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Domain: accelenation.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to accelenation.com.
Comments · 12
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TS:DR
There is a much better history of graphics cards at: http://accelenation.com/?ac.id.123.1&CFID=5425096&CFTOKEN=25318798 IMO of course. It has a lot more details and gives you a better sense of the "mood" of the industry
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Either FUD or Troll, I don't know
I had a Voodoo5 and a GF3-ti500 both the hottest cards out at the time. The Voodoo5 with only 2 CPU's kept up almost every game. But after the drivers stopped from 3DFX, you had to move to different hardware.
I'm sorry, but this is really walking very close to the Troll Line(tm).
The Voodoo5 was released around August 2000 while The GeForce3-Ti was released around October 2001. (ref: here)
As a matter of fact their was an entire generation of nNvidia cards in between the GeForce2 and GeForce2 GTS.
Let me quote what is said on this page about the speed you're claim of comparable speed between the two
During the following four months the Voodoo5 5500 proved to have the second best performance available, squeezing in between the Radeon and a GeForce2 GTS.
And do note that, this is only compared to a GeForce2-GTS not even a GeForce3 or a GeForce3-Ti
Also as a side note it's interresting to read back on the site that I've linked about the fact that nVidia, ATI and 3dFX where never really alone in the 3D market. PowerVR had an almost good successful prodect with it's KyroII line and SiS has always been pretty good in the the on-board/cheap-ass-but-works-ok line.
Murphy(c) -
Either FUD or Troll, I don't know
I had a Voodoo5 and a GF3-ti500 both the hottest cards out at the time. The Voodoo5 with only 2 CPU's kept up almost every game. But after the drivers stopped from 3DFX, you had to move to different hardware.
I'm sorry, but this is really walking very close to the Troll Line(tm).
The Voodoo5 was released around August 2000 while The GeForce3-Ti was released around October 2001. (ref: here)
As a matter of fact their was an entire generation of nNvidia cards in between the GeForce2 and GeForce2 GTS.
Let me quote what is said on this page about the speed you're claim of comparable speed between the two
During the following four months the Voodoo5 5500 proved to have the second best performance available, squeezing in between the Radeon and a GeForce2 GTS.
And do note that, this is only compared to a GeForce2-GTS not even a GeForce3 or a GeForce3-Ti
Also as a side note it's interresting to read back on the site that I've linked about the fact that nVidia, ATI and 3dFX where never really alone in the 3D market. PowerVR had an almost good successful prodect with it's KyroII line and SiS has always been pretty good in the the on-board/cheap-ass-but-works-ok line.
Murphy(c) -
Re:Why this is newsLooks to me like bitboys' place is history will lie here.
Back in 1995, or was it 1996, a small Finnish company by the name of Bitboys Oy announced their Pyramid3D chip. As the months rolled by there emerged successive technology reports that detailed such things as a geometry engine (transform and lighting) and projected speeds well in excess of the first Voodoo card from 3Dfx. What was never seen however was the actual product itself. Were BitBoys for real, or was it all a hoax? As I understand it, BitBoys approached a company by the name of VLSI Solutions with a chip design that later turned out to be written on the back of an envelope. TriTech Microelectronics then purchased that envelope with the intention to design the chip themselves. VLSI would then fabricate the board and another company program the drivers. Eventually some pre-production models were produced and demonstrated at Assembly '97, but just before the cards went into mass production in 1998 Tritech pulled out of the project killing it stone dead.
So it would seem that the Pyramid3D project did eventually become legitimate, even if Bitboys never were. The following left-hand image is purported to be a pre-production version of the card, but the right-hand image has been sent in by Mark Vojkovich who actually owns one today. It has 8MB of SDRAM and a pass-though connection similar to that found on a Voodoo board.
Figure 4.6
In May 1998 BitBoys Oy raised their heads once again and announced their Glaze3D chip. This chip would have a projected performance four times greater than that of the current all-conquering Voodoo2 chipset! At the time this statement caused a considerable stir, especially considering the fiasco surrounding their previous attempt. However once everyone realized that the chip would not be produced for over a year, this interest soon dissipated.
