge (original) exist on ISA ever? Which was the last S3 ISA card?

I have my doubts but there are plenty of choices for isa especially for those with deep pockets, S3 made a number of really good VLB cards though and the pci S3 cards are often dirt cheap provided you avoid the greed when shopping on eBay. Look for lots and items where the seller isn't sure what he or she has or has made a mistake where the item is mislisted.

386SX wrote:

But the VIrge DX wasn't more oriented for late Pentium MMX that previous? I bet it'd speed up a Pentium 0,60u or a 486 but it sound more a 97/98 low budjet card.

When I bought a desktop pc with p200 mmx, I found a virge dx 4mb in it.

386SX wrote:

But the VIrge DX wasn't more oriented for late Pentium MMX that previous? I bet it'd speed up a Pentium 0,60u or a 486 but it sound more a 97/98 low budjet card.

Yes, it was a low budget card, but as I said, my budget was a bit tight back then 😀

Well, another use for the ViRGE can be as 2D card to be paried with 3Dfx Voodoos

My Digital PC 5100 has a PCI S3 ViRGE integrated in the MOBO. Duke Nukem 3D flies on it.

I think Putas' homepage is also worth mentioning because it fits this thread's topic so well.

http://vintage3d.org/virge.php