3DLabs GLiNT 300SX (NEC)
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Specifications
Bus | PCI |
Memory | 4 MB |
Memory type | VRAM |
Memory bus width | |
Fab | |
Core clock | |
Memory clock | |
Connectors | VGA |
Year | 1994 |
Initial price |
Card is for MIPS platform. OpenGL support
Bus | PCI |
Memory | 4 MB |
Memory type | VRAM |
Memory bus width | |
Fab | |
Core clock | |
Memory clock | |
Connectors | VGA |
Year | 1994 |
Initial price |
Is it correct to say that this was the first 3D Graphics Accelerator on the market?
Did you try to test it with any OpenGL games?
How “rare” is this card anyway?
Yes, this was the world’s first 3D Graphics Accelerator for the PC. BTW, GLiNT is written as ‘GLINT’ as Silicon Grpahics objected to the emphasis on ‘GL’ the name of their graphics library, and Microsoft to the emphasis placed on NT. The Fab was IBM. Two variants of the chip were produced, the 300SX01 and the 300SX02, the latter addressing an issue which affected performance of pixel reads. It would run early OpenGL elementary games but did not have texture mapping acceleration support so this would drop back to software.
I think 1987 Matrox SM-640 was the first 3D Accelerator for PC.
It seems the SM-640 was the first 3D accelerator BOARD for the PC. It contained the ‘Geometry Engine’ chip from SGI but this was not designed explicitly for the PC. I should have been more explicit. The GLINT 300SX was the world’s first 3D graphics chip designed specifically for the PC, I believe. It was certainly the world’s first 3D graphics rasterizer chip. It was also commercially successful which the SM-640 was not.
I should also add that 3Dlabs provided a reference board design based on this chip. NEC was one of many companies who either adapted this or produced there own designs. So it’s hard to say which plug-in-board company was the actual first.