First available: Early December 1996 as OEM* & as ~ Late Sept 1996 retail. *The STB Velocity 3D cards were available in October 1996, but due to delays only about a few hundred copies of MW2 were initially shipped with the cards due to supply problems. The rest of the cards were shipped with a 2 day express shipping voucher for the MW2 3D Enhanced game. I picked most of this off old Usenet posts by/involving "Alf" a former STB-now-3Dfx tech who has been helping people out in comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video for several years. Format: Win95 PC Minimum System Requirements: Pentium 120MHz Processor, 12mb RAM, 256 color SVGA, PCI video, 58mb of uncompessed hard disk drive space, 2x CD-ROM, mouse, Win95, & a S3 ViRGE 3D Graphics accelerator. 3D API: S3D (S3's native API for the ViRGE chip series ) www.s3.com
Video cards the S3 ViRGE edition was bundled with: 1) STB Velocity
3D
Desktop systems the S3 ViRGE edition was bundled with: 1) Toshiba
Infinia 7200 (P200), Infinia 7160
(P166), & Infinia 7130 (P133) series
of desktop computers. (all w/
2mb ViRGE 325 based cards) 2) Micron
Home MPC (P200 w/ a 2mb Diamond Stealth 3D 2000
[ViRGE 325]) Retail S3 ViRGE version: One thing that seperates this version from all the others is that Activision decided that this was the one version they would sell seperately. The message below (from Activision) appeared on AOL back in April 1997 (Note: I am not, nor was I ever was a member of AOL!!!):
It appears that this advertisement was just a follow-up and the game was first available as retail somwhere in the late Summer of 1996 and continued being offered through 1997. This was the same exact game as the earlier STB Velocity 3D version, but it had cosmetic changes to the CD cover and CD labeling. I would guess that choosing the ViRGE version for retail had something to do with the huge number of S3 ViRGE cards shipping as OEMs at the time. DiamondMM had included a brochure w/ their Stealth 3D 2000 advertising ViRGE MW2 as far back as June 1996 and DiamondMM's website said "Available Late June 1996." Labeled as: "Enhanced for the STB Velocity 3D, "Enhanced for the S3 ViRGE" & "Enhanced for the S3 ViRGE" + "Offered only with Toshiba Personal Computers." Full Installation Size: 130 mb Resolutions: 320x200, 320x240, 512x384, 640x480 & 800x600 (and maybe higher?). Changeable from the Combat Variables screen in the shell. I finally tested it on one of the "right" cards that ViRGE MW2 was supposedly made for (a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000XL 4mb PCI) and it did offer 800x600, though at about 5fps. Note: When I installed the S3 version on a system with a 16mb TNT card, the MW2 shell offfered me 1024x768 and higher resolutions. Of course, I could not run it on that TNT card, but the positive thing was learning that the S3 version's MW2SHELL.DLL file may have a scalable resolution allowance, depending on video memory. It *may* be possible to use this MW2SHELL.DLL (stock or with some hex mods) on the other versions to allow higher resolutions. In-Game Graphics Options: 1. Monitor Brightness 2. Textured Sky: Turns on/off the texture mapped graphics of the sky. 3. Textured Ground: Turns on/off the texture mapped ground. 4. Filter Textures: This option filters out the texture mapping of objects in the distance, smoothing them and creating a more realistic image. Performance/Appearance: It actually looks really nice, but boy is it slow! It looks nicer than the Mystique, and is similiar to the ATI Rage version, with the added bonus of 640x480 and 800x600. Of course, these resolutions are really useless for enjoyable gameplay when 512x384 is choppy. I would have to say, visually, the ViRGE edition is the nicest of the 2D/3D card versions. It would seem that the ViRGE GX2 (AGP) has the best results in 3D app testing and should yield the highest possible framerates (It has almost double the VX's 3D WinBench score and even the DX and GX chips were significantly better at 3D), but try as I might, this chipset continues to defy several laws of the universe. I really thought that running a tweaked ViRGE GX2 AGP + PIII 500@667, 256mb