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Thanks for
stopping by folks. Tonight, we decided to have a little chat with
our friends at 3dfx Interactive, Brian Burke P.R. Manager and Peter
Wicher, Director of Product Marketing. It seems there has been some
fairly serious debate around the net and in the industry about the
architecture of 3dfx's next generation technology. Some believe that
the next step for the Voodoo platform is not much more than an
increase in clock speed with a few extra bells and whistles. We
decided it was high time to get to the bottom of this debate and get
some direct feedback from the people who are really "in the
know". We asked 3dfx to let us have a peek under the hood of
the Voodoo 4. Here is what they told us.
Dave:
OK, so Voodoo3? 5 layer metal, .25 micron technology? Refresh my
memory here. What are the differences between the Voodoo3 and
Voodoo4 Silicon? Are we talking larger data pipes and on chip memory
for buffering? What are some of the physical differences between
Voodoo3 and Voodoo4?
Peter:
To start with we're in a much nicer process technology. VSA-100
still uses a base 0.25um process geometry but we use six layers of
metal instead of five to get better density and speed, and the
actual transistor has a slightly shorter gate length and thinner
gate oxide to make it go faster, too. The chip design does have a
larger texture cache and the data paths are 32 bits rather than 16
(actually the rendering calculations are 40-bits wide in VSA-100 but
the operands and results are stored as 32 bits). In terms of
transistors we're looking at 14 million in VSA-100 versus 8 million
in Voodoo3 so VSA-100's going to be physically larger.
Dave:
We've heard a lot about the addition of full 32bit color support,
AGP4X and up to 64MB of memory. Is the VSA100 just a souped-up
version of the Voodoo3? Can you tell us about the features that are
exclusive to any of the next generation products based on the VSA100
and also those only available on the Voodoo5 Multi-Processor boards?
People have said that the VSA-100 is just the result of a die shrink
and a few new features that where left out of the Voodoo3 in an
effort to get it to market in time? Any truth to that?
Peter:
Some VSA-100 features were easy to add to the Voodoo3 base, but
others required significant redesign. Things like 32-bit rendering,
64MB memory support, and 4X AGP were not a great challenge. I
suppose that we could have shipped this kind of "Voodoo3+"
a long time ago but we didn't think that it was compelling for our
core customers: we went a lot further. Real SLI is very hard to do,
even for the guys who invented it. That's why four years after
Voodoo Graphics no one else even has two-way SLI while we're up to
8-way on a single board. FXT1 and DXTC texture compression, combined
with full 32-bit texture support and 2K x 2K texture size, was also
a non-trivial feature addition and beyond what anyone else in the
industry is doing. We also took time to trick out the basic 3D
engine. VSA-100 is a full two pixel per clock architecture as
opposed to Voodoo3's single pixel per clock, we improved the raster
efficiency by about 20%, we increased the texture cache size, we
added new texture combines and alpha blends, and we added guardband
clipping which significantly offloads the CPU from doing 2D
clip operations to speed up applications.
The SLI boards, that is the Voodoo5 products, enable the full-scene
antialiasing (AA) and T-Buffer effects and provide incredible pixel
fill rates. Once you've seen a game with full-scene AA you'll never
want to go back. Jaggies and scintillating pixels are totally
annoying, they suck. One of the beauties of our AA is that it will
work with any games now and in the future. Gamers who buy Voodoo5
will get an immediate, huge benefit on their favorite content. The
insane fill rates of the SLI boards, like over 1.3 gigapixels on the
Voodoo5 6000, will enable high frame rates at serious resolutions:
no more knocking the res. down to 640x480 to survive a death match!
Follow
up - 12/8/99
Davo:
We've heard a lot about the addition of full 32bit color support,
AGP4X and up to 64MB of memory. Is the VSA100 just a souped-up
version of the Voodoo3? Can you tell us about the features that are
exclusive to any of the next generation products based on the VSA100
and also those only available on the Voodoo5 Multi-Processor boards?
People have said that the VSA-100 is just the result of a die shrink
and a few new features that where left out of the Voodoo3 in an
effort to get it to market in time? Any truth to that?
