To see or not to see, that is the question!

The Graphics Industry

Ah... probably the most interesting of the 3 battles, high-end 3D graphics. Currently, we have two major players on top - 3dfx and NVIDIA. The other three players are S3, Matrox, and ATI. I'll skip the history lesson to give you a run down on their products.

3dfx produces the Voodoo3 line, which is, at its core, still the same technology that propelled the original Voodoo chipset to the fore of the 3D graphics industry. Originally, 3dfx was a simple fabless semiconductor manufacturer that only sold graphics chips to board makers. Back in the days of the Voodoo2 and Banshee, you could find 3dfx video cards made by just about everyone. You could have bought a 3dfx card from Diamond, Creative Labs, Guillemont, Canopus, or any other number of video card manufacturers, but now 3dfx has merged with STB and (starting with the Voodoo3) is now producing the boards themselves. Cutting out the middleman increases 3dfx's profit on each board, and eliminated the cut-throat price competition between different manufacturers that drove down the prices of the Voodoo2 board.

NVIDIA, the other high-end 3D leader, produces the TNT2 chipset, which is merely an update of the original TNT that launched NVIDIA from relative obscurity (Riva128), into gamer's hearts. NVIDIA follows the fabless semiconductor model that 3dfx abandoned earlier this year. Thus far, NVIDIA has shown utterly no interest in making the graphics boards themselves (indeed, why would they? With both S3 and 3dfx out of the chipset business, NVIDIA is basically alone.). Strong TNT2 pricing has proven that video card manufacturers are able to differentiate their TNT2 products without resorting to the price cuts that killed margins on the Voodoo2.

The Voodoo3

3dfx's Voodoo3: It comes in 3 flavours, the 2000, 3000 and 3500TV series. The Voodoo3 2000 is a bit faster overall than the regular TNT2, or about as fast as the old Voodoo2 SLI setup. The V3 2000, like its V3 brethren, offers excellent 2D image quality and comes in a 16MB configuration. Based on the same chipset as the other two Voodoo3 cards, the main difference is speed. While the 200 runs at 143/143MHz core and memory speed, the 3000 and 3500TV run at 166/166MHz and 183/183MHz respectively.

The V3 3000 is totally indistinguishable from its slower sibling, except in benchmarks, where it trounces the V3 2000. :) The 3500TV is a rather strange product. The fastest of the three Voodoo 3 cards, the 3500TV is also the most feature laden, with TV in and out, video editing capabilities, a TV-tuner, etc... The 3500TV is for the extreme high end gamer who is willing to pay extra for some nifty features, or someone who wants those nifty features but wouldn't mind the best flat-out 3D performance around.