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 3dfx Voodoo3 2000
AGP but not quite
(Review by MS, July 4, 1999)

Whenever there is a new graphics adapter a.k.a. video card that is about to be released, one major question comes to mind which concerns less the hardware but rather the software, generally referred to as drivers. More often than not, a card that, according to its technical specifications should deliver blistering performance, turns out to drag frames in 3D applications instead of pushing the game at the speed that one would expect from the technical data.

There are several factors that contribute to the "immature driver" syndrome, most importantly, the time scale within which the product has to be ready for the market in order to stay competitive. Thus, it is not really surprising that even the final drivers often are not equivalent to the hardware. In fact, we have seen it happening many times that only at the point where the card itself is about to be discontinued, the drivers finally weed out the last software bugs. Another point of concern in this respect is the performance and compatibility with the different design platforms currently available. It is certainly true that the AGP specifications were developed by Intel and thus, compatibility with Intel chipsets must have the highest priority. This is not necessary a matter of loyalty but one just needs to look at the numbers to see where most graphics adapters go that are produced.

A rough estimate is that about 90-95% of all video cards end up in OEM systems and that means that, at least until last year, 90% of all cards were destined to run on Intel platforms. This leaves the do it yourself market that, at present, shows at best a 50 / 50 distribution between Intel and arch-rival AMD. Consequently, only about 5% of all video cards are going to run on a SS7 platform and there, the driver developers face the further dichotomy between Ali and VIA. Is there still a question about the lackluster support of AMD’s 3Dnow! technology?


The one company that is not heavily involved in the OEM market is 3dfx formerly known as 3Dfx. Traditionally 3dfx products have populated the upgrade market from Electronics Boutique to CompUSA as the ultimate way of speeding up the 3D performance in already existing systems. Combine this notion with the increasing market share of AMD and there are some very good reasons why, at least one manufacturer has gone the extra mile and developed 3Dnow! optimized drivers. Recently there have been some other chipset manufactures, namely nVidia which has followed this trend but to give credit where credit is due, 3dfx were the trendsetters here with the Voodoo3.

We all know by now that the Voodoo3 is not the greatest card in the world, limitation of texture size to 256x256 pixels, no support of any of the AGP features like DiME and DMA and no texture compression are often brought up to reinforce the antipathy caused by the lack of 32-bit rendering. Still, depending on the application, none of these are valid reasons to automatically condemn the V3 as obsolete. The 300 / 350 MHz RAMDAC of theV3 2000 and 3000, respectively, is top of the line for 2D applications and the drivers may need a little bit of tweaks here and there. Reason enough to show what the V3 is capable of on a VIA MVP3 chipset, and how to get it there.

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