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3dfx Voodoo3 2000, Reviewer'S Manual

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3dfx Voodoo3 2000 Reviewer'S Manual Download Page 3

Voodoo3™ Reviewers Guide 

 

August 1999 

 

- 3 - 

 

 

Table of Contents (cont.) 

 

 

SECTION 6: FAQ   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 16

 

 

SECTION 7: Glossary of 3D Terms 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 19 

 
SECTION 8: Contacts 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 20 

 

APPENDICES  

1: Current Benchmark 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 21  

•

 

3D WinBench 

•

 

3D Mark 

•

 

Winbench 99 

•

 

Speedy 

•

 

Game Gauge 1 

•

 

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 

 

Summary of Contents for Voodoo3 2000

Page 1: ...G 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 ...

Page 2: ...nical Support SECTION 2 About the Voodoo3 Board 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 SECTION 4 Installation and Start Up Page 11 Installing the Board Start Up SECTION 5 Testing Recommendations Page 14 Testing the Voodoo3 Board Cures to common benchmarking an...

Page 3: ...Terms Page 19 SECTION 8 Contacts Page 20 APPENDICES 1 Current Benchmark Page 21 3D WinBench 3D Mark Winbench 99 Speedy Game Gauge 1 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 ...

Page 4: ... generation of ultra high resolution displays The Voodoo3 2000 is designed for the mainstream computer user looking to upgrade his graphics subsystem The Voodoo3 3000 boards are designed for consumers and game enthusiasts seeking the most compelling entertainment experience available on a PC With optimized software drivers for 3dfx Glide Direct 3D and OpenGL PCs equipped with Voodoo3 can run more ...

Page 5: ...r 14 texture map formats 8 bit palletized textures with full bilinear filtering Texture compression through narrow channel YAB format 2D Feature Set Fully integrated 128 bit VGA and 2D engine High speed 128 bit Windows GUI acceleration Hardware acceleration for Bresenham line draw 2 edge polygon fill scissor rectangle clippers and full 256 ROPs Internal 256 bit datapath Source and destination chro...

Page 6: ... and 3000 are covered by a lifetime warranty in the US and a 10 year warranty internationally Technical Support For technical support questions or additional information during the review process contact 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 Consumers can access toll free technical sup...

Page 7: ...166MHz RAMDAC up to 350MHz Video Input 8 bit VMI 1 2 video input port to support video peripherals such as TV tuners MPEG2 decoders 24 bit 12 bit dual edge digital RGB data output to support video output devices such as NTSC or PAL TV encoders Brooktree Bt868 included on board Bus Interface Graphics bus interface AGP 2X with sidebands I O Connectors HD15 VGA output and monitor detection I O Video ...

Page 8: ... support WHQL Requirement 720x576 72 100 8 16 24 32 VIDEO ONLY Ddraw only Video No Desktop support WHQL Requirement PAL 800x600 60 72 75 85 100 120 140 160 8 16 24 32 Desktop Ddraw D3D Glide OGL HW Accel less 24 32 bit color TV OUT support NTSC and PAL 920x768 60 75 85 8 16 Desktop Ddraw D3D Glide OGL HW Accel less 24 32 bit color 1024x768 60 70 75 85 100 120 8 16 24 32 Desktop Ddraw D3D Glide OGL...

Page 9: ... 24 Banked Linear 4bpp banked only 1024x768 70 8 16 24 Banked Linear 1280x1024 70 8 16 24 Banked Linear Software Drivers Drivers included with this kit Voodoo3 Driver Kit Voodoo3 DirectX Driver Voodoo3 Win9x 2D 3D Display Drivers Voodoo3 Glide 2 X Driver Voodoo3 Glide 3 X Driver Voodoo3 Control Panel 3dfx MiniGL 1 49 OpenGL ICD 3dfx Tools Summary 3dfx Tools make it easy to adjust and control vario...

Page 10: ...ce on both Pentium II Pentium III and future CPUs from Intel as well as the AMD K7 AMD K6 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 ex...

Page 11: ...iarize yourself with the installation procedure before you begin A simplified version of the hardware installation instructions is also included in this Quick Install Guide along with some basic troubleshooting information in case you have any difficulty getting your computer restarted after the installation of your new Voodoo3 card Quick Install Instructions 1 Before you do anything else start yo...

Page 12: ...he old card from your computer d Locate the AGP slot for your new Voodoo3 card and install the Voodoo3 card into the AGP slot e Connect your monitor s cable to the Monitor Connector of your Voodoo3 card f Replace the computer s cover and restart the system Overhead view of the expansion slots inside a computer NOTE Be sure to connect your monitor s cable to the Monitor Connector of your new Voodoo...

Page 13: ...for your new accelerator card If you chose to install the 3dfx Tools software then you will also want to open the 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 ...

