3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 Review Pittsburgh PA

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Originally published at Internet.com

The 3Dfx Saga

It all started a few years ago when 3dfx stunned gamers with their first product, namely Voodoo(1). It had blazing 3D graphics that would run up to 640x480 in full-screen mode, and there was no other video card at that time which could even touch the Voodoo chipset's 3D performance/quality. Over the next year, many attempts were made at de-throning the king of 3D gaming, but many of them fell flat on their face due to compatibility and performance issues.

Then 3dfx tried their luck at an integrated 2D/3D solution, the Voodoo Rush. The main problem that plagued the Voodoo Rush was that its speed performance was well behind that of Voodoo(1). Since 15 inch monitors were the standard of the time, 2D performance wasn't a really important factor in upgrading so Voodoo(1) still remained the best choice.

After the failure of the Voodoo Rush to deliver the goods, Voodoo2 entered the scene in March of last year. It was probably the most anticipated video accelerator to this date. It's performance level was incredible as compared with the Voodoo(1), and its 8-12MB allowed for resolutions up to 800x600. If you could afford a second Voodoo2, you could hook them up in SLI (Scanned Line Interleave) which gave a huge increase in performance and allowed the maximum resolution to increase to 1024x768.

The Banshee was a second attempt by 3dfx to integrate an all-in-one solution 2D/3D graphics accelerator. Just like the Voodoo Rush, It fell short of expectations mainly due to the fact that it didn't support mutli-texturing. In games that utilized multi-texturing capabilities, it severely lagged behind the performance of Voodoo2. A couple of other problems were the fact that it only supported 16-bit rendering while other contenders in the 3D graphics market were offering 32-bit rendering with reasonable speed, and only supporting a maximum resolution of 1024x768.

So all in all, we have a successful 3D add-on card followed by a 2D/3D solution that falls short. Which category does the Voodoo3 fall into? Lets find out...

Specifications - V3000

Misc. Features * 16MB SDRAM * 166MHz Core Clock Speed * Supports resolutions up to 2048x1536 * Supports DirectX, Glide and OpenGL

2D Features * Fully integrated 128-bit VGA and 2D engine * High-speed 128-bit Windows GUI acceleration * Accelerated 8, 16, 24 (packed), and 32-bit modes * Hardware acceleration for Bresenham line draw, 2-edge polygon fill, scissor/rectangle clippers and full 256 ROPs * Internal 256-bit datapath * Source and destination chroma-keying for DirectDraw * Color expansion and single-cycle block writes

Video Subsystem * 350Mhz Integrated RAMDAC * DVD Hardware Assist * NTSC / S-Video TV Output * 30 frames per second DVD playback with no dropped frames * Supports the latest MPEG2 software CODECs via DirectShow * De-interlacing using Bob Weave * Separate gamma correction for video and graphics * Supports up to 24 bits per pixel or 16.7 million colors * Auto page flipping using VBI for smooth motion video * YUV 4:2:2 and YUV 4:2:0 planar support (Here is a list of the resolutions at different color depths with their refresh rates.) Resolution Aspect Ratio 256 - 8bpp 65k - 16bpp 16.7M - 32bpp 640x480 4:3 60-160 60-160 60-160 800x600 4:3 60-160 60-160 60-160 1024x768 4:3 60-120 60-120 60-120 1152x864 4:3 60-120 60-120 60-120 1280x1024 5:4 60-100 60-100 60-100 1600x1024 16:10 60-85 60-85 60-85 1600x1200 4:3 60-100 60-100 60-100 1920x1080 16:9 60-85 60-85 60-85 1920x1200 16:9 60-85 60-85 60-85 1920x1440 4:3 60-75 60-75 60-75 2046x1536 4:3 60-85 60-85 60-85

3D Features * 7 million triangles per second * 333 megatexels per second fill rate * 128-bit 3D acceleration * Dual, 32-bit texture rendering architecture * True multi-texturing, 2 textures per-pixel per-clock * Full hardware setup of triangle parameters * Support for multi-triangle strips and fans Single Pass, Single-cycle Bump mapping * Single Pass, Single-cycle trilinear MIP-mapping * Sub-pixel and sub-texel correction with 0.4x0.4 resolution * Per-pixel atmospheric fog with programmable fog zones * Floating point Z buffer (W buffer) * True per-pixel, LOD MIP mapping with biasing and clamping * Highly accurate LOD calculations * Texture compositing for multi-texture and special effects * Support for 14 texture map formats * 8-bit palletized textures with full bilinear filtering * Texture compression through narrow channel YAB format

The 3 Flavors

The review board that was sent to us was the Voodoo3 3000 model. There are also two other models, the 2000 and the 3500. The 2000 is currently available in stores, and the 3500 is supposed to be out soon.

Voodoo3 2000

The 2000 model comes in either PCI or AGP flavors and is geared towards the OEM market. It is the slowest of the three different models and is clocked at 143Mhz. While it is the slowest of the three, its performance is almost as good as a Voodoo2 SLI setup and much easier on the wallet. The MSRP is $129, but its possible to find it as low as $100 if you do some on-line shopping.

Voodoo3 3000

The major differences between the 2000 and 3000 are: 1) The 3000 is clocked at 166Mhz, therefore has slightly better performance. 2) The 2000 has a 300Mhz RAMDAC while the 3000 has a 350Mhz RAMDAC. 3) The 3000 has TV-S-video out.

The 3000 model comes in AGP only and is geared towards the gaming enthusiast. It performance is roughly the same or better in some cases as a Voodoo2 SLI setup. The MSRP is $179, but it's selling on the net for about $155.