Figure 4.8
At Siggraph99 in August the Bitboys were back. This time with an updated Glaze3D specification that included every feature under the sun, including 9MB of embedded DRAM memory and four pixel pipelines capable of rendering 600Mpixels/sec and 1.2Gtexels/sec. In addition to this, the new chips could be connected in parallel to produce a phenomenal 1.2Gpixel/sec and 2.4Gtexel/sec. Was it merely a coincidence that this specification seemed to mirror many of the forthcoming features from NVIDIA and 3dfx. Would we ever see a Glaze3D chip? Don't hold your breath.
Can you believe it, in January 2000 the Bitboys were back again. Don't these guys know when to stay down! Having shelved their Glaze3D chip (surprise, surprise) they now announced their new XBA(TM) or Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture! Yeah right. By this time few were taking the Bitboys seriously, as demonstrated by the following press releases.www.somethingawful.com
If the Bitboys had ever done more than just PR this announcement might be cause for caring. You say they did a tech demo, great. Now so what? -
Re:Why this is newsLooks to me like bitboys' place is history will lie here.
Back in 1995, or was it 1996, a small Finnish company by the name of Bitboys Oy announced their Pyramid3D chip. As the months rolled by there emerged successive technology reports that detailed such things as a geometry engine (transform and lighting) and projected speeds well in excess of the first Voodoo card from 3Dfx. What was never seen however was the actual product itself. Were BitBoys for real, or was it all a hoax? As I understand it, BitBoys approached a company by the name of VLSI Solutions with a chip design that later turned out to be written on the back of an envelope. TriTech Microelectronics then purchased that envelope with the intention to design the chip themselves. VLSI would then fabricate the board and another company program the drivers. Eventually some pre-production models were produced and demonstrated at Assembly '97, but just before the cards went into mass production in 1998 Tritech pulled out of the project killing it stone dead.
So it would seem that the Pyramid3D project did eventually become legitimate, even if Bitboys never were. The following left-hand image is purported to be a pre-production version of the card, but the right-hand image has been sent in by Mark Vojkovich who actually owns one today. It has 8MB of SDRAM and a pass-though connection similar to that found on a Voodoo board.
Figure 4.6
In May 1998 BitBoys Oy raised their heads once again and announced their Glaze3D chip. This chip would have a projected performance four times greater than that of the current all-conquering Voodoo2 chipset! At the time this statement caused a considerable stir, especially considering the fiasco surrounding their previous attempt. However once everyone realized that the chip would not be produced for over a year, this interest soon dissipated.
Figure 4.8
At Siggraph99 in August the Bitboys were back. This time with an updated Glaze3D specification that included every feature under the sun, including 9MB of embedded DRAM memory and four pixel pipelines capable of rendering 600Mpixels/sec and 1.2Gtexels/sec. In addition to this, the new chips could be connected in parallel to produce a phenomenal 1.2Gpixel/sec and 2.4Gtexel/sec. Was it merely a coincidence that this specification seemed to mirror many of the forthcoming features from NVIDIA and 3dfx. Would we ever see a Glaze3D chip? Don't hold your breath.
Can you believe it, in January 2000 the Bitboys were back again. Don't these guys know when to stay down! Having shelved their Glaze3D chip (surprise, surprise) they now announced their new XBA(TM) or Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture! Yeah right. By this time few were taking the Bitboys seriously, as demonstrated by the following press releases.www.somethingawful.com
If the Bitboys had ever done more than just PR this announcement might be cause for caring. You say they did a tech demo, great. Now so what? -
Re:Why this is newsLooks to me like bitboys' place is history will lie here.
