S3 Vision968 - was it DirectX 3 compatible *enough* to pair with a PCX2-based card? \ VOGONS

S3 Vision968 - was it DirectX 3 compatible enough to pair with a PCX2-based card?

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First post, by droogiehowser

Posted on 2026-07-21, 08:26

droogiehowser Offline

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Hi all, first post here, long-time lurker. (Got inside my first PC in '92, and took to my MSX with a soldering iron some time in the '80s).

I was thinking of a hypothetical / historical matter, that may become less hypothetical: The PCX2 chip on the VideoLogic 3Dx requires paring with a "DirectX 3 compatible 2D card". I was wondering if S3 Vision968-based cards like VideoLogic GrafixStar 700 would make for an appropriate/compatible 2D card. The PCX2 was pared with a Tseng Labs ET6100 (or ET6000?), so I'm figuring the S3Vision968 may be good enough.

The thought of pushing the PCX2 version of Mechwarrior 2 through an IBM Palette DAC on to a ViewSonic p810 21" CRT (with sound coursing through a Aztech Sound Galaxy Waverider 32+) is something that keeps me up at night. I was a holdout on MS-DOS, only making the switch to Windows in the '98 era, using a DX5 AGP card. So I kinda skipped a few things, including the PCX2. Which is a shame, because the PCX2 version of MW2 looks quite nice (even if one of the expansions didn't come with a PCX2 version).

Call me weird - something most of us can probably be accused of - but I never took much to the kinds of 3D games that mostly only ran smoothly on a high-end 3D accelerator. Quake and UT never did it for me. Give me X-COM Apocalypse, Master of Orion II, and Mechwarrior 2, plus a bunch of DOS games from the early 90s*, and I'm good.

Does anyone have any experience/opinions with/on the combo of a Vision968 and a PCX2?

* I know DOS Warcraft didn't like the Palette DAC, or fast RAMDACs in general. But I didn't play it that much.

Reply 1 of 4, by mwdmeyer

Posted on 2026-07-21, 08:45

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I feel it will work, although not 100% sure, I tried with a range of ISA video cards (hah) but no luck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqBL3qlksH4

Let me know if you get it working!

MW2 is great and the PCX2 is a cool card, I've done a lot of playing around with them.

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Reply 2 of 4, by Dipshidian

Posted on 2026-07-21, 11:25

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I remember having system freezes a few seconds into playing ReVolte on a Pentium Pro 200/Vision968 (Stealth 64 Video VRAM PCI)/PowerVR PCX1 combo. Can't speak for PCX2 + Vision968, sadly.

Mind you, I don't remember trying out disabling the PowerVR HAL option in the PowerVR tray application to see if it fixed the freezing (it fixes garbled graphics in some SGL games, including ReVolte, on the Matrox Millennium). I also don't remember how the Vision968 fares with the PCX1 in other PVR games, because I remember being a bit bummed about ReVolte not working properly at that time. What little I did manage to get running in SGL did perform pretty well on the Vision968, so at least there's that. Didn't have such problems playing other DOS and Win95 games made around the same time on that card. It is a pretty early revision of 968, though (the main Vision968 chip was manufactured right at the end of 1994), so perhaps this quirk was fixed with later cards.

I have had success with using a PCX1 (Apocalypse 3D and PC3D Engine) with S3 Trio64V+ and Matrox Millennium. The PCX2 (Apocalypse 3Dx) worked with the aforementioned cards, plus the ATi Mach64GX (P/N 109-25500-10) when I tested it out on a 1994-era Pentium 90 board.

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Reply 3 of 4, by droogiehowser

Posted on 2026-07-21, 14:03

droogiehowser Offline

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mwdmeyer wrote on 2026-07-21, 08:45:

I feel it will work, although not 100% sure, I tried with a range of ISA video cards (hah) but no luck
...
Let me know if you get it working!

Trying it out with ISA cards? That's some mad scientist(tm) stuff right there.

Sadly, if I ever do get to try the Vision968/PCX2 combo, it'll be some time from now.

I have watched a few of your videos, just not the PCX/ISA one. Reckon I may have commented on one of your vids before. (Australian here, too).

Reply 4 of 4, by droogiehowser

Posted on 2026-07-21, 14:14

droogiehowser Offline

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Dipshidian wrote on 2026-07-21, 11:25:

I remember having system freezes a few seconds into playing ReVolte on a Pentium Pro 200/Vision968 (Stealth 64 Video VRAM PCI)/PowerVR PCX1 combo. Can't speak for PCX2 + Vision968, sadly.

Ahh! So close!

From memory, the Videologic GrafixStar 700 launched in late '96, so it'd possibly have a revised version of the chipset. Am wondering how VGABIOS would play into things as well. There's potentially a lot to account for over a short period there. Things were quite fast moving. The VESA BIOS Extensions got an update for accelerator functions in August of 1996, and Direct3D a couple of months earlier, so it makes me wonder a little.

*Insert hand wavey gesture*

Cheers for replying. I'll contemplate these things further (although technically, you have also answered my question, so thanks for that too!)

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