Voodoo3 3500

The major differences between the 3000 and 3500 are: 1) The 3500 is clocked at 183Mhz. 2) The 3500 has support for LCD flat panel display.

The 3500 is also AGP only and is for the gaming enthusiast who wants to spend an extra $80 for a slight performance increase or need LCD flat panel display support. The MSRP is $249, lets hope this price either goes down or it clocked higher than 183Mhz when it hits the market.

Performance - Celeron 450A

The following benchmarks were run with the default settings of the Voodoo3 at 166Mhz with Vsync disabled while the Voodoo2 8MB SLI was run at a core clock setting of 90Mhz also with Vsync disabled. All of the games had the latest patches and were run with the default installation settings (16-bit color). Each of the benchmarks were run 3 times and the scores are based upon the average of them.

The test system was configured as follows: * Voodoo3 3000 or Voodoo2 8MB SLI * Windows 98 * DirectX 6 * 128MB 8ns PC100 RAM * Abit BX6 II * Celeron 300A clocked at 450Mhz * Ensoniq AudioPCI

OpenGL Performance

The real noticeable difference between the Voodoo2 SLI and Voodoo3 is in the crusher demo. The amount of texture memory on the SLI just isn't enough to keep it floating above the precious 30 fps mark. This problem is almost non-existant in demo 1 as it is less demanding; the Voodoo3 finally starts to pull alway from the SLI at the 1024x768 resolution.

D3D Performance

There is relatively little difference between the Voodoo3 and Voodoo2 SLI in Forsaken except at the maximum resolution of the Voodoo2 SLI. It would be interesting to see how the SLI performs at the resolutions higher than 1024x768. The Voodoo3 has a definite advantage of utilizing the AGP bus' extra bandwidth over PCI bus the Voodoo2 SLI has to communicate over.

Glide Performance

The performance of the Voodoo3 is right on par with the Voodoo2 SLI. With a few really cool games coming out based upon the Unreal engine such as Wheel of Time and Duke Nukem Forever, its nice to see that you can get the power of the SLI setup without having to forfeit 2 PCI slots.

Performance - PII 300

The same hardware was used for the PII 300 benchmarks as was used for the Celeron 450A. The Voodoo3 3000 is definitely a worthwhile investment even for someone running a PII 300. The Quake 2 Crusher demo scores are well above the 30 fps mark. The only real difference between the PII 300 and Celeron 450A (besides lower scores), seems to be in the Forsaken Ship demo. At lower resolutions, the Voodoo2 8MB SLI outperforms the Voodoo3 3000, but this quickly changes at 1024x768. This just goes to show that the extra bandwidth of the AGP bus is needed at those demanding high resolutions.

Image Quality

The debate of 16-bit vs. 32-bit is quite overrated. While staring at a screenshot of 32-bit, then looking at the same screenshot in 16-bit you can notice quite a difference in some games. The way most games today are fast paced it is really hard to notice the small gain in image quality. Nonetheless, Voodoo3 doesn't support 32-bit rendering.

I decided to see if there was any improvement upon the image quality of the Voodoo3 over the Voodoo2 at the same resolution. Below is a screenshot taken at 1024x768 using the MiniGL that came with the driver CD for the Voodoo3 and the latest 3dfx reference drivers for the Voodoo2 SLI. There is very little difference between the two in image quality, but of course the SLI setup is limited to a resolution of 1024x768 whereas Voodoo3 can do up to 1600x1200.

The following screenshots were taken with the Voodoo3 3000. Unfortunately, these screenshots aren't the best JPEG quality in the world since I had to downsize them from 2-3MB to something a little more realistic (roughly 100k for the 800x600 and 200-300k for the 1024x768). 800x600 1024x768 Quake II

Shogo Half-Life

Forsaken

2D Performance

There really isn't that much to say about the 2D performance of the Voodoo3 except that it supports up to 2046x1536. The 350Mhz RAMDAC ensures an excellent refresh rate all the way up to this resolution as long as your monitor supports it. The following screen is a nice addition that is added to the advanced tab of your display property settings. If you're not sure the supported maximum resolution of your monitor is, the "Current Monitor Information" will tell you. This section also displays a great deal of useful information about the video card.

TV / S-Video Out

The TV / S-video isn't something I would use quite often except for gaming on a larger screen. Other than that I found that it was just too blurry to be of any use in windows. Even after 15 minutes of playing Quake 2 in single player mode, I started to get a headache. If you are used to playing games on a console like the Playstation or N64, it probably wouldn't bother you.

The screenshot below is used for setting up the TV / S-video out. It allows you to adjust the size of the view able screen which I ended up having to do since the TV out wasn't initially using the entire screen.

Conclusion

Voodoo3 is way ahead of anything currently available out on the market in terms of raw speed (Can you say Voodoo2 SLI performance in an AGP flavor?). It has the maximum compatibility vs any other video card out there since there are tons of games that supports 3dfx's API: Glide. Although it does have the speed and compatibility behind it, it is lacking in a few features that many other video card manufacturers currently offer. The three most important features it is lacking are:

1) 32-bit rendering 2) Greater than 256x256 texture handling ability 3) No AGP texture support

While this doesn't seem a problem as shown with the benchmark scores, the games coming out later on this year will probably put strain on the Voodoo3 as the textures will be larger (Greater than 256x256) and more complex showing the increasing need for AGP texture support.

All that aside, I would have to say that Voodoo3 3000 is an excellent performer for a video card in the sub $150 area. There may be faster options in the very near future (TNT2), but if your looking for Glide support, this is the one you want. The Voodoo3 3500 model will be out soon and at a price of $249 it isn't worth the wait. I'll be showing why in some overclocking benchmark comparisons in the very near future.

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