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All graphics cards have 2 main components: graphics memory and chipset. While the amount of memory a graphics card has doesn't affect its speed, it determines the highest resolution and colour depth that the graphics card can support. The chipset on the other hand affects the speed and also the maximum refresh rate of the card. There are other factors, of course, like the video card's BIOS, drivers and design that also determine its performance; but the chipset will determine a rough range of performance values. The recent introduction of AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) which is a new bus specification to enchance the performance of 3-D graphics further complicates things. AGP is an interface that can convey 3-D images at high speeds. It can use main memory for refreshing the graphics and to do texture mapping, z-buffering and alpha blending. Other than the AGP complication, some chipsets are 128bit meaning that they can send and receive up to 128-bits per clock cycle. Unfortunately, 128bit chipsets are not neccessarily faster than 64bit ones. For more information, select a graphics chipset: |
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The ATi Rage 2 A 2D and 3D video accelerator that is pin-compatible with the RAGE accelerator with double the 3D performance, improves 2D performance by 20%, supports MPEG2 video and increases DAC speed to 170MHz. Supports ATI Multimedia Channel (AMC) expansion modules. TV-out support is available through ATI's ImpacTV companion chip. Supports EDO and SGRAM memory. Features PCI version 2.1 with full bus mastering and scatter/gather support and Bi-endian support. Has a 48-level command FIFO and 32-bit wide memory-mapped registers. Programmable flat or paged memory model with linear frame buffer access, Triple 8-bit palette DAC with gamma correction. Pixel rates up to 170MHz or 200MHz (optional). Supports DRAM, EDO DRAM, SDRAM and SGRAM across a 64-bit interface. Has a complete 3D primitive support: points, lines, triangles and quadrilaterals and BLTs with Z compare. Comprehensive enhanced 3D feature set includes: Full screen or window double buffering, hidden surface removal using 16-bit Z-buffering, sub-pixel and sub-texel accuracy, 3D Gouraud shaded polygons, perspectively correct mip-mapped texturing with chroma-key support, bi- & tri-linear texture filtering , Direct3D texture lighting, alpha blending, fog, video textures and texture lighting and dithering support. The ATi Rage Pro Uses 133MHz AGP with sidebands and pipelining. Superior 3D performance achieved through a floating point setup engine rated at 1 million triangles/sec. 100 MHz SGRAM support for maximum 2D and 3D performance. A 230MHz DAC allows 85Hz refresh at 1600x1200 resolutions. Incorporates filtered sealing of 720 pixel wide DVD content with improved MPEG-2 motion compensation. Has a 128-level command FIFO, 32-bit wide memory-mapped registers, programmable flat or paged memory model with linear frame buffer access, triple 8-bit palette DAC with gamma correction and pixel rates up to 230MHz. Supports DRAM, EDO DRAM, SDRAM, and SGRAM at up to 100MHz memory clock providing bandwidths up to 800MB/sec across a 64-bit interface. Supports WRAM and 128-bit external DAC. - S3 868 A 2D graphics accelerator. - S3 964 64 bit 2D graphics accelerator that supports up to a maximum of 4MB VRAM. - S3 968 64 bit 2D graphics accelerator that supports up to a maximum of 4MB VRAM. Has some limited 3D capabilities. - S3 Trio 32 A 32bit, 2D only graphics accelerator that was used in budget desktops around 1995. - S3 Trio 64 The S3 Trio64V is a 64bit DRAM- based, 2D only graphics accelerator used in budget desktops. It has an integrated 135MHz RAMDAC clock. - S3 Trio 64V+ The S3 Trio64V+ delivers respectable video and graphics capabilities to the commercial and home desktop PC markets. It is a 64-bit, DRAM- based digital video-enabled integrated graphics and video accelerator with the capability to interface to live video and MPEG-1 peripherals such as S3's Scenic/MX2 MPEG decoder. It incorporates an enhanced version of the graphics core and high-performance 135 MHz true-color RAMDAC clock that is found in the Trio64 chip. - S3 Trio 64/V2 The Trio64V2 takes advantage of hardware double buffering for seamless, tear-free video. It has better memory bandwidth management, faster memory access and higher memory clock support than the 64V+. The Trio64V2 enables higher refresh rates and larger resolutions by integrating a 170 MHz true-color RAMDAC. Support for resolutions and refresh rates of up to 1280x1024@85 Hz. Utilizes synchronous memory to provide more usable bandwidth at mainstream resolutions such as 1024x768x16bpp @ 85Hz. - S3 ViRGE Virtual Graphics Engine. 