of ram would achieve an acceptable frame rate in MW2, but I was wrong. I didn't have FRAP's at the time of testing but by seeing the level of stutter, I'd have to guess it is usually running around 10-15fps. To play this vesion online in a league would have been an act of insanity, suicide, or both. Get used to seeing yourself explode at 2-5 fps as your blood pressure rises and you pound your keyboard into dusk. Even to play games just for fun, it probably would become quite frustrating dealing with a slide show. Videocard Compatibility: This game should run on any of the ViRGE family, though I use "run" in the broadest sense. So far I have successfully run this version of MW2 on a STB Powergraph 64 3D PCI (2mb, ViRGE 325), Diamond Stealth 3D 2000XL PCI (4mb, ViRGE 325), and a Diamond Stealth 4000 AGP (4mb, ViRGE GX2), but none could give me acceptable performance. Since the ViRGE family includes the ViRGE/MX mobile chipset, it would be theoretically possible to run this version of MW2 on a MX "powered" laptop or notebook, assuming that S3D DLL's are included within the MX driver set. Aybody out there crazy enough to try this? OS Compatibility: All the MW2 Win95 based versions only seem to install and/or run correctly (or run period) on Win9x based systems. The S3D driver is only available for Win9x and [maybe] NT. Basically, you're going to need a Win9x partition for OS and driver compatibility for the 3D Enahnced versions of MW2. Tweaking: There probably are variables that can be adjusted to increase performance in the ViRGE's native S3D [such as disabling Vsynch], but I have never seen any key to provide guidance to what needs to be done. Nor have I seena any program that effects the settings of S3's native API or explanation of how manually tweak the registry. Let's face it, the S3 guys didn't exactly hang out in the game newsgroups and forum giving this info out. The remaing option is pretty much limited to core/memory overclocking. The old MCLK utility can still be used to overclock the ViRGE, but I doubt you're going to see much of an advantage due the cards design. If an overclocked ViRGE/GX2 AGP on a fast system is still slow, then overclocking your old Stealth 2000 PCI is not going to do much. Probably the best option at this point would be Entech's Powerstrip or Performance Tuner, which allows you to overclock and manipulate other display variables. S3 ViRGE Support Sites: S3 3D tweaking sites have always been very rare, for a good variety of reasons and with the ViRGE long out of production, you can't really expect much at this point. I used to recommend S3 Planet, but it is long gone. I'll see if I can find anything to replace it, but I wouldn't expect too much at this point. I did have somebody from Europe email me last year about having an S3 support site, but I have unfortunately lost the link. If you're still out there, please let me know. Cheats: The Cheat codes are the same as the regular Win95/Pentium version, though I don't believe the "bounding spheres" works on these versions. Bugs: The music track resets when you go into the Game Options menu and then reenter into the SIM. Apparently the torso twist is not a full 180 degrees. I haven't been able test the armor bug on this one. Misc. Notes: While the ViRGE series had great 2D quality, a nice 3D feature set and the VX had a helluva fast RAMDAC for it's day (220MHz), it was [and will forever be] considered one of the slowest 3D capable cards in existence. Almost four years later [2000], it is still referred to as a "3D decelerator" on Usenet and elsewhere. For some reason, in most 3D tests I've seen, the STB ViRGE/VX card was slower than some other manufacturers original ViRGE boards. Maybe some day someone will figure out a way to implant the STB Velocity 3D card into the human body so it can slow down the aging process.... STB held a tournament at the Fall Comdex '96 show (in Las Vegas, Nevada) that had ~$25,000 in cash and prizes going to the daily top scorers. Here is a copy of the original STB press release. S3
ViRGE Screenshot Gallery:
(Using an STB Powergraph 3D 2mb ViRGE 325 or Diamond Stealth 4000 4mb ViRGE/GX2) |
