DOS Days

Orchid Fahrenheit ProVideo 64

The Orchid Fahrenheit ProVideo 64 arrived in late 1994 and used an S3 chipset, the Vision968.

 Released 1994
Bus VESA Local Bus or PCI
Chipset S3 Vision 968 (86C968)
Standards Hercules, MDA, CGA, EGA, VGA
Memory 2 MB or 4 MB VRAM
RAMDAC Brooktree Bt485
Ports 15-pin DSUB (analogue video out)
Part # 830-0106-X (Fahrenheit 1280)
FCC ID DDS7EFFP64964-VLB
Price Aug 1994: $427
See Also Orchid Kelvin Video64

The Orchid Fahrenheit ProVideo 64's maximum resolution is 1600 x 1200 and supports refresh rates up to 120 Hz, though at this highest of its resolutions it can only manage 43.5 Hz, which is extremely low compared to other cards that could reach 72-85 Hz.
It has hardware digital video scaling, colour space conversion and dithering capabilities.

Screen Resolutions and Vertical Refresh Rates:

Resolution Refresh Rate
800 x 600 ?
1024 x 768 85 Hz
1280 x 1024 75 Hz
1600 x 1200 43.5 Hz

 

 

Board Revisions

I have no details on the various board revisions for the Fahrenheit ProVideo 64 card.

 

Competition

-The ProVideo 64 competed against other video-centric cards in 1994 including Diamond Stealth64 Video 3000XL, Hercules Terminator Professional, Matrox MGA Millennium, Number Nine 9FX Motion771, and STB Systems Velocity 64 Video. Top of the video playback performance charts here was the Matrox Millennium by some margin. The others were all close in performance - the STB Velocity 64 Video came in 2nd in the 8-bit test (1600 x 1200), and the Diamond Stealth 64 Video came 2nd in the 24-bit test (1024 x 768).

 

In the Media

"Orchid Technology Inc's Fahrenheit ProVideo 64 is no speed devil, but it was competitive in most of the categories. Its $427 price tag is typical, and its utility set has some useful, configurable tools, such as power management. But its virtual desktop size is limited, and it lacks color correction altogether. Its video performance was on par with that of the other S3-based boards, and the technical support was one of the top two in the comparison." 
PC World, March 1992

 

Setting it Up

I have no information of the hardware set up for the Fahrenheit ProVideo 64.


Downloads

Operation Manual

 

Original Utility Disk
(missing)

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VGA ROM BIOS v1.0
(missing)

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More Pictures