Trident Microsystems, Inc.

Trident was a graphics and audio chipset manufacturer for the IBM PC and its compatibles that started up in 1987. Cards based on their graphics chipsets are ubiquitous having been sold to OEMs in large quantities to be installed in budget-oriented PC clones, and are generally considered to be low performers.

Don't be fooled by the model numbers that Trident uses for its ISA chipsets. The TVGA8900D is about the fastest chipset they produced for the ISA bus (and it was an exception to the general rule about Trident-based cards being slow - this one was decent), followed by the 8900CL. The 9000 range were designed to be used on even lower-budget video cards and for motherboard onboard graphics.

On the last 8900 (TVGA8900D) and chipsets from the 93xx and beyond, all models were capable of linear addressing of their video memory. Prior to this they relied on slower bank switching.

Trident produced just one audio chipset, the 4DWave, which worked on the PCI bus and can be found on several sound cards but is more commonly seen embedded onto motherboards in laptops.

The table below lists all the Trident chipsets/cards here at DOS Days (in chronological order):

ISA / VLB Graphics	PCI Graphics
TVGA 8200XL (aka LX8200) chipset (1987) TVGA 8800 chipset (1988-1989) TVGA 8900 chipset (1989-1992) TVGA 9000 chipset (1991-1992) TVGA 9200 chipset (1993)	TGUI 9320 (1994) Cyber 9382 / 9385 / 9386 / 9388 (1994) TGUI 9420 (1995) TGUI 9440 (1995) TGUI 9470 (1995) Cyber 9520 / 9525 / 9540 (1995) TGUI 9660 / TGUI9680 (1995) ProVidia 9685 3DImage 9750 3DImage 9850 Blade3D 9880

PCI Audio Chipsets
4DWave DX / NX (1998)