CS01 3DLabs GLINT 300SX
Description
This item is from the PC 3D Graphics Accelerators FAQ, by Blair MacIntyre with numerous contributions by others. (v1.2).
CS01 3DLabs GLINT 300SX
First, a comment about the GLINT 300SX chip, which I will make because it was not clear to me when I first read their specs. They mention texture mapping acceleration, but on the 300SX texture maps are held in host memory and per pixel information is sent to the chip which performs the necessary interpolations and applications. For the upcoming 300TX, the texture maps are held in local memory on the graphics card (the "localbuffer") and the host just sends per vertex information to the chip which performs all the texture mapping calculations.
Information on the 300SX can be obtained from the 3DLabs home page at http://www.3Dlabs.com/ or by sending email to info@3Dlabs.com.
The technical specs below were copied directly from the page http://www.3Dlabs.com/300SXinf.html
GLINT 300SX Overview
The GLINT 300SX high performance graphics processor combines workstation class 3D graphics acceleration and state-of-the-art 2D performance in a single chip.
GLINT is capable of processing 300,000 shaded, depth buffered and anti-aliased polygons/second. The chip provides complete 32-bit color, 2D and 3D acceleration, an on-chip PCI-compliant local bus interface and integrated LUT-DAC control, making a complete graphics subsystem possible with minimal chip count.
All the rendering operations of OpenGL are accelerated by the GLINT 300SX, including Gouraud shading, depth buffering, anti-aliasing, alpha blending, and texture mapping.
3D ACCELERATION
* 100% OpenGL compliant rendering operations in hardware
* Point, line, rectangle and polygon primitives
* Gouraud shading, depth buffering, anti-aliasing, dithering, depth cueing, texture map filtering and alpha blending
* 2.5 Giga operations per second
* 300K Gouraud shaded, depth buffered triangles/sec
2D AND GUI ACCELERATION
* True color acceleration of window systems such as Win32 and X11
* Accelerated bitBLT, line drawing, fills, text and window clipping
SPECIAL FEATURES
* 64-bit hyper-pipelined architecture
* Vertex level interface
* 112-bit pixel datapath to memory
* High quality 16 and 8-bpp dithering of 24-bit graphics images
* Fast frame and depth buffer clears
* Shared framebuffer interface for easy multimedia integration
* VRAM block fill and bit masking
* Anti-aliasing for high quality images at 4x4 and 8x8 sub-pixel resolution
DISPLAY MODES
* Resolutions up to 2560x2048
* 8, 16 or 32-bits per pixel RGBA and 4 or 8-bit color indexed
* Packed 8, 16 and 32-bit pixels
* Supports advanced modes: double buffering, stereo and overlays
GLINT 300SX Graphics Architecture
The GLINT 300SX delivers 3D and GUI rendering functionality to improve the performance and quality of graphics applications and APIs.
* Gouraud shading
* Depth buffering
* Anti-aliasing
* Dithering
* Depth cueing and fog
* Texture mapping
* Scissor and stipple masking
* Alpha blending
* Logical Operations (e.g. XOR)
The unique hyper-pipelined architecture and 112-bit memory datapath ensure that multiple rendering operations can be combined with no performance penalty - allowing a Gouraud shaded polygon to be processed just as fast when depth buffering, dithering and anti-aliasing are enabled.
FRAMEBUFFER CONTROLLER
The 64/32-bit framebuffer controller directly interfaces to VRAM or DRAM framebuffers and supports a wide range of pixel depths, resolutions and memory sizes - enabling systems to be tuned to meet specific price/performance targets.
* 1-32 MBytes VRAM or DRAM
* 8,16 or 32-bit RGBA color
* 4 or 8-bit color indexed
* 2, 4, 8 pixels per 64-bit word
* 640x480 to 2560x2048
* VRAM arbitrary shape block fill
* VRAM bit masking
* Framebuffer bypass mode
LOCALBUFFER CONTROLLER
The localbuffer holds optional off-screen information for each pixel including; depth (Z) values, stencil data, arbitrary window clip planes, plus a control field for fast window clearing. The format for each field is user defined, up to a maximum of 48 bits.
* 0-48 MBytes DRAM
* 0-48-bits wide Depth: 0, 16, 24, 32-bit Stencil: 0, 4, 8-bit Window clipping: 0, 4-bit Fast depth clear: 4, 8-bit
* Localbuffer bypass mode
INTEGRATED VIDEO TIMING
An internal timing generator and VRAM transfer controller are incorporated into the GLINT 300SX processor. Advanced systems requiring overlays, stereo, interlace or very large framebuffers can be supported using an external timing generator.
SHARED FRAMEBUFFER
The GLINT 300SX's on-chip shared framebuffer interface is a fully integrated implementation of S3's interface, allowing GLINT to use video and multimedia co-processors, or for the GLINT to be used as a 3D coprocessor to an S3 device.
UPGRADE PATH
The GLINT 300SX is the first of a family of GLINT graphics processors that are designed to meet the demands of the graphics designer. The GLINT300TX, is a second generation pin compatible processor that enhances the SX's texture capabilities - supporting local texture storage and pixel address generation for all OpenGL texturing modes.
NOTICE: 3Dlabs reserves the right to change the above specifications without notice.
From looking at the various boards, it appears that typical performance quotes are in the following range:
* 3D Gouraud shaded, depth buffered, window clipped, stippled, dithered,
and alpha tested rendering performance with 24-bit RGB color depth is
the following:
o 300K 25 pixel triangles/sec
o 500K 10 pixel vectors/sec
o 8M independent points/second
o 500K 9x13 pixels characters/second
* 2D Graphics performance
o 1M 10 pixel vectors/sec
o 500K 10x10 pixel, flat shaded rectangles/sec
o 500K 9x13 pixels characters/second
o Scroll Rate 48M pixels/second - 8 bits/pixel
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