Back in 1995, or was it 1996, a small Finnish company by the name of Bitboys Oy announced their Pyramid3D chip. As the months rolled by there emerged successive technology reports that detailed such things as a geometry engine (transform and lighting) and projected speeds well in excess of the first Voodoo card from 3Dfx. What was never seen however was the actual product itself. Were BitBoys for real, or was it all a hoax? As I understand it, BitBoys approached a company by the name of VLSI Solutions with a chip design that later turned out to be written on the back of an envelope. TriTech Microelectronics then purchased that envelope with the intention to design the chip themselves. VLSI would then fabricate the board and another company program the drivers. Eventually some pre-production models were produced and demonstrated at Assembly '97, but just before the cards went into mass production in 1998 Tritech pulled out of the project killing it stone dead.
So it would seem that the Pyramid3D project did eventually become legitimate, even if Bitboys never were. The following left-hand image is purported to be a pre-production version of the card, but the right-hand image has been sent in by Mark Vojkovich who actually owns one today. It has 8MB of SDRAM and a pass-though connection similar to that found on a Voodoo board.
Figure 4.6
In May 1998 BitBoys Oy raised their heads once again and announced their Glaze3D chip. This chip would have a projected performance four times greater than that of the current all-conquering Voodoo2 chipset! At the time this statement caused a considerable stir, especially considering the fiasco surrounding their previous attempt. However once everyone realized that the chip would not be produced for over a year, this interest soon dissipated.
Figure 4.8
At Siggraph99 in August the Bitboys were back. This time with an updated Glaze3D specification that included every feature under the sun, including 9MB of embedded DRAM memory and four pixel pipelines capable of rendering 600Mpixels/sec and 1.2Gtexels/sec. In addition to this, the new chips could be connected in parallel to produce a phenomenal 1.2Gpixel/sec and 2.4Gtexel/sec. Was it merely a coincidence that this specification seemed to mirror many of the forthcoming features from NVIDIA and 3dfx. Would we ever see a Glaze3D chip? Don't hold your breath.
Can you believe it, in January 2000 the Bitboys were back again. Don't these guys know when to stay down! Having shelved their Glaze3D chip (surprise, surprise) they now announced their new XBA(TM) or Xtreme Bandwidth Architecture! Yeah right. By this time few were taking the Bitboys seriously, as demonstrated by the following press releases.www.somethingawful.com
If the Bitboys had ever done more than just PR this announcement might be cause for caring. You say they did a tech demo, great. Now so what? -
heat on the pentium IIIsDid he ever even take into consideration that P3's doesn't scale that well anymore? Heat, my friend.
Actually, he's right and you're wrong. The new Tualatin core Pentium IIIs have extremely impressive thermal characteristics. You're probably thinking of the old Coppermine core Pentium IIIs, which had serious heat problems at 1.13GHz that led to the infamous Pentium III recall.
For example, these guys say:
[Tualatins] put out about 29W of heat, which is 4W less than the Coppermine 1Ghz, and significantly less than the Pentium 4 or Athlon processors. As a matter of fact, I was able to run the processor with a small heatsink and NO fan....
The low heat output of the Tualatin Pentium IIIs is the major reason why the Pentium IIIs still remain the preferred CPUs for rackmount server installations where space and heat dissipation are at a premium. I own one of these myself, and the core temperature of the CPU has never risen above my body temperature in the six months or so that I've had it. -
Re:Only 7 Years?
The article originally said:
...This article should really be called "7 Years of 3D Graphics" because 3D acceleration seemed a suitable starting point...
So yesterday I emailed the author pointing out that accelerated 3d graphics has a 30 year history at Evans & Sutherland and a 20 year history at SGI (see for example this timeline). He replied that this was true and then changed the wording in the article to say:
...This article should really be called "7 years of PC 3D graphics in the home"...
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Video Card Woes
Is it bad if I still use one of the first video cards there? The Virge 3d from S3
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Re:Processors Still only have heat sinks?
Works okay with dual 1.26GHz fanless Pentium 3s as well, apparently:
Here you go. -
Re:Processors Still only have heat sinks?
>At 1GHz, I'd like to see any Intel variant touch that...
Looks like today's your lucky day.
1.2GHz 0.13u Pentium 3 w/512K 1.2GHz cache = kicks the shit out of a 1GHz G4. Just ask SPEC!
