The Model 3 was based on Real3D Pro-1000 Image Generator, intended for high-end real-time visualization and was state of the art at the time. Real3D itself was spun out of Lockheed Martin’s flight simulator business.

Model 3 was specced to handle 1M polygons/sec at a buttery smooth 57.524 FPS and featured hardware transformation & lighting, mip-mapping, multi-texturing, and anti-aliasing. It could render both triangle and true quad primitives. Rather than accepting a command list each frame, the Pro-1000 graphics subsystem featured scene graph processing and was capable of parsing a high level graph data structure consisting of view port nodes, transform nodes, and mesh pointers. This minimized the burden on the host PowerPC CPU, which could set up most of the scene in a single frame and transfer only updates to the transform matrices.

Two-D graphics are handled by an old-fashioned tile map generator from earlier Sega arcade boards. For audio, a Motorola 68000-based sound board drives two Yamaha-designed Sega Custom Sound Processors (the Sega Saturn console had one of these). Some games featured an MPEG audio board for additional music capability, powered by either a 68K or Z80.

Additional peripheral boards included Z80-based force feedback drive boards and a 68K-based network board with low-latency fiber optic link.

All are emulated by Supermodel, which today is the only playable Model 3 emulator.