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ATI
First graphics chip to break through the Gigatexel barrier with an awesome 1.5 Gigatexel per second rendering engine.

3DFX
Taking advantage of the revolutionary scalable architecture of the 3dfx VSA-100 chip, the Voodoo 5 6000 AGP features four processors working together to be the world's first 3D accelerator to break the Gigapixel barrier.

Ok, that last one says 'pixel', but 3DFX is probably referring to single-texture polys anyway.

Couldn't find an nVidia reference, can anyone else find one?

I'm just skimming through the tech specs here and I'm just gonna comment on a few things...

Note, I'm no graphics professional. I am merely an interested individual. Repeat: I am no John Carmack! :P

The first thing that jumped out at me that ATI seems to be doing in the "new and cool" area (rather than just adding more horsepower to today's GPUs) is adding keyframe interpolation. Not *2D* interpolation, but *3D mesh* interpolation. The idea has a good illustration at the bottom of this page.

Voxels seem to be cropping up here. It's cool to see that they are adding support for them at the hardware level. I know that John Carmack has been skeptical about using voxels due to the sheer amount of processing power they need.

Most of the stuff I saw in the specs, however, is mostly just fluff covering various graphics technologies and what they do. While the specs hint that the chip will have support for them, it doesn't do too much more than hint at it.

Maybe there'll be more information soon...

I'm just skimming through the tech specs here and I'm just gonna comment on a few things...

Note, I'm no graphics professional. I am merely an interested individual. Repeat: I am no John Carmack! :P

The first thing that jumped out at me that ATI seems to be doing in the "new and cool" area (rather than just adding more horsepower to today's GPUs) is adding keyframe interpolation. Not *2D* interpolation, but *3D mesh* interpolation. The idea has a good illustration at the bottom of this page.

Voxels seem to be cropping up here. It's cool to see that they are adding support for them at the hardware level. I know that John Carmack has been skeptical about using voxels due to the sheer amount of processing power they need.

Most of the stuff I saw in the specs, however, is mostly just fluff covering various graphics technologies and what they do. While the specs hint that the chip will have support for them, it doesn't do too much more than hint at it.

Maybe there'll be more information soon...

They will make an announce tonight at 10:30 PM EST on www.ati.com I guess it will be about the Rage 6. They seem pretty confident as you can read the following on their home page : "ATI is unmasking the new face of graphics, THE REAL POWER of graphics is within your reach"

ATI's newest in the All-In-Wonder series (the 128 Pro) may be worth checking out: http://www.ati.com/n a/pages/products/pc/aiw_128_pro/index.html

ATI Developer Registration

-partap

ATI does support Linux and Open Source. Here is a press release concerning it. Also their web site assures developers that technical data is availiable upon request. It is only a matter of time before a linux driver can be written.

It uses a ATI Rage Mobility chip. You can get more info about it at: http://www.ati.com/ca_us/showcase/mobil ity/

Oh oh, big huge rant following (I got a few to many spams in my mbox today... ;-)

Marketers are aware that you better not annoy your potential customer, or you might loose him or her forever.

Quite right. I not only refuse to buy stuff from people who spam me just once (even if the subject warns me of it, and they remove me from their list) but I go to great lengths to:

A - Get the spammer and his facilities shut down.
B - Tell EVERYONE I can what an asshole the company is.
C - Phone their 800# (if they have one) and have a LOOOOOOONG discussion on spamming... not that the minimum wage operators enjoy it, but because it costs the company money. Eg. I called one spammer for 30 minutes from Ont., Canada to Utah (or somewhere like that). I figure it cost 'em, $50 or so to listen to me. Worth EVERY minute...

Both are legal (like spamming). If the company won't quit spamming, I pull out the "big guns", and try to make sure I:

D - Tell their upstream network providers what assholes the spammers are.
E - Buy something from www.ati.com and have it mailed to the company... (JJ)

Spamming (to me) is like spray-painting your AD on my car. If you don't think like this, then fine, spam me. I figure A and B cost about $20 in a lost account, and $100 (or more, hopefully) in lost business. C should cost normally around $20, and if necessary, D might cost much more (like finding it difficult to connect to the 'net in your town again...). Is it worth it to you to "prove" you are right, spammers?

Last, but not least, for the grand finale, I might, one day, take it upon myself to buy one of those email lists, find EVERY damn hole in the spammers server, and explain, bit by bit, so even the STUPIDEST win '95 user can do it, how to gain root access to their machine, and send it to all those email address on the list (ok, so I guess that isn't "playing fair", and I'd probably never do it, but getting a "spam" like that from someone else would rock! ;-)

So, to finish, I figure you don't need legislation. Just call every spammer you can (That's either a local call [happened to me once! NB: If you fill up their lines with only complaints, the company still has to pay the workers, and sells nothing. Good enough for me!], or better yet, an 800#), get their accounts removed, and make sure no one you know buys from that company (If you feel like it, and the person is adamant about buying from them, lie to them [ALL of the spam I receive is chock full of 'em anyways]... It's worth it. Spammers don't deserve to be in business. It's just not legitimate business strategy to do what they do).

Well, I feel much better now. Thanks for listening...

That is what you get if you think the web is a safe place to buy shit online....

May I suggest you try Artificial Turd Industries? I'm not sure about that safety thing, though :-)