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Hardware

Voodoo3 Debut 82

Posted by CmdrTaco from the killer-hardware dept.
Several folks wrote in to tell us that 3dfx has announced the Voodoo3 boards. The 2D/3D combo card can do 8 million triangles per second but has no 32-bit rendering. To bad 3d support under Linux still sucks. Quake would be smooth. I figure between Mesa and xig that should change this year. Standard 3d will make modern games much easier on Linux. I think Diablo 2 is coming soon... that would be a swell port.
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Voodoo3 Debut More

Voodoo3 Debut

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  • Maybe 'Not well known' was the wrong choice of words. The point I was trying to make was that the VooDoo2 hasn't saturated the market. The same thing happened with Intel. They introduced the Pentium Line, and that exploded. Next came the Pentium II, and almost on the PII's back follows the PIII. Intel should have held off a while till releasing the PIII, becuase the PII isn't that widespread yet. That was my point with the VooDoo2.
  • That's like saying Macintosh support for games is good, there just aren't any games released for the OS... Until the hardware is supported under OpenGL/Mesa, and such, there isn't really any 3d support in Linux, is there? At least no hardware 3d...

    AS
  • Makes it harder to port to other 3d cards (use OpenGL/Mesa)!
  • I'm sorry, but you are flat out wrong. I have consistantly gotten 67 fps in quake2 from windows, and only 37 fps in quake2 under linux on the same machine. If I'm missing out on something, or misunderstood, I apologize. .. I still barely ever boot windows (half-life :)
    Later.
  • SLI (stands for Scan Line Interleaved) isn't any faster than the new Voodoo3... a standard Voodoo2 does 3M textured triangles per second. Two cards in SLI mode would do 6M triangles. However, even a single Voodoo2 is more than fast enough for any current game on the market. If you've got a game that necessitates an SLI setup now, your CPU is probably way too slow. There's really no reason to go SLI if you have the PCI slots... it should be more than fast enough for quite a while.
  • "...since STB is owned by Diamond."

    Perhaps you meant, "owned by 3Dfx"? ;)
    --
    synaptik
  • SGI does OpenGL in X. Even the high end stuff. High end SGI boxen have kick-ass 3D. Ergo, X is not the problem. XFree86 might be, though. But Precision Insight is working on a multipipe rendering system modelled after papers published by SGI, which will AFAIK be released under the X license. That should solve any performance problems in XFree86, I hope.
  • I grant the K7 will be fast; 3x is something I have to see to believe.
    The cache on chip is 200MHz, I believe. PCI bus is still 33 MHz, and AGP is 66MHz. Memory may go up to 133MHz, but expect 100MHz because that is currently standard.
    I don't know that K7 is a hell of a lot cheaper; Cheaper than a comparable P2 Xeon, which retails for 1900$ for a single CPU at 450MHz and 1 mb cache at 450MHz... But not cheaper than a 190$ 450MHz Celeron, or an overclocked dual Celeron300A at 60$ each, running at 450MHz.

    The Vortex2 with A3d, like Diamond's MX300, would seem to have better 3d support for games, while the Sound Blaster Live! has much better studio, mixing, and media authoring capabilities.

    You go with IBM; I think they are the best in the business.
    19" monitor is also feasible.
    So total of your system: 700$ per CPU, 300$ for motherboard, 100$ for MX300, 300$ for an IDE IBM, 160$ for 128mb ram, and 600$ for a decent monitor all now. Assuming the 180$ V3 card...
    $3400 dollars =) And I really doubt you will outperform the SGI bus, with its UMA between video and system, and its total bypass of AGP entirely. V3 will still rely on a 33MHz PCI bus, or a 66MHz AGP bus, at 32bit, whereas the SGIs gets a direct 3.2gb/s pipeline from memory to video. What is AGP right now? AGP Pro is something like 1gb/s, and right now is something like 500mb/s?
    Also, each component in the SGI gets something like a 1.6gb/s pipe to the CPU. I don't see anything match that; its not even shared bandwith, but individual, like audio, net, hard disk, etc.
    Of course, its 4000 for a single 350MHz, 128 mb, and some 19" monitor... But I don't think any architecture can beat that combination.
    You're also stuck running WinNT4 until SGI sees the lite and ports to Linux
    AS
  • I bought a Voodoo2 card yesterday, and had Quake2 running within an hour of installing it in my box.