64bit, 2D + 3D The ViRGE 64-bit DRAM-based accelerator combines a 135MHz RAMDAC and clock synthesizer with the multimedia capabilities of S3's Trio64V+. 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. Supports all major 3D APIs, including OpenGL, Microsoft's Direct3D and RealityLab, as well as Argonaut BRender and Criterion Renderware. - S3 ViRGE/VX Virtual Graphics Engine. 64bit, 2D + 3D The ViRGE/VX product offers all of the same features as the DRAM-based ViRGE, but supports 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. - S3 ViRGE/DX and ViRGE/GX Virtual Graphics Engine. 64bit, 2D + 3D ViRGE/DX - DRAM support Features are SmartFilter technology for higher performance and higher quality texture mapping; and a parallel processing perspective engine for increased throughput. When combined with the following ViRGE capabilities, the ViRGE DX/GX are designed to deliver software and hardware customers with the next level of 3D acceleration for gaming applications: 1. MIP mapping and trilinear filtering to deliver images that are free of annoying visual artifacts such as "sparkle" and "jaggies." The ViRGE/DX and ViRGE/GX provide an easy upgrade path from S3's widely accepted ViRGE accelerator. - S3 ViRGE/GX2 Virtual Graphics Engine. 64bit 2D + 3D The ViRGE/GX2 accelerator provides support for Intel's AGP standard. Has a full set of 3D rendering features including MIP mapping, trilinear filtering, transparency, atmospheric effects, Z-buffering, and perspective correction of textures. - S3 ViRGE/MX A power saving version of the normal ViRGE that is used in laptops. - Tseng Lab ET6000 The ET6000 combines 128-bit GUI accelerator, video image processor, integrated 135MHz clock and 24-bit LUT-DAC. Has enhanced video features and high performance Multibank DRAM support. - Tseng Lab ET6100 ET6100 is an enhanced, pin-compatible version of the 128-bit ET6000 2D Graphics and Multimedia Engine. It features an integrated 175MHz VGA-compatible LUT-DAC and delivers increased display bandwidth. A 128bit chip similar to the ET6000 but with 3D support. The Rendition Veritie V1000 A 2D and 3D accelerator. General 3D Features: Inverse Texture Mapping 3D Performance: Fill Rate (Bilinear, persp. corr., no z) 28M pps Filtering: Point-sampling Blending: API Support The Rendition Veritie V2200 - True per-pixel perspective correction - Sub-pixel / sub-texel positioning accuracy - Flat and Gouraud shading - Z-buffering - Anti-aliasing - Comprehensive texture mapping support, including video textures - MIP-mapping - Bi-linear and tri-linear filtering - Support for texture animation, morphing and other special effects - Complete set of blending functions inc. alpha blending, fog, chroma-keying - Motion compensation for MPEG-2 video playback - Video ports for digital video input and output - Programmable flicker-filter for TV output The 3D/Fx Voodoo A 3D only accelerator, this is what the computer industry has adopted as its "standard". 3D games are designed with this chipset in mind and demonstrations of new games at exhibitions are always performed on computers sporting cards based on this chipset. It has excellent acceleration speed. Features: Texture modulation -Provides diffuse lighting affects on a texture. The Oxygen Chipset Designed by Dynamic Pictures, Oxygen accelerates CAD/CAM software applications such as Solidworks, Pro/ENGINEER, SDRC I-DEAS and Unigraphics. Using a scalable architecture, the Oxygen can have one, two or four graphics processors operating in parallel. Features: nVIDA RIVA 128 The Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator (RIVA) uses a vertex cache to maximize triangle rates over the system bus (doubles the maximum possible triangle rate). Features: - Perspective Correct Texturing - Filtering - Lighting - Alpha - Z-buffer - MIP mapping 3D Labs Glint MX Scalable Architecture allows for 2,4 or 8 devices. 3D Performance: - 1M triangles/sec, 25 pixel, Gouraud, Z - 33M pixels/sec, Gouraud, Z - 2M vectors/sec, 10 pixel, Z - 33M bilinear filtered, per-pixel mip-mapped texture mapped pixels/sec - 16.5 M trilinear filtered, per pixel mip-mapped texture mapped pixels/sec 2D Performance: - 4 Gbytes/sec pixel fill using 8 column VRAM block fills - 2M 10 pixel vectors/sec - 118M bytes/sec screen to screen copy Features: - Gouraud & flat shading - Sub-pixel correct primitives/textures - 32-bit Z-buffer (also 0, 16 and 24-bit) - Fog - Alpha blending - Retained alpha buffer (8-bit) - Specular lighting - Stencil buffer (8-bit) - Anti-aliasing (4x4 and 8x8) - Overlays (8-bit) - Ordered dithering - LogicOps - Graphics IDs - Per pixel mip-mapping - Trilinear and bilinear filtering - Per pixel perspective correction - 32-bit RGBA textures - 8-bit palletized textures - 48 Mbytes addressable local textures - On-chip texture cache |
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