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Originally published at Internet.com 3dfx Voodoo 3 3500TV review - Review Date: Nov. 22, 1999 Reviewer: Pat Kennedy ---------------------------------------------------------------------
When 3dfx announced the Voodoo3 line, there was the V3 2000 the V3 3000 and later the higher performance model, the V3 3500. The 2000 model rolled out with a 143MHz core and memory clock rate. The 3000 had a much faster 166MHz clock for both. Then comes the Voodoo 3 3500. The plan was for a Voodoo3 based card that could run at 183MHz, which would leave the other two models in the dust. The release was delayed, though, for two reasons.
First, the price of 183MHz memory was high. With speed comes cost and at the time those parts were high-end chips and came with a high-end price tag. The second reason for the delay was that 3dfx decided to add a few more goodies on the card. The 3500 became the 3500TV which means 3dfx didnt just boost the speed. They also added a TV and FM radio tuner. The end result was a product that nobody could find for months, yet when it finally hit the shelves everybody was happy. 
3dfx Voodoo3 3500tv with "pod"
The Current Market
The GeForce 256 is the top of the line NVIDIA chip. It has tons of speed but has yet to be combined effectively with PC theater features other than TV out and software DVD, which have been common features for quite a while now. ATI has their All-In-Wonder line that combines a well-rounded, mature, software control suite for the TV functions and a proven Rage 128 accelerator chip. Matrox has their Marvel G400, which is again a great card. It is similar to the All-In-Wonder in concept except it uses their G400 chip. The two cards have robust video editing capabilities built in. Then comes the classic option, a standalone TV and/or FM radio card. These cards can be added to systems with a wide array of graphics solutions. These boards are convenient because they do their jobs well and allow a user to upgrade their video controller without worrying about losing their TV capabilities. The major drawbacks with these cards are that they take up a valuable slot, usually PCI.
Specs
TV, FM, and DVD, Oh My!
I cannot stress how nice it is to have a radio and a TV tuner all on your computer. Typing in silence can get irritating and boring very quickly, as can other tedious activities that require your attention on the computer. For a long time now computers have packed CD-ROMs capable of playing audio CDs for your listening pleasure. While that's great, it does not offer the same mix as is found on the radio and offers completely different content than can be found on TV or in a movie.
Lately, DVDs have exploded onto the PC screen. Now the newest video format actually looks better on a computer than a television. The big plus with DVDs is that they are a shared media between a traditional home theater system and a computer. The 3500TV comes with WinDVD, which is a great software DVD decoder that eliminates the need for a specific board to do the job.
With the 3500TV you get several pieces of a good home theater system. First off, you get coax inputs for TV signals, the jack where you attach your antenna, satellite, or cable. Most people seem to forget that it is very simple to add a standard VCR or laser disk player to the coax chain. There is a second coax connector for a FM antenna. While one is not provided with the board it is pretty much a requirement for good reception. This is a radio shack trip that will cost you about $4.
The 3500TV is clearly a flexible device that can be expanded into a fully functional home theater system with a good sound card, an old VCR, cable/satellite/antenna TV, FM antenna, and speakers.
The Pod
The Pod is a really great peripheral. It is a necessity for the 3500TV because of the fact that 3dfx designed the board without a standard 15 pin connector for the monitor. Instead of being plugged directly into the card, a monitor is plugged into a short length of cable that combines with the Pods cable at its base. The base is then used to connect the Pod and monitor to the 30 pin connector on the 3500TV board. Although it is a pass through for the monitor I could not find any characteristic loss of sharpness usually associated with passthroughs. On one side of the pod are standard RCA and S-Video in connectors to hook up a video camera for capture or a console game system like the new Sega Dreamcast. On the other are RCA and S-Video out connectors for output to VCRs, video cameras, and TVs. Again the pod shows how well rounded a product the 3500TV really is. The included VisualReality software allows you to switch inputs from the onboard coax jack to the RCA and S-Video inputs of the pod.
What the 3500TV Means to the Business User
Although this card has speed to spare in both 2D and 3D, the business user has several things to consider with the 3500TV. First, at resolutions above 1600x1280, 2D becoms lower quality than with the Matrox G400 based products. Of course at that resolution you will be squinting to see icons even on large screens so this is probably only an issue for a Photoshop or other graphics intensive user. The TV-out is not suited for giving presentations. Keep that in mind. Blurry text could be embarrassing if you are using this card to give a presentation. The multitude of connectors and the video editing capabilities make this a perfect entry-level video editing solution, however. If you are looking to make broadcast quality video or anything close this is not, by any means, going to work for you. Integrating video youve shot into presentations is impressive though. The other thing to remember is that the card can be used for video conferencing. There is no need to bog down a USB port with low quality video from a USB camera. All that is needed is a video camera with a S-Video or RCA plug. You can even hook up an old camcorder that has any of the aforementioned outputs to capture video.
For the Home User
The home user can combine a traditional home theater system with their home PC. With more and more sound cards adding the functionality of Dolby Digital out, speaker systems for the computer are getting more and more powerful. In dorm rooms and small apartments, space is at a premium. Combining a stereo, DVD player, and a TV makes a lot of sense, especially considering the fact that sound cards are increasingly utilizing Dolby Digital out to allow better sound quality and better speaker setups. With the advent of systems such as the Cambridge SoundWorks DTT25000, the functionality of computer speaker systems is quickly becoming that of home theater systems. By eliminating the need for separate speakers for both an entertainment system and your PC, you eliminate a ton of wire clutter in a room as well.