Peter:
Some VSA-100 features were easy to add to the Voodoo3 base, but
others required significant redesign. Things like 32-bit rendering,
64MB memory support, and 4X AGP were not a great challenge. I
suppose that we could have shipped this kind of "Voodoo3+"
a long time ago but we didn't think that it was compelling for our
core customers: we went a lot further. Real SLI is very hard to do,
even for the guys who invented it. That's why four years after
Voodoo Graphics no one else even has two-way SLI while we're up to
8-way on a single board. FXT1 and DXTC texture compression, combined
with full 32-bit texture support and 2K x 2K texture size, was also
a non-trivial feature addition and beyond what anyone else in the
industry is doing. We also took time to trick out the basic 3D
engine. VSA-100 is a full two pixel per clock architecture as
opposed to Voodoo3's single pixel per clock, we improved the raster
efficiency by about 20%, we increased the texture cache size, we
added new texture combines and alpha blends, and we added guardband
clipping which significantly offloads the CPU from doing 2D
clip operations to speed up applications.
Peter:
Wow, my answer caused quite a stir, didn't it? Let me explain what I
was trying to communicate about 4X AGP, 32-bit rendering, etc.
VSA-100 is a truly unique product. 3dfx customers want us to deliver
products with features that are beyond what they can get from anyone
else. If the VSA-100 only added 4x AGP, 32-bit rendering and 64MB
memory support, to a Voodoo3, it would not have satisfied our core
customers. To be compelling and to meet our customers' expectations,
our VSA-100 engineering team put incredible energy into unique,
technologically advanced features including real-time full-scene
anti-aliasing, T-Buffer cinematic effects, and FXT1 and DXTC texture
compression. A Voodoo3+ would have "de-focused" us from
the goal of delivering the best 3D experience possible. PC Graphics
is a very competitive market and an in-depth focus on a well-defined
goal is essential to winning. End users are going to be very pleased
when they fire up 3dfx's next generation of Voodoo.
Sounds like good product planning to me. Guess what folks, people
always find something to bitch about. John Q. Public is a tough
customer. If you ask me, (not that I need an invite :) ) 3dfx may be
a tad late but I think the decision to release true next generation
product vrs. the "shrink and tweak" approach was the only
way to do it. 'nuf said...
Dave:
I have heard rumor that some of these new features were already in
the Voodoo1 chip, but just not "turned on", true?
Peter:
No, none of these features were in the original Voodoo Graphics.
We're working with 14 million transistors in VSA-100 compared with
about one million in Voodoo Graphics. It's like comparing a Z8 with
a Model-A.
Dave:
Ahh, Multi-Processing how sweet it is when it is implemented
correctly? So, SLI (scan line interleave) the old and the new, why
don't we just plug a VSA100 in an AGP slot and another in a PCI
slot? Personally, I am VERY happy to see you can do it all on one
card. What key architectural differences exist in the VSA100 that
allow you to achieve SLI this way? Does it work the same way SLI did
on Voodoo2?
Peter:
The new SLI is different and much better than Voodoo2's. Voodoo2
used a comparatively simple analog scan line interleave scheme.
VSA-100 enables a true, multi-chip digital communication and
computation protocol. In the driver we can program how many scan
lines each chip will rasterize, from one to 128 per chip. This lets
us optimize for resolution and required fill rate. You've already
noted another difference, that we can do SLI on a single card, which
is a big win in saving slots and makes four and eight chip SLI
physically practical. We can also sit on the AGP bus. The new SLI is
a nice upgrade from Voodoo2's PCI based approach.
Dave:
I am drooling over one of those AAlchemy boards. Hey what's a mere
$40K between friends, huh?! Can you hook me up with one of those bad
boys?!!! I promise to be VERY gentle with it? :-)
Brian:
What do you have for collateral? Seriously, we may have some
surprises up our sleeves for the Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 roll-out. You
may be able to get your hands on one, but no promises yet.
Dave:
(whimper) Oh, sorry I was mopping the drool up there? Uh?. Hey
thanks Bri! If my next born is male, the name is Brian and if
female, well then she'll have to be named Briana! :-) So, what kind
of performance increases can we expect from the Voodoo4 and Voodoo5
family of products. Do we have a "GeForce Killer" here or
what?
Peter:
From what we know of the GeForce and it's upcoming 0.18um die shrink
we're pretty comfortable. When end users compare Voodoo5's
significantly higher fill rates, full-scene AA, and T-Buffer
effects, not to mention our superior title compatibility, with what
they will get from the 0.18um GeForce they're going to buy the
Voodoo5. Looks better, runs faster: it's an easy decision.
Dave:
Won't the Voodoo4 4500 perform only marginally better Voodoo3 3000?
Is it a similar graphics core running at the same speed? Why should
anyone who already owns a Voodoo3 lay down $179 for a Voodoo4?
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