    You did read the Quake-HOWTO, didn't you? Does the 3DFX test app give you the blue screen? If not, you've set something up wrong...

  • On the high-end, the AGP-only Voodoo 3 3500 will run at 183MHz and include 16MB of SGRAM, rather than the SDRAM featured in the other cards. Like the 2500, it will offer TV-out capabilities, a 350-MHz RAMDAC, and a game bundle. In addition, it will feature 3Dfx's proprietary LCDfx technology for supporting digital flat-panel displays.

    Ripped straight out of gamecenter.com

    Unfortunately, it will be a $200+ solution and still only 16mb onboard, without real AGP DME texturing, and I doubt the DVD acceleration is available under Linux yet... And it is still only 16bit acceleration, of course, if you care.

    AS
  • I would just like to say thanks, too.

    Bandwagon boy (and proud banshee owner)
  • I read the press release, and there's no mention of Linux support; I guess they just assume you run Windows. 3DFx announced in a previous press release several months ago that the Voodoo3 would have Linux support, or support Linux, or something like that.

    Maybe someone from 3DFx could clear this up...

    TedC

  • Sucks to be vendor locked, doesn't it? To be held hostage in an open market by one company, whether they realize it or not, whether the market realizes or not...

    Wonders how soon Real Soon is, since there is open source 2d for TNT under Linux. How long until 3d?
    Sigh.
    AS
  • "Not well known"?!? You're kidding, right? ;)
    It's the top card right now.
    --
    synaptik
  • granted, the 2D performance may be speedy... but comparisons to the "null driver" don't answer the allegation that the cards have blurry 2D output.
  • I thought of this too. Also I think there's some time before the V3 gets good X-Server support.

    Problems with another V2 are that it takes one more PCI slot and if you have a slow processor, you won't get any benefits of the new card. (300 MHz PII or similar is recommended). My 200 MHz is too slow. :-(
  • Posted by IconisT:

    Don't even bother with V3, as far as I can tell its just fast, at the cost of features, as opposed to TNT2 which will be fast and have all the features, Permedia3 as well will be pretty decent, I can't say which one will be better, but I don't think Voodoo3 is the way to go, unless you don't have a really nice machine and want speed. If you have a decent computer though, get a card that can handle the speeds AND the graphics, not just resolution but different options like bi-linear filtering, stencil buffering, etc, etc, oh not to mention 32bit color, sheesh, Not sure what 3dfx was thinking with voodoo3, Maybe they know people will buy 3dfx over quality, if only because they don't know what all these features mean. Seriously though, I recommend waiting to see how these new chipsets shake out; Permedia3, TNT2, Voodoo3, etc. I also have a 12MB voodoo2, and I like it, but I see my friend's TNT and wish that I could have the higher res, even though its not quite as fast as my voodoo2, albeit the difference is minimal, ie worth it! Peace.
  • The wheels turn slow at that 3dfx place, i have the 3dfx development page bookmarked so i can get the latest alpha banshee xserver etc, and this process has been excruciating, dont expect voodoo3 support for a long long time. At least the wheels are turning thought =/
    http://glide.xxedgexx.com/status.html
  • This probably means that I'll be able to finally pay what the Voodoo2 are worth, not some marked-up price.
  • I've seen Conix OpenGL for the Mac, and its software rendering. It's seriously impressive for software rendering. One would almost think it was raycasting from the speed of some demos! This is the product Apple bought and will be making available to MacOS folk at no cost, the concession that got John Carmack on a stage acerbically plugging Macintoshes. Maybe PPC is particularly suited to software OpenGL rendering? If so it'd be every bit as capable in linuxppc...
  • The point is that these packages (xig, Mesa, etc) should support the acceleration of Voodoo3. As for OpenGL hardware support in X, it does have its problems, but they're being overcome.

