First post, by Vany
It appears that I have made this my quest to find the compatible games for this chip! Oh dear...
While this chip really is a 3D-capable chip, the fact that it only has 2.5 MB VRAM limits it to the point that most games and programs will *NOT* recognise it as a 3D capable device, regardless of all the settings.
The chip itself officially supports DirectX 3.0, 5.0 and 8.0 (with latest driver) but with some features missing. Some 3D games that require DirectX 5.0 and a minimum of 2MB VRAM detect it properly , other games will require DirectX 7.0 or 8.0 to be installed in order to initialize 3D hardware acceleration. No idea why.
Quirks:
- 64-bit data bus width.
- The 2.5MB VRAM is dedicated, and is not shared with RAM.
- Virtually identical performance as the 3DImage 9750, it is even identified as such by some programs.
- Can't use Truecolor at higher resolutions due to lack of VRAM, despite the chip itself supporting it.
- 512 x 384 resolution with 16-bit color seems to be the "sweet spot" between quality and performance. Many games will actually run the same if not worse at lower resolutions.
- It really does support bilinear filtering and transparency effects but it depends on how it's implemented per game.
- Texture transparency works in some games.
- System Info programs have trouble detecting this chip's properties, so the core clock, memory clock and other basic information is unavailable.
- Incorrectly detected as an AGP 2X card in most programs. This chip has no AGP, not even AGP 1x like the 3DImage 9750.
- Despite being named Cyber 9525DVD, the chip does not support hardware accelerated DVD playback and is often found in laptops with only a CD drive.
Note:
- I have only tested games with DirectX Hardware Acceleration under Windows 98 SE. I am not sure if drivers for DOS 3D Hardware Acceleration exist.
So without further ado:
List of Playable Games (My criteria for a playable game: Min 20+ fps, 320x200 or higher resolution)
Age Of Empires 2 - 1024x768, Max Settings, no graphical glitches.
Croc: Legend of The Gobbos - 512x384, 2D transparency issues, nothing game breaking.
Destruction Derby 2 - 640x480, no graphical glitches.
G-Police- 512x384, framerate can drop below 20fps regardless of settings and resolution, aside from scaling artefacts on 2D icons.
MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries Titanium Edition - 640x480, transparency issues, playable, barely.
Monster Truck Madness - 640x480, transparency issues, oddly runs worse than MTM2.
Monster Truck Madness 2 - 640x480, transparency issues.
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Nuclear Strike- 512x384, Max possible details.
What in the world is going on here? The game runs FLAWLESSLY, on HIGHEST details at stable 30+ fps?! Is this the only game Trident tested their chip on and called it a day? Seems like it. Had to check 3 times it was the actual 3D chip doing the acceleration rather than cpu. Not only is it doing the acceleration, but the Image Quality is BETTER when compared to software rendering.
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Touring Car Championship - 320x240, 2D and 3D transparency issues.
Twisted Metal 2 - 512x384, transparency issues, runs surprisingly smooth.
Wipeout XL - 640x480, transparency issues, runs surprisingly smooth.
Zero Divide - 512x384, no graphical glitches. I'd suggest disabling the backgrounds for a whooping 20fps boost.
Games that will run but are either too slow or have major graphical glitches:
[*]Battlezone - Runs OK at lowest settings at 640x480 but is unplayable due to transparency issues.
[*]Defiance - Managed to get to the menus, trying to play the game caused system to crash.
[*]Future Cop: L.A.P.D. - Same as Defiance, but didn't crash the system, instead it quits to desktop.
[*]Half-Life - Textures are glitchy and will fail to render after a while, resulting in completely texture-less white picture.
[*]House Of The Dead- Menus and Intros crawl at 0-1 FPS, however, your patience will be rewarded as the game runs surprisingly decent with major slowdowns every time a zombie hits you.
[*]Urban Assault - Manages to run without any graphical glitches, but is way too slow to be playable (less than 15 FPS when nothing is going on in the game.) and glitches up at lower resolutions.
[*]Unreal Gold - Fails to initialize 3D hardware acceleration without DirectX 7.0. After extensive tweaks to the config files, I managed to get it run somewhat smoothly at 320x200 resolution with every visual effect disabled yet there are still transparency issues. I do not recommend playing the game like this.
[*]SEGA Rally with Direct3D patch- Major transparency issues to the point that the game slows down to a crawl.
[*]X - Beyond The Frontier - No graphical glitches, but runs below 20+ for the majority of the time.
[*]X - Tension - Same as X - Beyond The Frontier.
Games where the chip meets the requirements but won't run:
RoBo Rumble - despite requiring only 2MB VRAM to run, it refuses to boot, citing lack of VRAM.
Hydro Thunder - fails to detect the chip.
Quake 2 - won't initialize hardware acceleration.
Benchmarking Software / Demos
Final Reality - Crashes at the end but the rest of the demo works without graphical corruption aside from textures being wobbly.
3DMark99 Max - Waste of time, only a few tests work.
PC Player 3D Benchmark - Disabling Fog and Transaprency effects yields good results.
Xdemo3 - Demo for X - Beyond the Frontier, and again, what is going on here? The demo looks fantastic, no glitches, runs at 50+ fps at 512x384 but the actual game runs like a turd?!
Tools:
3D Analyze (Latest) - program fails to start, with an error message.
3D Studio Max 2.5 - Hardware acceleration works but the chip cannot be used as a renderer, also there is a warning on startup about low video memory.
EVEREST Ultimate Edition - Does not detect the chip as a GPU and shows very little information about it.
HwInfo32 - Detects the chip correctly, but also shows it as 3DImage975
So what exactly is wrong with this chip? Bottom line
The Drivers.
I have tested three different drivers for this chip, one that came with the recovery cd, one from dynabook website and another from a different laptop with the same chip.
Recovery CD driver and the driver from the website have identical performance and problems, despite being a year apart.
Driver for a different laptop (4090XCDT) improves the texture rendering, less glitches, but at the cost of being almost two times slower than the drivers it came with.
When the drivers work, this chip outperforms S3 ViRGE GX in terms of performance and image quality. I'd say it's 50% faster compared to some youtube videos showcasing ViRGE's performance. When compared to the 3DImage 9750 which it is apparently based off of, it runs mostly the same, despite being on a PCI bus instead of AGP and with less VRAM. Both chips have identical graphical glitches and texture corruption in the same games tested. Amount of VRAM doesn't seem to play a role in this.
Verdict: I dare to say this chip was the GeForce FX5200 of the late 90s. It was probably the cheapest chip at the time that a manufacturer could put in their machine and claim that it has 3D hardware acceleration and Direct3D support. Still, what could have been a decent entry-level 3D graphics chip was completely ruined by it's drivers. It will play only specific DirectX 3.0-8.0 games that require less than 4MB VRAM on low-to-medium settings but nothing else. Also, requires getting used to transparency problems because most games will have them. When it works, It's overall performance is on-par with software rendering on a 300 Mhz cpu with better image quality. And yes, my Pentium II's software rendering is much more faster at the same resolution than this chip so it is officially a 3D decelerator!
System tested:
Toshiba Satellite 4080XCDT
OS: Windows 98SE
CPU: Pentium II MMX @ 367 Mhz
GPU: Trident Cyber9525DVD, 2.5MB VRAM
SPU: ESS Maestro 2E
RAM: 128 MB DDR @ 66 Mhz
HDD: Toshiba 4200 RPM, 30 GB
Support/Drivers for this machine:
https://content.us.dynabook.com/content/suppo … ds/s259vid8.exe
EDIT: Omitted OpenGL tests as it seems that the tests only ran in software mode.