I think the main difference was that the original Virge run at 50 MHz + EDO and the /DX at 66 MHz + SDRAM. I am not sure if the memory clocks ran synchroneously.
What is much more annoying is the bad 2D signal quality of the original S3 Virge (without DX etc.).

elianda wrote:

I think the main difference was that the original Virge run at 50 MHz + EDO and the /DX at 66 MHz + SDRAM. I am not sure if the memory clocks ran synchroneously.
What is much more annoying is the bad 2D signal quality of the original S3 Virge (without DX etc.).

So the 2D signal quality was noticeably worse with the 3D 2000's VIRGE/325? I didn't know that, thanks for the info!

Analog signal quality is primarily determined by board design quality. Or should I say that if it's blurry, blame the board? The specs sheet won't tell you if it's gonna be a blur fest or not.

Virge DX/GX are similar and offered a considerable (relative to original Virge) increase in D3D performance. DX was supposed to be used with EDO DRAM while GX with SGRAM (although there are GX boards with EDO). 3D performance is still not really adequate though. It's a sort of 2 times 0 = 0 thing. 😉

Two cards that come to mind are the STB Nitro 3D or Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro. You can probably find reviews of those on the web yet or in my sig link to my mag scan post. There were of course many many cards that used the chips.

I remember testing the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 and Pro models, and noticing that the Pro looked better. But over the course of time, I've noticed other things too when testing graphics cards -

If I test 2 graphics cards that are essentially the same, sometimes one will look better than the other. When I say "the same", I mean I've got 2 Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 cards, with the same PCB revision number, but it's possible that one may have a slightly different BIOS version chip, etc - in other words there may be some subtle differences, but nothing major. @swaaye, I think you mentioned once that you had this issue with a couple of Matrox G200 cards ?

2) If I test the same graphics card in 2 different mobos, sometimes one will look better in one board, than in the other board. A good example: the QDI Kinetiz 7E-A is perhaps the worst board for video card display quality, whereas the Epox EP-8KTA3+PRO is the best.

I wonder if it's got something to do with the state/condition of some of the graphics cards' onboard components, and perhaps in conjunction with how the mobo handles power from the PSU? - such as the quality of the power signal to the AGP/PCI slots?

swaaye wrote:

Analog signal quality is primarily determined by board design quality. Or should I say that if it's blurry, blame the board? The specs sheet won't tell you if it's gonna be a blur fest or not.

This argumentation is applicable nowadays. At the times of the Virge most of the cards had an external DAC in bipolar technology whereas the graphics IC was in HCMOS. The Virge is one of the first cards that has DAC and GPU on the same HCMOS die. And it seems that implementing the DAC in HCMOS was not as good as compareable bipolar DACs at the time. Also notice that the S3 Trio64 before 1995 utilize an external DAC. And all the professional cards of this time use an external DAC in bipolar technology.
There is also a article in the german magazine c't which discusses the overall bad 2D quality of the Virge:
http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Brot-und-Spiele-284534.html

So much to theory, but I also tried several Virges myself and they all had a considerable worse 2D signal quality. So if you get your hands on a S3 Virge, try yourself.

Was the virge actually supposed to be faster for dos gaming than the trio64 though, since i tried a couple of virge pci/agp cards and my trio64 wins the dos speed benchmarks.

External DACs were used because the manufacturing would cost more to have it integrated. As manufacturing capabilities improved the integration increased and it allowed for ever cheaper boards. I doubt that the integrated vs. external DAC aspect affects quality much. It's all about how well they wire up the analog signal from the DAC. Back in 1996, the vast majority of people weren't running >1024x768 so why add board cost for high res and refresh.

Virge and Trio64 are probably very similar in the 2D area. Same era. Why would S3 not share technology there. I doubt that they are identical though. Clock speeds probably vary for one.

Was the virge actually supposed to be faster for dos gaming than the trio64 though, since i tried a couple of virge pci/agp cards and my trio64 wins the dos speed benchmarks.

I don't think so. The Virge was basically just a Trio64 with some rudimentary 3D capabilities tacked on. I would've thought the Virge would be about the same speed, though... not slower.