Table of Contents
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Voodoo3™ 2000/3000 Reviewer's Guide
For reviewers of:
Voodoo3 2000
Voodoo3 3000
DRAFT - DATED MATERIAL
THE CONTENTS OF THIS REVIEWER'S GUIDE IS INTENDED SOLELY
FOR REFERENCE WHEN REVIEWING SHIPPING VERSIONS OF VOODOO3 REFERENCE BOARDS.
THIS INFORMATION WILL BE REGULARLY UPDATED, AND REVIEWERS
SHOULD CONTACT THE PERSONS LISTED IN THIS GUIDE FOR UPDATES BEFORE EVALUATING
ANY VOODOO3 BOARD.
3dfx Interactive, Inc.
4435 Fortran Dr.
San Jose, CA 95134
408-935-4400
www.3dfx.com
Copyright 1999 3dfx Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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Table of Contents
Summary of Contents for 3dfx Voodoo3 2000
- Page 1 SHOULD CONTACT THE PERSONS LISTED IN THIS GUIDE FOR UPDATES BEFORE EVALUATING ANY VOODOO3 BOARD. 3dfx Interactive, Inc. 4435 Fortran Dr. San Jose, CA 95134 408-935-4400 www.3dfx.com Copyright 1999 3dfx Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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Page 2: Table Of Contents
Page 7 • Board Layout Hardware Configuration & Components System Requirements • Display Mode Table • Software Drivers • 3dfx Tools Summary SECTION 3: About the Voodoo3 Chip Page 10 • Overview Page 11 SECTION 4: Installation and Start-Up • Installing the Board •... - Page 3 • Quake II Time Demo 1 at 1600 x 1200 • Quake II Time Demo 1 at 1280 x 1024 Expected Performance of Popular Benchmarks 2: Errata: Known Problems Page 23 3: 3dfx Tools User Guide Page 24 - 3 -...
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Page 4: Introduction
Vooodoo3 3000 AGP and PCI will feature an internal core and external clock rates of 166MHz. The Voodoo3 product line is rounded out by the Voodoo3 3500 TV, 3dfx's highest-end graphics accelerator, which also includes complete TV, VCR and FM stereo capabilities. The Voodoo3 3500 TV details will be provided in a separate reviewer's guide. -
Page 5: Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide August
• 6 million triangles per second (Voodoo3 2000 at 143 MHz) • 333 megatexels per second fill rate (Voodoo3 3000 at 166 MHz) • 286 megatexels per second fill rate (Voodoo3 2000 at 143 MHz) • 128-bit 3D acceleration • Dual, 32-bit texture rendering architecture •... -
Page 6: Warranty
The suggested U.S. retail price for the Voodoo3 2000 is $129.99. The suggested U.S. retail price for the Voodoo3 3000 is $179.99. Warranty Retail versions of the Voodoo3 2000, and 3000 are covered by a lifetime warranty in the US and a 10 year warranty internationally. Technical Support... -
Page 7: Section 2: About The Voodoo3 Board
Board Layout Hardware Components Graphics Subsystem • Graphics Controller – 143MHz Voodoo3 2000 or 166MHz Voodoo3 3000 • Frame Buffer – 16MB of 512Kx32 SDR SDRAM for the 166MHz • RAMDAC – up to 350MHz • Video Input – 8-bit VMI 1.2 video input port to support video peripherals such as:... -
Page 8: System Requirements
Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide August 1999 System Requirements • Windows 95 or Windows 98 (Windows NT4.0 for 2D benchmark test) PC with a Pentium, Celeron ™, Pentium II, or Pentium Pro Processor (Pentium 233 and up • recommended), AMD K6-2, K6-3 with 3DNow! and a free AGP or PCI slot. •... -
Page 9: Software Drivers
• OpenGL ICD 3dfx Tools Summary 3dfx Tools make it easy to adjust and control various aspects of the system’s display and performance. For a complete overview and guide to the 3dfx Tools available with Voodoo3 boards, please refer to Appendix 3. -
Page 10: Section 3: About The Voodoo3 Chip
-II and K6-III processors featuring 3DNow!™ technology. The latest in 3dfx Interactive’s long line of highly acclaimed 3D and 2D accelerators, Voodoo3 provides complete compatibility with the largest library of enhanced 3D entertainment titles available: more than 300 titles are currently available, with over 500 expected by the end of 1999. -
Page 11: Section 4: Installation And Start-Up
Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide August 1999 SECTION 4: Installation and Start-Up Installing the Board For Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0 Systems Follow these simple steps and in just a few minutes you can easily replace your computer’s old display card with the powerful new Voodoo3 accelerator card. The Quick Install software on the Voodoo3 CD will analyze your computer and then open the Quick Install Guide which will lead you through the installation process in a few simple steps and can even show you examples. - Page 12 Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide August 1999 When your system is shutdown, open the computer and replace the old display card with your new one. NOTE: Be sure to leave the Voodoo3 CD in your CD-ROM drive when you shutdown the computer. 4.
