From Hardware Central,
H A R D W A R E F L A S H
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Your Weekly Source For Hardware Information!
For the Week of April 5th, 1999
Volume 2, Week 11
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Greetings!
With the computer industry's spring "refresh" just around
the corner, many developments have occurred in the 3D
arena.
Here's a brief summary of the happenings in each company in
the 3D arena:
3Dfx
----
Despite the negative feedback 3Dfx has received recently on
both the Voodoo3 and STB merger front, it appears 3Dfx will
be doing extremely well from a business perspective.
Though
the Voodoo3 lacks many image quality features such as
32-bit
rendering, the performance is still top-of-the-line. In
addition, during the coming months, 3Dfx will be pushing
the
3Dfx "brand" to general consumers through a large marketing
campaign which looks to be quite promising. What does
3Dfx have planned for a Fall part? No one knows for sure
yet,
but chances are, they are looking at a 32-bit color part
with
double the fill rate of the Voodoo3 that will again push
the
limits of consumer 3D.
nVidia
------
The greatest threat to 3Dfx and the Voodoo3 is currently
nVidia's new TNT2. While 3Dfx seemed to take a "speed vs.
quality" angle, nVidia is sticking with image quality.
However, this does not mean that the TNT2 will be lacking
in performance. In actuality, it is quite the contrary.
Preliminary tests show that the performance is on par with,
if not exceeding that of the Voodoo3 at the same clock
speed. TNT2 products should start appearing from many
companies around May.
In the few couple weeks, there has been much speculation of
nVidia's next killer chip. Rumor has it that nVidia may
already have something up and running. There is also
speculation that the NV10 will have 4 rendering pipelines
and support up to 64MB of on-board RAM. But then again...
that's just speculation.
S3
--
With all the 3Dfx vs. nVidia hoopla going on, there is one
company lurking around as the "darkhorse" of the 3D
industry. The company is S3, and the product is the
Savage4. Unlike some of the other 3D companies that have
been hyping their cards, S3 has been keeping a relatively
low key with their Savage4 chip. The Savage4 is
essentially
what the Savage3D was supposed to be, with the addition of
multi-texturing capabilities. While this chip isn't the
Voodoo or TNT "killer", many will be pleasantly surprised
by its performance. Instead of trying to produce the "holy
grail" of 3D acceleration, S3 decided to produce a solid
product aimed at a market segment of 3D that no one has yet
"claimed", the mid-range market. With a large number of
OEM wins already, the Savage4 looks like it just might be
a surprise winner this time around.
Matrox
------
Yet another company that had, until recentrly, kept a tight
lid on its next generation product was Matrox with its G400
product. The G400 was officially unveiled just a couple
weeks ago at GDC, and it looks to be quite a promising
chip.
Matrox's previous chip, the G200, boasted stunning image
quality, but seriously lacked the performance to support
it.
This time around, Matrox is again building on its already
great image quality and it also trying to add better
performance to support it. In addition, Matrox will also
be one of the first companies to be using "true hardware
bump-mapping", unlike cards like the TNT, which use an
"embossing" technique. The results of the hardware
bump-mapping are quite impressive and should add another
dimension to 3D acceleration. Unfortunately though, the
performance hit with true bump-mapping turned on may
seriously affect the support it garners from the gaming
community. It will be interesting to see how things work
out when the card launches in the May timeframe to go up
against chips like the TNT2, Voodoo3, Savage4, Permedia3
and PVRSG. For a full preview, click here:
hardwarecentral.com
3D Labs
-------
While 3Dlabs has been known for their professional level
3D chips, their presence in the gaming market has been
weak. The Permedia2 chip was strong professional entry
level OpenGL accelerator, but its gaming performance was
lacking. With the Permedia3, 3Dlabs hopes to remedy this.
With 3Dlabs' vast experience in OpenGL, its OpenGL
performance will likely be top-notch. In addition, the
Permedia3 may support true bump-mapping and will also sport
a proprietary technology called "Virtual Textures" that
will greatly enhance texturing performance. Despite delays
on the Permedia3 chips, development still seems to be
humming along and we should expect to see products in the
next few months.
For the full scoop on 3Dlabs' Permedia3, go here:
hardwarecentral.com
PVRSG
-----
Last but not least, NEC and Videologic will also be
launching a PC version of their PVRSG. Why all the delay?
NEC/Videologic have been busy fulfilling demand for the
Dreamcast platform. The PVRSG should be a contender in
this
spring when all the new chips come out, but it wouldn't be
too surprising if the PVRSG doesn't come out on top.
However, NEC and Videologic representatives assure us that
the 3rd generation PowerVR chip is on schedule for Fall.
I hope you enjoy this week's HardwareFlash!
If you have any comments, questions, suggestions or
feedback
please feel free to e-mail me at:
(mailto:jtseng@hardwarecentral.com)
Jeffrey Tseng
HardwareCentral Site Leader
jtseng@hardwarecentral.com
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