Fall Comdex '98 Coverage

The rumors are true, 3Dfx quietly introduced their plans for the true successor to the Voodoo2/Banshee era of graphics accelerators, today (Monday, November 16, 1998) at Comdex, 3Dfx had a hot new product on display, the 3Dfx Voodoo3 graphics accelerator.

From AnandTech's conversation with a few representatives from 3Dfx, the Voodoo3 is a combination of the best of the Voodoo2 SLI and the Banshee worlds, at a much higher clock speed that is.  Sources indicate that the Voodoo3 will be available in 2 distinct flavors, currently only identified as the 2000 and the 3000 models.

The Voodoo3 2000 will run at a 125MHz clock frequency, feature a 300MHz RAMDAC, and be the "low end" performer out of the two solutions.  The Voodoo3 3000 will operate at a 183MHz clock frequency and will feature a 350MHz RAMDAC.  Obviously there will be a price difference between the two cards, however 3Dfx did not release any estimated pricing levels at the time of publication.  Both cards will be available in an AGP 2X flavor (none of the AGP 1X Banshee crap), they will both be an integrated 2D/3D solution, and the Voodoo3 chipset will boast dual texture processing units like the Voodoo2. 

According to 3Dfx, the 8.1 million transistors found on the Voodoo3 will be able to process more than 100 billion operations per second, more than 7 million triangles per second, 366 million texels per second, and overall it should offer about 2 - 3x the performance of a Voodoo2 SLI.  From AnandTech's brief encounter with 3Dfx this morning, the closest thing to a relative benchmark would be the claim that a Pentium II system running the current revision of the Voodoo3 silicon was able to achieve 30.1 fps in Quake 2 at 1600 x 1200, in comparison to the absolutely unplayable < 15 fps of a similar configuration on a Riva TNT.  Until we can confirm that, 3Dfx's potential is still up to speculation, but one thing's for sure, this is a company that has done it before...and there's no doubt in this editor's mind that they can definitely do it again if they're pushed to that level. 

That's all for now

That's all for now guys, I've got a meeting with 3Dfx tomorrow to discuss in more detail the specifications of the Voodoo3, so in tomorrow's update I should be able to provide you with a little more information than I already have.  I hope you enjoyed the brief description of Comdex Day 1, I've got much more to publish but that'll have to wait until another day.  Tomorrow you can expect some information from AMD among other things, however until then, take care and have a wonderful night.