    Actually, Conix (the same company that's doing OpenGL for MacOS) is working on an OpenGL plugin for XFree, last time I checked.
  • Banshee's 2d acceleration was never very good anyway. That's why 3Dfx bought a company that actually knew how to do decent 2D acceleration and had them develop the 2D core for the Voodoo3. As a result, the 2D performance of Voodoo3 is very much improved.

  • The Banshee and V3 are a common core, so the X server that is out for the VB will work for the V3. It is getting "reasonable" right now. I'm working out a few glitches, but I'm almost ready to call it working.

    3D support will take a little more effort, but shouldn't be too bad. The approach will be the same as the Voodoo Rush, but should perform much better as it won't have to stall the graphics to do a page flip like the VR board.

    The V3 is faster than a V2 SLI configuration, and it gives you nice 3D in a window. It should be win. The biggest downside is that the 3D is still 16 bit.

    For more information on all this see my website:
    http://glide.xxedgexx.com in particular the status.html page located there.

  • The reason the Xi Graphics and Metro Link solutions help is that it gets a lot more boards supported. To do 3D well you really do need a 3D board. Xi supports several.

    I'm doing a presentation at Linux World Conference and Expo on the state of 3D for Linux. At that presentation I'll be talking about the state of the free and comercial software. I'll also be presenting some benchmark results on a variety of boards and servers.

    After the show is over I plan on putting my results up on my website.

  • I agree. It is a good product that's been around for a long time and supported Linux early on.

    It's already listed on my software page of my website. (http://www.linux3d.org) I expect I'll plug them in the SciVis area in my talk.

  • I still want to choose my 2D card and use
    the 3DFx for 3D only... *sigh*
  • I think the 3500 hundred can drive CRTs as well.

    One thing to keep in mind when pricing flat panels, the stated size represents the active image area, unlike CRTs. The 15" apple display we just bought has the same image area as a Sony Trinitron display and I must say, the image is fantastic. The viewing angles are quite broad, the image as bright and the subsampling is very well done so things look good even below screen resolution.

    The price was just over $1000. A bit high, but not a totall killer. In a month or two they should have a 17" for about $1500 with the same active image area of a 19" display.
  • Doesn't anyone else think it's a bit early to introduce the VooDoo3? The VooDoo2 isn't really all that well known as of yet, so I think 3DFX should have waited and developed 3 a bit more.
  • I currently have a P-5 200MHz machine (non-MMX). I was planning on buying a Voodoo 2 (Monster 3d II) card for it. Should I buy the Voodoo 2 or wait for the Voodoo 3? Would the Voodoo 3 even run on my machine (I don't have AGP, etc.)?

    Yes, I know that the Voodoo 2 would be CPU-limited on my machine. I'm just wondering whether to spend $130 on a Voodoo 2 or wait to spend $160 on a Voodoo 3 :)

    Thanks,

    Niall
  • I'm curious if ACs come back to read the responses to their questions... A minor benefit to registration is the ability to track all your posts, and read all the correspinding responses...

    Anyway, I think the 3500 would have both LCD and regular monitor support; at that price range it would be ridiculous not to support both. Heck, it comes with TV out, so I assume that all the reviewers feel a standard VGA connector is so standard that they fail to mention it.

    VooDoo3 will only support "windowed QuakeGL", and probably most other games, but I don't know about "real GL" yet. Anyone know how far 3dfx has gotten on it's GL drivers, ICD, and such? Right now Quake games and derivatives all rely on a miniGL driver, ie, the driver only contains the calls made by Quake, and no others.

    Heh, that makes me wonder if it's possible, on a dual CPU system, whether 2 games of Quake2 in GL are possible in 2 windows...

    AS
  • RTFM!! It has support for Permedia II using the 3DLABS server.
  • as i understand it, 3dfx is just letting you do it, not really supporting linux themselves.
  • http://www.linuxquake.com/howto/

    When the screen turns black just unplug the monitor from the 3d card and into your regular video card.

  • How does xig and Mesa solve Linux's 3D speed problems? In the current mess, we already have a free opengl library in Mesa, but it's too slow on X, svgalib doesn't support most chips, and GGI is still in flux.