Page 14: ...ommon benchmarking and image quality issues Be sure to use the New MiniGL drivers that are on the CD When testing Quake II go to the video options and turn off 8 bit textures This removes banding when viewing the sky by allowing the game to use the higher quality 16 bit textures Prior to testing frame rates ensure that vsync is disabled Before you do any frame rate testing make sure that vsync is ...

Page 15: ...D 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 The reason this runs slightly slower than standard filtering is that it consumes some additional frame buffer bandwidth to perform this which in frame buffer ba...

Page 16: ...hink consumers will agree that it s a tremendous value and very powerful graphics accelerator Third we discovered that the 183MHz chip again yields performance that exceeds even our expectations Based on the relative performance of this chip versus the other Voodoo3 chips not to mention the technology available from our competitors it was clear that this processor was an ideal engine to drive the ...

Page 17: ...ntly been released and Voodoo3 is fully compatible with Glide 3 0 Voodoo3 is also backward compatible with the older Glide 2 X API Q Will Glide be updated prior to the release of Voodoo3 There will be unique Glide drivers for Voodoo3 however the core Glide functionality and programming interface will be unchanged for Voodoo3 Q Is Voodoo3 faster than Voodoo2 SLI If so how much faster A Yes the Vood...

Page 18: ...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 As for Pentium II we introduced a patent with Voodoo Banshee to direc...

Page 19: ...e As light passes over this texture different shadows and reflections appear across the surface which shift according to the light s movements and placement For example viewing a rug from a distance the rug looks smooth But were you to look closely you would notice ridges and bumps crevasses and shadows Chipset Refers to the key components of silicon that drive the graphics of your game Another wa...

Page 20: ...exture Mapping The process of applying a texture to a triangle Tri Linear Filtering A higher quality texture filtering technique than bi linear Voodoo2 can perform this at full speed W Buffering A much more precise way than Z buffering of storing depth values to reduce the amount of pixels drawn on a screen Voodoo2 is one of the very few architectures that can process W buffering allowing it to ru...

Page 21: ...exture sizes and single and multiple textures per pixel The recommended resolution for running 3DMark is 1280x1024 For more information visit http www 3dmark com 2D Performance Winbench99 Winbench99 measures business and high end graphics This benchmark can also be run under Windows NT 4 0 to simulate a business desktop environment For more information visit http www zdnet com zdbop Speedy Speedy ...

Page 22: ...8 2 Crusher dm2 MiniGL 1 49 OGL 1 0 0 0442 ICD MiniGL And OGL MiniGL And OGL MiniGL And OGL MiniGL And OGL MiniGL And OGL 1024x768x16bpp 50 9 35 9 39 7 48 0 39 9 39 4 3DMark99Max 1024x768 triple buffered 4636 3063 3435 4197 3104 3358 Ziff Davis WinBench99 v1 2 1024x768x16bpp 85 Hz 3D Winmark 99 triple buffered 948 801 857 846 736 785 2D Business Graphics Winmark 16 bpp 192 148 187 190 148 187 2D H...

Page 23: ...Display CP Attempting to launch Quake or Hexen II at resolutions higher than 800x600 generates a wgl failure When setting up FIFA 99 for night play corrupts the lights on the outside of stadiums Descent 3 Demo 2 Problem with OpenGL ICD where textures are missing in certain areas of game Descent 3 Demo 2 Exiting Game to Black Desktop running game in OpenGL A system lock up will occur while running ...

Page 24: ...ouse keystrokes Another differentiating factor is the ability of 3dfx Tools to automatically download connection to the Internet required compare and install new drivers effectively keeping our clients up to date with out making them have to hunt for the latest drivers then painfully try to install them With this feature set and level of integration STB will possess the industry s best control too...

Page 25: ...s click on the page name and it s back Note The Control page should be populated with data from the actual card in the system 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 pa...

Page 26: ...ns all the available features currently incorporated into 3dfxTools that allow modification to the Glide OpenGL settings of the board Any and all of these settings can be used at once Reset to Previous Button This button resets all data on this page to the Previous data that was APPLIED with the APPLY button All setting on this page will not be saved until the APPLY button is pushed Factory Defaul...

Page 27: ...ar title and on the performance or image quality preferences of the user Automatic This allows the driver to determine the specific image processing algorithm which provides the best combination of performance and image quality This is the Default mode High This high quality option produces an image without the color banding that can appear in some games Choosing this option results in a slight pe...

Page 28: ...user to switch between TV and VGA Monitor output As soon as the user selects a mode the picture to the right should change to indicate that he s she s about to go into TV or Monitor mode as soon as he she presses the APPLY button located at the bottom of the page The two images shown here show the different pictures that will be displayed The other checkbox allows the user to turn off the output t...

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