Reply 80 of 91, by RandomStranger
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elszgensa wrote on 2023-12-09, 12:38:I'm also interested in makes other than the "big two" (e.g. currently toying around with a Via Chrome9/WinME combo - would not recommend tho).
I also find less successful brands fascinating. S3 is very close to my heart as the biggest of the underdog brands. Ever ambitious, but never could quite live up to their promises once hardware accelerated 3D became the standard. The Virge was a promising 3D accelerator suffering from poor support, the Savage3D would have been a decent competitor against other 1st gen 3D accelerators like the Riva 128, Voodoo1 and PCX1, but came late and had poor drivers, the Savage 4 similarly would have done well against the TNT, but came late, the Savage 2000 was on time against the Geforce and the Radeon and it's performance was okay, but had faulty T&L and poor drivers and their last hurrah, the DeltaChrome was also a decent design, but came late with unrefined drivers. They could have beaten the Geforce FX even if ATI was out of their reach. After that they gave up on competing, they came out with a few budget cards for OEM partners then VIA sold them to some mobile chipset manufacturer.
