S3
S3 Graphics, Ltd is a graphics hardware manufacturer founded in January 1989. Their proprietary API's were S3D for DOS and MeTaL for Windows.
*S3 chip sets were very popular among low-end graphic hardware manufacturers. Sometimes standard S3 drivers won't work on such cards. Use FCC ID to confirm the graphic card's origin.
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S3 Vision
High performance GUI accelerators during 1994 and 1995. The family includes the 864, 868, 964 and 968 chips. The 9xx series uses VRAM memory instead of fast-page DRAM, enhancing memory performance and improving high-resolution GUI performance. The x68 chips include motion video acceleration features including color space conversion and video scaling.
S3 Trio
An evolution of previous accelerators. The name refers to the integration of 3 components into one ASIC: RAMDAC, graphics core and clock generator. Higher integration reduces overall product cost.
Trio64 variants are popular for DOS gaming due to their high compatibility and good speed.
S3 ViRGE
The ViRGE is the first S3 chip with 3D acceleration support and launched in 1996. Aside from the 3D hardware, it is quite similar to the Trio64V+. These cards typically come equipped with 2-4MB RAM. S3 created the S3D API to program directly for the ViRGE accelerators although they also support Direct3D 3+.
There are several variants. The original ViRGE (marked 325), the ViRGE VX, ViRGE DX, ViRGE GX, ViRGE GX/2 and Trio3D. VX is slower at 3D but uses VRAM memory to somewhat improve high-resolution GUI performance. DX and GX are the second generation and GX supports SGRAM. GX/2 and Trio3D are typically AGP products and perhaps the third generation.
All ViRGE chips posses a fairly complete 3D feature set and can output quality 3D visuals. The original 325 chip and the VX have inadequate performance outside of S3D games. The DX and GX have approximately double the 3D performance and can run some Direct3D adequately if the driver is compatible with the game. Later chips are somewhat faster still.
S3D games often only recognize the original ViRGE 325 chip but there is a third party utility to fix the game executable.
The similarity to Trio64V+ provides high compatibility for DOS games.
S3 Trio 3D/2X
This is based upon the ViRGE architecture.
S3D accelerated games
- Demolition Derby
- Descent 2
- Mechwarrior 2
- Terminal Velocity
- Tomb Raider
S3 Savage3D
Savage3D was released in 1998 and was S3's first 3D chip with useful Direct3D and OpenGL performance. Its performance is similar to Voodoo Banshee or Matrox G200, and its image quality is excellent. GUI performance is excellent. It supports single-cycle trilinear filtering, meaning one can enable trilinear filtering with little speed impact. It can use textures up to 2048x2048 pixels. It is also fully AGP 2x compliant.
It is the first 3D accelerator to support texture compression, in the form of S3TC, which would later become the DXT1 Direct3D standard. Texture compression dramatically reduces the size of a texture while only minimally affecting quality, allowing very high quality textures to be used even with the limited 8MB RAM of the Savage3D.
S3 created a new API called Metal for the Savage family. Unreal Engine 1 games frequently support it, and may also have optional S3TC textures available. Like 3dfx Glide, it offers superior quality and performance compared to Direct3D and OpenGL with Unreal Engine.
Savage3D's greatest failing was, as typical with S3, driver quality.
