I'm not sure. S3 ViRGE 325 was a Direct3D 3 era card, but got Direct3D 5 compatible drivers at the end.

Windows 98SE shipped with DirectX 6.1 and would test hardware acceleration with those older Direct3D drivers being used.

DirectX 7 or Direct3D marks a category on its own, though.
Later DirectX Diagnose programs divide Direct3D in Direct3D 7, Direct3D 8.x and DirectX 9.

On Windows XP, I remember, the S3 ViRGE 325 had its hardware acceleration enabled in DXDiag.

Edit: Or in other words, I don't know.
Direct3D 7 API normally is being used for anything Direct3D 7 and earlier.
So it's the legacy API, essentially. In your case it's more modern than the S3 ViRGE drivers and definitely not acting like a "legacy" API.
To DirectX 7, Direct3D 7 is current API - not a compatibility thing.

Im using Virge "superuni" driver from vintage3d website

ViRGE isn't capable of much enough to satisfy Direct3D7. No blending functions, no alpha modulation, etc. IIRC the superuni drivers junked the notion of 3d "acceleration" on the ViRGE to maintain compatibility on the 2D front (as it's a very common card and some may need it for something important/mission critical)

If your desktop is currently in high/true color, then that's the full performance potential of the ViRGE right there. If you REALLY want to see 3D work on it, install an older driver. Just don't be surprised if everything doesn't run, looks like crap, runs with framerates you can count on your hands/hand, etc. Probably the last games to care about supporting the Virge are lithtech1 games as they don't blend much and have a lot of fallbacks.

leileilol wrote on 2024-07-01, 16:18:

ViRGE isn't capable of much enough to satisfy Direct3D7. No blending functions, no alpha modulation, etc. IIRC the superuni drivers junked the notion of 3d "acceleration" on the ViRGE to maintain compatibility on the 2D front (as it's a very common card and some may need it for something important/mission critical)

If your desktop is currently in high/true color, then that's the full performance potential of the ViRGE right there. If you REALLY want to see 3D work on it, install an older driver. Just don't be surprised if everything doesn't run, looks like crap, runs with framerates you can count on your hands/hand, etc. Probably the last games to care about supporting the Virge are lithtech1 games as they don't blend much and have a lot of fallbacks.

Does clean install w98 needed for old drivers

I wrote up a list of what I'd try the S3 card with. Most of it was stuff that made use of S3 API. Some of it wasn't. I'd be interested to see what brainier nerds/nerdier brains are going to think of it:

Actua Soccer Semi-Finals
Battle Race
Blood 2
Crime Cities
Croc
Destruction Derby
Die Hard Trilogy
FX Fighter Turbo
GL Quake
Grim Fandango
Monster Truck Madness
Myth II
Osarium
POD Racers
Screamer
Star Wars Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2
Syndicate Wars
Terminal Velocity
Terracide
TOCA Race Car Driver
Tomb Raider
Twisted Metal
Whiplash 3D
Xtom-3D

I've not had a go yet because it's forever a lower priority. But I'm ever hopeful and confident that the S3 will do more than provide 2D for the voodoo.

ctrl-alt-rees did a good video on it, and has a very useful resource page "link in the description" as they always say
https://youtu.be/f6fk_iarL-8?si=2FjgYdHr3myI7gqc

I like the card, good dos compatibility and using the S3D versions of Terminal Velocity and Whiplash makes me feel special.
Maybe that's because I didn't own it at the time and being disappointed.

rain wrote on 2024-07-01, 13:40:

Why software rendering instead of hardware? is it normal or driver issues?

It is normal, press OK to continue.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-07-01, 23:39:

I like the card, good dos compatibility and using the S3D versions of Terminal Velocity and Whiplash makes me feel special.
Maybe that's because I didn't own it at the time and being disappointed.

Buddies had them in the day, 96-ish and at the time, running on DX2/80 and P90 you could see the speed up, and the mags were all talking up the "pro" 3D like 3Dlabs and stuff that seemed like supercomputer tech but unobtainium priced and kinda skimmed over the gaming ability of voodoo and ran down the relative experience of 3DFX until glide game after glide game came out. ... but they also were priced pretty high and were hardobtanium... Virge was "there" for us at the time, for middle of the road machines, and it's star didn't shine very bright for very long, but it whelmed us for a year or so. Anyway it was probably the expectations that virge would get hugely better over the next couple of years and really burn through triangles on faster machines, along with it being "alright" for 96 that probably made it seem more disappointing by the time 98 rolled around. Regular users were basically chanting "whole new chip, whole new chip" at S3 and getting bummed with the warmed over same old same old. ATi got away with it better for the same period somehow. Anyway such was hardware development at the time, plow millions into something and it don't scale whoopsie, and it's successor not meeting target, double whoopsie, 6 months behind was a lifetime. Then the less nugget they made on previous made for smaller war chest for future products.

Anyway still got that laptop with VirgeMX to get going, which was the top of the pile of Virge classic +20% +20% +20% +20% improvements.

Hi, a few years ago I did a test with S3 ViRGE and Final Reality benchmark (W95, DX5).

Accelerated (hw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujfl3fwb2aE

Unaccelerated (software):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiKq0x4HHaw

I wouldn't want to play either if it were gameplay tbh.

I'm prepared to pair an MMX-having cpu with it and send my STB Nitro's clocks to the moon, but...

What happens when the S3 is fed DX6 games to work on? And if it depends on the game which ones work and which ones do not?

That's largely dependent on the game and how far they're willing to stretch back on hardware support. Some DX6/DX6.1 games will care to have fallbacks to work on older hardware, though many won't. Midtown Madness for example has alpha blend fallbacks for a lot of things that are additive blended so it should play on a Virge, Mystique, PCX2.
Similar applies to OpenGL stuff that work with S3's MiniGL because all that knows what to do is premultiply alpha channels on a lightmap to get it to shade. Half-Life ain't going to be miracles on it. Crime Cities is probably the only released ViRGE-supported OpenGL game.

Yah 97ish there were a bunch of Dell, Compaq etc shipping with MMX CPU and Virge DX either onboard or discrete as factory VGA so there was a decent amount of IUB for devs to take aim at and not piss off for a couple of years.