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Performance strongly depends on the optimization of the video adapter for the different platforms. In this regard, the Create! offers every possible choice since the drivers are optimized for both SSE and 3Dnow! and, thus, take advantage of the latest CPU instructions on both Intel and AMD systems.

We tested the Permedia3 Create! on the following platforms:

Shuttle HOT 597, AMD K6-III 450 at 4x112 (448 MHz), IBM 9.1G (UATA 66 HDD not supported by mainboard), Single 128MB EMS HSDRAM DIMM, ASUS 40x CDROM, Creative Labs Ensoniq soundblaster

AMD Fester B3, AMD Athlon 600, Western Digital Expert A41800 (18G UATA 66), generic 128 MB PC100 CAS-2 DIMM, Toshiba SCM1212 6x DVD ROM, Linksys HPN 100 NIC, Creative Labs Soundblaster Life!

All benchmarks were run under Windows98 (first edition) using DirectX 6.1, AcerView 76e (monitor).

Setting up the Create! is as easy as one could possibly wish. All that is necessary is to access the Control Panel/ Display…..Adapter, select "Change" … "have disk" and point to the correct .inf file. After rebooting the card is functional and can be configured according to anyone’s desire. For benchmarking, it is necessary to run regedit and to add the Direct3DHAL.NoVBlankWait=1 string value to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\3DLABS\DirectX subdirectory or simply run Powerstrip and disable Vsync.

An interesting features of the Create! drivers is that they allow to specify the exact version of OpenGL drivers, custom tailored for either QuakeII, Q3, HalfLife, TrueSpace or generic OpenGL applications in the control panel. These optimizations hardly enhance the performance in 16 bit mode, however, in 32bit color depth, up to 30% performance increase (QuakeII crusher) can be squeezed out of the card. Similar options are found in the D3D control panel where the options comprise Unreal, Shogo DreamWeaver, Blood2 as well as a variety of other game and CAD applications including Photoshop. A similar, albeit simpler approach was taken by ATi in the first versions of the Rage 128 Fury drivers, however, in contrast to those, the Create! control panel allow changing drivers on the fly without rebooting.

Image Quality

There is little or very much to be said about the image quality of the Create!. The little would be the bold statement that if you haven’t seen it, you ain’t seen nothing yet. An unsatisfactory statement for those who do not have first hand experience with the Create!, so let’s try to break it down into manageable chunks.

Color management and level of detail

There is no way of giving examples of the image quality using screenshots, simply because one would need a Permedia3 Create! in order to appreciate them. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy here, I know, hehe. The truth is that it takes some time to get adjusted to the level of image quality that the Create! provides. In my own case it took about one week until I felt kind of funny whenever I went back to another machine to look at similar applications. The best analogy would be a HiFidelity audio system. For the purist there is nothing more distracting than the TONE switch that artificially enhances the bass and treble in order to compensate for the non-linear frequency threshold of Human hearing. While this feature makes the sound more pleasing, it is altered from the original and does not represent the input accurately. Similar strategies have found their ways into the video domain and, while they make certain applications visually more exciting, they do alter them and, thus make them non-reproducible on different systems. Suffice it to say that there are purists among us and the clarity and fidelity of the display of the Create! is unsurpassed by any other graphics adapter. Where are the benchmarks to corroborate this? Simple answer: there aren’t any, just like a tube amplifier cannot be described by numbers. However, no matter what you run on the Permedia3 Create!, there will be new details or even new perspectives and the gain increases proportionally with the visual complexity of the application. In other words, one should not expect too much from "Incoming" but in "Unreal", one might be in for a surprise.

The same holds for a variety of CAD applications, all of which the Create! absolved with flying colors except for the "Image Quality" test in "Indy3D" where the translucent panels are shown in reversed order, compared to the reference image; a small but potentially important flaw.

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