I made another test.
First computer i tried the trio virge + TV was a celeron 500 256mb sdram under dos.
So i built another rig, this time a P4 1.8 512 mb rambus and i tried the trio virge + TV with it.
I would swear its faster! frame rate is not impressive but it is actually descent. I dont think its much faster than on other machine but it still surprises me because i thought the s3 virge would have been the definitive bottleneck even on a celeron 500 system.
Funny thing is there is strange shifting texture behavior. Like the textures are slightly shifting position as you move. It looks as though the land is alive. Kinda creepy. I dont remember this happening on the 500 mhz ..
As for overclocking the card, i dont think my current p4 board allows this. I also touched the S3 chip after 30 min of TV demo and its pretty hot, the poor thing is working hard. If there was a way to overclock it like crazy and heatsink+ Fan it, that might be very funny.
So it seems i still have tests to do , i decided i was not done with s3 cards and ordered a S3 Virge DX. Another 20$ down the wazoo, i hope its worth it. DX should be around 33% faster than a classic virge i believe, + overclocking possibility that might just be able to run TV properly.
Probably should start a new topic with a more specific title though and relate my exploration of the S3d world 😜