    I understand why OpenGL is a good thing, since a game can be written for both win32 and Linux simultaneously. But wouldn't better support for voodoo chips provide almost the same thing? Or is X still too slow? Doesn't hardware support for opengl still face the limitations for X, or is X somehow changed?

    Confusing.

  • Hmmm, I hate buying things. Either it's great and you love it, or it sucks and your stuck with it.

    My Voodoo 1 was one of the better thing I've ever got though, so maybe V3 is a good idea.

    Then again mabye a ATI rage would be the best choice

    arrrrrrrrr


    Fishy
  • All gamers might know, but the money really isn't in the gamer's pockets, are they?

    What 3dfx needs is a good enough board with 32bpp color depth and 32mb of memory and good AGP2x/4x support, as well as DVD support
    (See ATI Rage128 and TNT2)

    For real cash, 3dfx wants to bundle in OEM systems, and attract more for business machines, soho, and sub-1000 machines, since all those are targeted for high volume growth in 1999. It's boards, spec wise, don't live up because of lack of features... S3, Matrox, nVidia, and ATI all have better looking specs, even if they don't dominate in 3d.

    Any comments?
    AS
  • If you are using windows, ATI Rage 128 might be a good idea... if not, you lose.
    ATI does not seem very supportive of the idea of supporting 3d under Linux to say the least, heck, they don't even give out information on how to use the I2C bus on the 3d Rage II chip, which is needed to drive the ATI-TV card... :(
  • Check out http://www.linux3d.org/ [linux3d.org]. This site is run by Daryll Strauss, who does all the glide ports to Linux...

    As far as I know, Voodoo is the only consumer-grade 3D hardware support under Linux. (nVidia only has a 2D X server.) Daryll is also porting to Linux/PPC and Alpha..

    However, I don't think SLI is supported under Linux...

  • I think it's safe to say that Creative won't be selling Voodoo3 cards. STB Systems, Inc. announced 2 months ago that 3Dfx has agreed to purchase them, pending FTC/SEC/shareholder approval.

    3Dfx will be selling their own wares, exclusively, in all likelihood.

    That said, don't be unduly concerned about Linux drivers. It think someone above already mentioned that 3Dfx has committed resources (contractor, or otherwise,) to accomplish this.


    --
    synaptik

  • It's actually more complicated than that. There are four things to getting the Banshee/V3 running:

    1) An X server. Since people want to do 2D on these things. (Actually the X server provides some other support functions as well). I'm working on this now.

    2) Glide. This talks to the hardware. This is just routine code messaging to make it run under Linux. A little assembly that needs to move between MASM and GAS.

    3) X Server/Glide Integration. They have to cooperate in talking to the hardware. This is the XFree86-Rush extension slightly modified for the Banshee. Shouldn't take much work.

    4) /dev/3dfx. No changes needed excepting updating to the 2.2 kernel which has already been done by some other folks. I just need to grab thier fixes.
  • Posted by obituary:

    I think that has more to do with Quake II than Linux or Windows. On my system, a 640x480 software rendered timedemo tells me that Windows is about 4-6 FPS faster than Linux. I'm positive this is not the case, however, because *visually* the game runs smoother and appears seamless in Linux. It *feels* much faster than it does when I'm playing under Windows -- I'm sure the benchmarks are misleading.

    I get similar results with my Voodoo card as well.

    Whatever algorithm Q2 uses to calculate the framerate clearly favours Windows. Let your eyes be the judge... if it's running smoothly, who cares how many FPS its doing?
  • Silly.
    Then you would wait forever!

    New graphics cards are going to pop up like crazy this year;
    ATI's Rage 128, TNT class
    TNT2, TNT+ class
    VooDoo3 2000, TNT+ class
    VooDoo3 3000, SLI class
    VooDoo3 3500, SLI+ class
    VooDoo3 4000, VooDoo2 killer
    S3 Savage4, TNT class
    3dLabs Permedia3, TNT class
    And probably others from Trident, Matrox, etc.
    I don't see any VooDoo3s other than 2000 taking off really big, as most people don't need/want more performance/cost than that.

    AS

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