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3dfx Unveils Info Regarding Voodoo 4 & 5

Posted by Hemos on from the better-graphics-coming-your-way dept.

A reader wrote to us about the latest press release from 3dfx regarding the Voodoo 4 and 5. The V4 and V5 will apparently be released in March of 2000. The V4 will be single processor, but the V5 will have both a commercial and professional version, respectively supporting up to 4 and up to 32 VSA-100 processors, and up to 128 and 2GB of RAM each. The release for the V4 and V5 is rolled in with the VSA-100 talks - definitely worth checking out.

9 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Why is everyone so excited? by The+Wing+Lover · · Score: 3

    I can't figure out why everyone is so happy about 3dfx putting out another Voodoo chip. They're pushing a proprietary interface (Glide), where a perfectly good standard exists instead (OpenGL). They're using market pressure to get game manufacturers to adopt their standard, and lawsuits against developers who try to write Glide wrappers so that Glide-only games can be played on other video cards.

    Doesn't this sound a bit like another company that everyone is up in arms about?


    - Drew

    --

    - In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!

  2. The usual... by pen · · Score: 3
    Let's get this off our chests...
    • Linux support?
    • This is just another trick by Microsoft
    • Wow, I'd like to see a Beowulf cluster of these..
    Personally, I think that this is great... let's hope iD is keeping up and giving us RealGuts(tm) in Quake 4.

    Remember how the cheapo motherboards used to be able to allocate some of the system RAM for video RAM? It would be pretty funny if these cards could do the opposite.

    --

  3. umh...crap? by marcos76 · · Score: 3

    3Dfx unveils good number for his new 3d architecture...but It lacks of geometric acceleration. Do you still want 200 fps at 1600x1200 32 bit with 3 big polys at each frame? :) No thanks, I prefer lower fill rate and higher polys counter.

  4. hrm... by Haven · · Score: 4

    Windows 95, 98, NT4.0 and Windows 2000 drivers Allows you to run the Voodoo5 6000 AGP with all popular operating systems.


    Okay, not only am I defending linux on this one, I am also wondering where the MAC drivers are. If 3dfx wanted to have some incredible benchmarks they should write a MAC driver and throw it into a G4. They say the Voodoo 5's aren't only for gamers, why not port the drivers to the most popular graphics design platform?

  5. Why does anyone care? by jalefkowit · · Score: 5

    I fail to understand why this stuff excites people. I've always thought that the market for add-on 3D graphics cards was going to develop a lot like the market for add-on sound cards did, and so far I'm seeing nothing that indicates otherwise.

    What I mean is -- consider for a moment how the market for add-on sound cards developed. Up to 1992, sound on the x86 PC was basically nonexistant, unless you owned a flaky almost-compatible like the Tandy 1000. Then the multimedia tidal wave hit and suddenly there was consumer demand for hardware sound support -- and a market sprang up to fill the demand.

    Once the demand for sound cards sprang up, the market developed through 3 distinct stages in the next 5 or so years:

    1. Race for Market Position: Five thousand companies hit the market selling sound cards that are all completely incompatible with each other. Software developers pull their hair out trying to decide which to support. Consumers pull their hair out trying to decide which to buy. Eventually one (Creative Labs' Sound Blaster) ekes out enough sales to justify making it the default choice for software developers to support, which launches a virtuous circle of consumers buying it because that's what the software supports and developers supporting it because that's what the consumers have.
    2. Hegemony through De Facto Standards. Soon the virtuous circle described above means that, for good or ill, the Sound Blaster becomes the de facto standard in the marketplace. Other products either become Sound Blaster compatible or are consigned to the margins. Creative maintains its profit margins by releasing a new board every so often(SB, SB Pro, SB16, SB32), upping features and performance. But eventually the feature set becomes Good Enough (TM) for most users, and adding new features becomes a less and less compelling reason for consumers to upgrade. (In the sound card market, this happened, IMHO, with the release of the Sound Blaster 16.) This puts downward pressure on prices, which broadens the market for these Good Enough products (and strains the market for the latest and greatest), which leads to...
    3. Integration and Commoditization. The fact that suddenly the hardware is cheap enough for everyone to own leads to integration -- the Good Enough hardware starts to become part of the motherboard, and the software APIs get rolled into the OS. This effectively kills the mass market for upgrade hardware -- if you can get a Good Enough sound card built right into your PC at the point of purchase, why spend $200 for the Latest and Greatest, especially since you'll never use most of those snazzy features anyway?

