12-May-1999 [Artur Marques]
Today [23:42]: #1) The 3D Accelerator war
There is a hell of a fight between current popular 3D accelerators. Some hardware reviewers claimed that the RIVA TNT 2 board is the fastest of them all, and that the way it renders both 24 and 32 bits color, is a vast advantage. Meanwhile, some gamers testing the RIVA TNT2 against a PowerVR NEON 250 [which also does 24 and 32 bits color], concluded that the NEON is always FASTER, despite its early drivers... and this one is very amazing, believe me. Just remember that the PowerVR card is the one used in SEGA's DREAMCAST console...
But what about 3DFX and its new VOODOO range of products?! Well, the VOODOO 3 is being attacked for its 16 bits only color [on 3D full screen mode], and there are benchmarks that show that it is underperforming, relative to both the TNT2 and, of course, the NEON 250... HOWEVER - surprise, surprise - the main programmer of the ultra superb game UNREAL [Tim Sweeney], someone to be very respected, wrote wonders about the the way 3DFX handles textures...
Just read:
"I just picked up a carload of the new Voodoo3 3000's [snip]
The performance and graphical quality of the Voodoo3 are simply amazing. Though we've had a board for over a month, beta drivers and pre-release board problems prevented us from realizing just how far ahead of the pack this hardware is.
[big snip]
While the Voodoo3's fill rate is outstanding, where the card really clobbers all others is its texture management performance. This is a very important characteristic, because it determines how smooth the performance is from frame-to-frame."
So, where does this leave potential 3D accelerator buyers? My answer: wait a few weeks for those drivers, prices and opinions to stabilize.