- Page 13 “Advanced Properties” dialog box and the “3dfx Tools” dialog box (located in the Windows Control Panel) to select your 3dfx Tools options. 3dfx Tools make it easy to adjust and control various aspects of the system’s display and performance. For a complete overview and guide to the 3dfx Tools available with Voodoo3 2000 and 3000, please refer to Appendix 3.
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Page 14: Section 5: Testing Recommendations
SECTION 5: Testing Recommendations Testing the Voodoo3 Board When testing Voodoo3 2000 or 3000, we recommend you work in the highest resolution possible. The key strengths of Voodoo3 are phenomenal graphics memory bandwidth and high pixel fill rates. In other words, you can still achieve high frame rates at high resolutions. As an... - Page 15 Perfromace Video” checked in the D3D/Direct Draw section of the “3dfx tweaks” page in “3dfx tools” (see page 5 of Appendix 3 for details). It’s basically a 2x2 box filter, which means we filter images to produce a more pleasing image by sampling and filtering 2x2 blocks on scan-out.
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Page 16: Section 6: Faq
First, we discovered that we could beat our projected internal clock rate of our entry-level chip, so we decided to power the Voodoo3 2000 with a faster 143MHz chip. This still is offered under the price point we had pegged for the 125MHz chip, so it’s a real bonus for consumers. - Page 17 August 1999 Q. Does Voodoo3 support texture compression? A. Yes, Voodoo3 supports 3dfx’s “narrow channel compression” or NCC, a texture compression format that we’ve used since the original Voodoo Graphics. Developers favor NCC because visually, it is virtually lossless, meaning that you can’t really see the difference between a compressed texture and a non-compressed texture.
- Page 18 All of the application programming interfaces (APIs) supported by Voodoo3 – including Microsoft’s Direct X6, Glide from 3dfx and OpenGL from Silicon Graphics – have been optimized for the Pentium III processor. As a result, content developers can incorporate more intricate models and scenes, and apply significantly greater realism to the movements of characters and objects.
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Page 19: Section 7: Glossary Of 3D Terms
Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide August 1999 SECTION 7: Glossary of 3D Terms Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) An expansion bus developed by Intel specifically for the video card subsystem. It operates independent of the PCI bus and normally runs at 66MHz (i.e., 1x). Whenever you see multipliers attached to AGP, such as 2x or 4x, they are referring to how much faster the bus will run--2x means 66MHz x 2, or 133MHz. -
Page 20: Section 8: Contacts
SECTION 8: Contacts Brian Burke, Public Relations Manager 972-234-8750, ext. 2113 bburke@3dfx.com PT Barnum, Field Applications Engineer 972-234-8750, ext. 2226 pbarnum@3dfx.com - 20 -... -
Page 21: Game Gauge
Voodoo3 product line. The information provided is the most recent available at publication time, however more up-to-date results may be available at http://www.3dfx.com. 3D Performance • 3D Winbench: The industry accepted standard for measuring 3D accelerator performance. - Page 22 PT Barnum at 972-234-8750,ext 2226 or pbarnum@3dfx.com so we can isolate the reason for the discrepancy and insure both your benchmarks and our benchmarks are accurate. Product Voodoo3 3000 Voodoo3 2000 System Intel PIII-500 Intel Celeron- AMD K6-3 Intel PIII-500...
- Page 23 • Quake 3 has intermittent texture flashing when jumping on jump pads • Forsaken 2 Ship Demo (benchmark version) crashes when loading a new level • 3dfx Tools won't install V3 drivers with V3/Banshee multimon setup. User must force install using Display CP •...
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Page 24: 3: 3Dfx Tools User Guide
Gamers Edge pages. All of these sections have been realized as strategic parts missing from most video card tool kits. While some companies have incorporated some elements of these features into tool sets, only 3dfx Tools will contain all of the power and flexibility of these industry leading components. - Page 25 (i.e. If a Banshee is installed, the LCD and TV out pages will not show up) As more and more features are added to 3dfx Tools, more items will be added to the list of items that can be enabled or disabled. The entire purpose of this page is to organize and keep the visible tab/pages under control.
- Page 26 August 1999 Tweaks Page The new 3dfx Tweaks page is shown below. This page allows the user to customize the setting of the video card. The following features can be used from this page: Selection box - This box allows the user to toggle which part of the interface he will be changing.
- Page 27 Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide August 1999 • Automatic: Setting this mode allows the driver to determine when to use 3dfx's new Alpha- Blending Quality technique as needed. This is the Default mode. • Sharper: This option turns off the Alpha-Blending Quality technique, which results in a sharper image and removes some of the "screen door"...
- Page 28 Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide August 1999 New graphics from v1.2.0.16 - 3/31/1999 This page operates much in the same way as Microsoft Explorer does with expanding / collapsing branches and scroll bars. The data is pretty straightforward. TV-Out Page (if supported) This page is used to control the TV-out function of the video card.