The Big 3D Fight
Written: 11/10/99
Written by: Jellebee
   
I’ve Got Bigger
Muscles Then You
Lets
go forward a bit to the time of March 1999. The scene was set once again for the
domination of the 3D market. It was the time for NVIDIA and 3dfx to have a rematch and
this time it was personal.
3dfx
initially beat NVIDIA by having their Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 out on to the market first.
And boy was it fast. But NVIDIA was not lying
low. They had their sucker punch ready with the TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra. Initial benchmarking
showed that in 16bit the Voodoo3 was slightly faster than the TNT2. However three things
that spoil the events for 3dfx were:
Lack of 32bit colour
and support for textures higher than 256x256 in the design of the Voodoo3.
Nvidia’s
development of the faster than ever 3dNOW! And SSE enabled drivers, compatible with TNT,
TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra – the 1.88 drivers.
Quake III: Arena Test
initial benchmarking showed that the immature Voodoo3 OpenGL drivers were no good (and the
development of a MiniGL followed which wasn’t too good either).
There
was war on the internet. Two factions quickly developed and anyone claiming that the
Savage4 was the best thing since sliced bananas was obviously eating too many dried frog
pills and quickly deported to Siberia with their iMAC in tow. 3dfx lovers went on about
the speed of the thing and how Voodoo3 could whoop the TNT2’s ass. Nor, they claimed,
could you tell the difference between 16bit and 32bit colour.
NVIDIA
wannabes pointed out that Quake III looked so much more better in 32bit colour.
Tomshardware then followed with dodgy benchmarks claiming the 3dfx card sucked and NVIDIA’s
card smelt like roses. Id software (makers of Quake 3) told him that the benchmarks weren’t
valid and Dr. Tom Pabst was hugely criticised for being a cheat, liar and a fool by almost
everyone.
I
don’t have a personal opinion on this (actually I do) but I was not impressed with
the behavior of Tom when he began to tell id how to do their job and was rude to Brian
Hook (then programmer for id). It was all a little ‘stoopid’ and surreal.
Anyway where were we? In the end the general consensus
that TNT2 Ultra was the fastest thing in general and the better product offering more
features. NVIDIA were then afforded the crown with ‘Supreme 3D dudes on the Planet’
. . . (which on the back and in small print reads ‘but
hey, if you mess up we won’t even spit on you ‘cos we are nice like that).
So,
where, you are wondering was everyone else? Quite simply my dear Dr Watson they were
caught napping. Well not quite, allow me to elaborate.
3D
Labs tired something new with their Permedia 3 card with their Virtual Texturing. However
this was not really a compelling reason to purchase a 3D accelerator on, since in theory
it was fine but in practice it was not as fast as the Voodoo3’s or TNT2’s. S3
and Videologic/NEC we have already mentioned . . . ATi continued to watch this generation
go by and were quite happy with their Rage Fury and Rage Fury Pro. ATi were not too
concerned with being the fastest kid on the block at that time. Rendition the developers of the ‘slightly
flawed but otherwise very nice for its time’ Rendition 2k are still nowhere to be
seen but have promised something very nice in the way of the Rendition 4k. Matrox though .
. .
Matrox
were cheeky enough to not only become the fastest card on the block with their G400 and
G400 MAX but they also decided to implemented some pretty nifty features too which at that
time were not to be found anywhere else on the market. You have to admit you cannot be
fail to be impressed with DualHead Technology and Environment Bump Mapping (EBM). Funny
thing is both of these technologies were ‘accidents’ or ‘mistakes’ . .
. no really. Their ‘killer app’ is a complete accident . . . I kid you not.
“They
weren’t mistakes as such, but they did just kind of happen” jokes Jason Della
Rocco [of Matrox], “In the case of bump mapping we looked at the DirectX6
specifications and said ‘We’d better put it in because everyone else will be
doing it, and if we don’t do it we’ll be screwed.’”
And the DualHead
output?
“We left it on
the consumer-level board and it’s become this great feature for us,” Della Rocco
explains [Quotes taken from Edge 78 Nov 1999]
It turned out pretty
nicely for Matrox and they can now claim faster performance than the TNT2 Ultra with their
TurboGL drivers. Nifty indeed.
Look out for Part II of the Big 3D Fight coming
soon to a screen near you. Meanwhile you can
check out other articles by the same author:
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