    So this is where we are today in sound cards -- while a few enthusiasts care about buying the latest Sound Blaster Live! or whatever, the vast majority of users are happy with the 16-bit audio that's hardwired into their motherboards. It's Good Enough!

    And that's what's going to happen in the 3D card marketplace, IMHO, fairly soon. We've already passed through stage 1 (I remember agonizing over whether to buy a Voodoo1 or a Rendition Verite card) and stage 2 (with 3Dfx milking their brand name for all it's worth through the Voodoo3). But now Good Enough 3D hardware is starting to come integrated on motherboards, and 3Dfx's Voodoo-only APIs have been almost entirely forsaken in favor of Direct3D, which is integrated into the OS. I've run 3D games on cheapo PCs using this integrated hardware, and while the performance isn't great, it's Good Enough -- while the add-on card companies fight over which card can provide 80 fps in Q3Test, or other "features" which would be lost on the average consumer anyway. So watch for it -- in a year I'd be amazed if there's still a market for whizbang add-on cards. Most people will be just fine with the Voodoo2-level hardware they'll get free with their PC.

    -- Jason A. Lefkowitz

    --

    Read my blog.

  6. Divided by Hobbex · · Score: 3


    Upon seeing the specs for that baby, part of me just screams I want it, but the other, more rational part of me wonders what the point really is.

    I mean, great: gigatexels per second. As much RAM as I currently have on my mainboard. Meaning what? I can now play Quake3 at 4,000*3,000 resolution? Yay. Yes, I know about anti-aliasing, but this is overkill for even that if not running very righ resolutions (1024*768 and above).

    Read my lips, 90% of all speed problems with games on current hardware is the geometry setup bogging down the processor. Unless you play at above mentioned resolutions, or happen to have dual athlon 700s and are playing at 100 fps already (and if I am right in assuming that this does not have a Geometry chip like the GeForce) this card will be exactly 0% faster for you.

    In my opinion Nvidia have taken a much wiser approach to the whole 3d acceleration concentrating on the weekest pointinstead of just pouring in endless amount of pixel fillrate that the processor can't render anyways unless you are stairing at a blank wall.

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

  7. Details... and analysis by bwoodring · · Score: 3

    The page with detailed info concerning these boards is www.3dfx.com/prod/voodoo/newvoodoo.html

    The really interesting thing is that *once again* 3dfx promised us more than it will deliver. On the low end (Voodoo4 4500) these babies are getting smoked by the GeForce 256, which will be a half a year older! The GeForce can do 480 Megapixels per second, about 1.3 times as fast as a Voodoo 4 (which clocks in at 367 Megapixels per second).

    If the past is any indication it at least a few more months for the Voodoo 5 to be released (ignore what 3dfx says), by this time Nvidia will probably already have a better card.

    In summary, the Voodoo 4 is slower and less feature rich than the GeForce 256, plus is won't be out for 4 more months. It could take longer for the Voodoo 5 which will probably be an anachronism before it is released.

    Come on 3dfx! This is *not* the technology that will keep us ahead of the PSX2!!!

  8. I am... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    a typical Slashdotter...I will pay $5000 for a video card, but $40 for Word Perfect is a travesty, because I can't see the source code.

  9. Re:The importance of PCI: dual-head kings of tomor by Alfthemack · · Score: 3

    How you managed to avoid having your post not moderated to flame-bait is beyond me.

    Matrox offers an AGP card with two outputs. It's called the G400. Unlike the V4 and V5, it's already released and available.

    Anyway, I'm somewhat off topic. But, I needed to correct this. The issue with PCI is bandwidth and texture swapping. If the card truly can have up to 2GB of RAM, (Yes, there are many simulation visualizations and mappings that can use this.), you'll need more than the 533 MB/s provided by the PCI bus. Even full AGP 4x (w/ RDRAM) has 1.06GB/s. An approximately 2s delay is damn noticeable.

    If they can put multiple graphics processors on one card, why can't they put multiple output ports on the same card?

    --
    --Al