S3 ViRGE and ViRGE/VX
The information in this section was taken from the S3 homepage at:
 
http://www.s3.com/
The ViRGE 64-bit DRAM-based accelerator combines a 135MHz RAMDAC and clock synthesizer with the multimedia capabilities of S3's Trio64V+ including video acceleration, video playback using both software and hardware sources, live video support and the ability to connect with popular NTSC and PAL decoders. Additionally, ViRGE is SVGA-compatible, so as to support legacy DOS applications and games, and provides high-performance 2D GUI acceleration support for resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 x 256 colors at 75Hz. S3's ViRGE accelerator also provides support for all major 3D APIs, including OpenGL, Microsoft's Direct3D and RealityLab, as well as Argonaut BRender and Criterion Renderware.  
 
The ViRGE/VX product offers all of the same features as the DRAM-based ViRGE, but substitutes support for VRAM and WindowsRAM (WRAM), and increases the integrated RAMDAC performance level to 220 MHz. Resolutions up to 1600x1200x16 million colors @ 75Hz are supported and higher memory bandwidth is enabled by the block write feature.  
 
64-bit S3d Engine
The S3d Engine provides 2D acceleration for excellent Windows applications performance and a full-featured high-performance 3D rendering engine for games and other interactive 3D applications.  
The S3d Engine incorporates the key Windows accelerator functions of BitBLT, line draw and polygon fill. 3D features include flat shading, Gouraud shading and texture mapping support. Advanced texture mapping features include perspective correction, bi-linear and tri-linear filtering, MIP- Mapping, and Z-buffering. The S3d Engine also includes direct support for utilizing video as a texture map. These features provide the most realistic user experience for interactive 3D applications.  
 
Other advanced features of the S3d Engine include S3 proprietary compressed texture formats for improved performance and reduced memory requirements, as well as support for S3's MUX buffering (pat. pend.) feature, which allows for Z-buffering support with no additional memory requirement.  
 
Streams Processor
The S3 Streams Processor provides the stretching and YUV color space conversion features required for full screen video playback with both software CODECs and hardware MPEG-1 sources.  
The Streams Processor allows simultaneous display of graphics and video of different color depths. For example, it is possible to display 24 bpp- equivalent video on top of an 8- bit graphics background. This saves memory bandwidth and storage capacity while permitting higher frame rates.  
 
S3 Scenic Highway
The S3 Scenic Highway allows lowest cost direct connection to S3's Scenic/MX2 MPEG-1 audio and video decoder as well as video digitizers such as the Philips SAA7110/SAA7111.  
Features
High-Performance Integrated DRAM-based 2D/3D Graphics and Video Accelerator  
High-performance 64-bit 2D/3D graphics engine  
Integrated 135 MHz RAMDAC and clock synthesizer  
S3 Streams Processor for accelerated video  
S3 Scenic Highway for direct interface to live video and MPEG-1 peripherals Pin compatible with S3 Trio64V+ S3d Graphics Engine Features  
High performance 2D Windows acceleration  
Flat and Gouraud shading for 3D  
High quality/performance 3D texture mapping. Perspective correction Bi-linear and tri-linear texture filtering MIP-Mapping.  
Depth cueing and fogging Alpha blending  
Video texture mapping  
Z-buffering  
Vertical interpolation for video playback  
S3 Streams Processor Features Supports on-the-fly stretching and blending of primary RGB stream and RGB or YUV (video) secondary stream. Each stream can have a different color depth. High-quality hardware-assisted video playback with horizontal interpolation.  
Support for Indeo, Cinepak, and software and hardware-accelerated MPEG-1 video S3 Scenic Highway Interface and Philips SAA7110/SAA7111 video digitizers.  
S3 Scenic/MX2 MPEG-1 audio/video decoder  
High Screen Resolution (Non-package interlaced) Support  
1280x1024x256 colors at 75 Hz refresh  
1024x768x64K colors at 75 Hz refresh  
800x600x16.7M colors at 75 Hz refresh  
High-Performance Memory Support  
64-bit DRAM memory interface  
2- and 4-MByte DRAM video memory  
Single-cycle EDO operation  
Non-x86 CPU Support  
Big endian/little endian byte ordering  
Relocatable addressing  
Industry-Standard Local Bus Support.  
Glueless PCI 2.1 bus interface  
Glueless VESA VL-Bus interface  
PCI Bus Mastering for Display List Processing and Video Capture Support  
Multimedia Support Hooks  
Full Software Support. Drivers for major operating systems: [Windows 95, Windows 3.11, Windows NT, OS/2 2.1 and 3.0 (Warp), ADI 4.2]  
Green PC/Monitor Plug and Play