The machine featured 1 MB of on-board memory and a Q22-bus interface with DMA transfers.
DMA transfers over this bus occurs in packets of eight 128-bit words, achieving a peak usable bandwidth of 2 GB/s.
DMA transfers can either occur one word at a time or all at once in burst mode.
Although a DMA transfer can be triggered externally, there is no external indication of completion of a transfer.
The reference cited uses an obscure timer mode to generate high speed strobes for DMA transfers.
However, this was more the fault of the API because Direct3D, at the time, lacked support for DMA transfers.
At the end of 2003, DMA 33 transfers were added as well, available since mid-2004.
The 8237 DMA controller supplies the memory with control signals and memory address information during the DMA transfer.
The 8237 is capable of DMA transfers at rates of up to 1.6 MByte per second.
The enhanced sound hardware offers automatic DMA transfer, allowing more complex sound effects with a significantly reduced processor overhead.