The cost savings is easy to realize considering that a DVD drive for your computer costs $50 and a DVD player for your home entertainment system will run about $200. Anyone who has set up a home entertainment system will agree that often-overlooked pieces of the puzzle are the wires. If you go with good quality cabling you can easily spend $100 on just that. A 13" stereo television is about $150, which is a little less than the cost of a 17" monitor. Then add a good receiver and you can see the price take off.
Another practical use for the 3500TV is to use it as a video surveillance system to see who is at the door from your computer or to keep an eye on portions of your residence. Also, for all those parents out there who are worried about what their children watch on TV, 3dfx allows you to password protect channels so children wont have access to them. Televisions are just starting to incorporate similar features, but you can get protection today with the 3500TV.
For the Gamer
100 billion operations per second, 8 million polygons per second, 366 megatextels per second, and 183 megapixels per second are the peak processing numbers. The Voodoo3 3500TVs numbers speak for themselves. If you are a fan of 3dfx and glide games this is the top of the line choice right now. Let me just say this card is fast when you are playing Quake 3. The upsides of this card are that it is fast and it has the TV/FM tuner advantages I have already explained.
However, I was a bit disappointed in a few of the details of the card. First, I know memory prices are on the rise but it would have been nice to have 32MB of SDRAM onboard instead of 16MB. And, the 3500TV doesn't support AGP texturing, and the extra room to store textures would have been nice. Also, dont expect to run Quake 3 in 32-bbit color. The Voodoo3 line of cards is limited to only 16- bit 3D color rendering. While the TV out provided by the Brooktree Bt869 chip (NTSC/PAL encoder on the 3500TV) is not really suitable for text, it works great for games. That means you can hook the computer up to a big screen TV and see your games look life-size.
Drivers
This is definitely a card with mature drivers. The Voodoo3 chip is shared with the 2000 and 3000 models and those drivers have been revised constantly for the past few months. The experiences learned in STBs two previous TV cards definitely shines through in how solid the A/V portions drivers are. The only major driver bug is one that I have never experienced, the alleged TV-out problem. I have full confidence that this problem will not even be an issue in the near future.
The test configuration was as follows:
3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV 16MB vs. Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra 32MB
Celeron 366 @ 506MHz (92 x 5.5) Abit BP6 motherboard 384MB PC100 SDRAM Sony 5x DVD drive 20.4GB Maxtor ATA/66 7200rpm hard drive Diamond MX300 Sound Card Linksys 10/100 NIC Windows 98
Performance
In Quake 2, the Voodoo3 3500TV rocked. Both the TNT2 Ultra and 3500TV were perfectly playable up until 1600x 1200. At that point that point though both cards began to weaken. I would not recommend playing at 1600x 1200 on either card because the numbers reported here are averages over the timedemo. At some points in the demo the frame rates were significantly lower as I could see a noticeable slowdown. Other times, the frame rate soared, thus helping the average. These are the type numbers you can expect in the current generation of OpenGL games based on the Quake 2 engine.
Q3Test is a great program to use to shed light onto how graphics cards will perform with tomorrows games. The (*) next to high quality on the graphs is there to show that all of the normal high quality settings were used except for 32- bit color mode. This is because the 3500TV cannot render 3D scenes with 32- bit color. As you can see in the normal mode, the 3500TV beats out the TNT2 Ultra by a nice margin. When the move is made into the high quality mode it is all over for 3500TV. 39.6fps is still a perfectly respectable score. The TNT2 Ultra, though, takes a comfortable lead as you move to the higher quality mode.
Expendable uses a slew of explosions to test a card's Direct3D performance. In Expendable the 3500TV rocked the TNT2 Ultra. In every test the 3500TV flexed its muscle and took first place honors. It is easy to see why 3dfx has long been known for exceptional raw 3D speed. I should point out that 1600x 1200 was not playable on either card. Also, the TNT2 Ultra is able to run in 32- bit color mode and the 3500TV cannot.
Software
The full version of Unreal and a coupon for Unreal Tournament are included. For this top-notch gaming card, it's odd to include only one bundled game. The Ulead VideoStudio program is a really nice entry-level video editing solution. Using VideoStudio you can capture still and full motion video from either the coax, composite, or S-Video inputs. The package allows you to save your video in AVI, MPEG1, and MPEG2 formats. However, unlike the Marvel G400, the MPEG2 encoding is not done in hardware, but rather in software. After the capture, the video can be burned onto a CD to share with others.
The Ulead software is a lot of fun, especially if you are looking for something to do that is both fun and productive. The Visual Reality software takes care of the TV/FM controls. The software DVD player bundled is the Intervideo WinDVD player. DVD playback is fast. As long as the DVD app was the only open application, I could not get the playback to stall on a 506MHz Celeron. Microsoft Net Meeting, VDONet, and VDOPhone add video conferencing capabilities to the 3500TV. Also included in the bundle is Microsoft Netshow, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, and Lgos GoMotion Codec.
Conclusion
The 3dfx 3500TV is not your average video card. Based on the Voodoo3 chip, its drivers are very mature after several months of refinement. The board offers top-notch performance in both the 2D and 3D arenas. Unlike basic video card setups, the 3500TV has a TV/FM tuner. With RCA and S-Video In/Out ports and coax antenna/ cable/ satellite and FM inputs the video options are great. The Ulead VideoStudio software bundled with the board makes for a capable entry video editing solution. The major complaints with this board are the lack of 3D rendering in 32-bit color and the lack of infrared remote support. Still, with all of the extra features included with the Voodoo3 3500TV, it is a very versatile board. It would make a great addition to any PC.
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Author: Pat Kennedy
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