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The
3dfx Voodoo3-3000 PCI
Leading
Edge Technology For The Trailing Edge User
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| As
we all know with any business, you go where
the market is. The old adage, "if
you build it, they will come" works only
in the movies. Not long ago the PC
platform standardized on the next generation
PC Graphics Bus Interface, known as AGP.
The promise of increased bandwidth and
performance was ushered in along with yet
another variation in motherboard expansion
slots. As a result, many users who had
just purchased a pre-built PC with on board
graphics, may have been left out in the
cold. In addition, many of the new PCs
being released still came equipped with on
board AGP graphics and several PCI slots but
no AGP slot for graphic upgrades. Since
the average Joe doesn't upgrade their computer
every six months with each new product
evolution, there were many folks opting to
hold out of the next evolution in 3D
graphics. That's when somebody at 3dfx
put on their marketing hat.
3dfx
realized there was a large market still
available that consisted of mainstream medium
to low end computer users that only had PCI
slots to work with. The following is a
Hot Hardware assessment of the 3dfx
Voodoo3-3000 16MB PCI card, current Voodoo
technology designed for the mainstream user on
a budget. What if we told you that the
PCI version of the Voodoo3 is the number one
selling graphics card for 3dfx? Would
you believe us? You should. It is
true and we wanted to find out why.
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| Voodoo3
3000 PCI Specifications |
| The
heart of the Voodoo on a
different bus. |
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Click
on image for full view
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PCI
Bus Interface Card
- 16MB
SDRAM
- 166MHz
Core Clock Speed
- 7
Million Triangles/sec
- 333
Megatexels/sec.
- Supports
resolutions up to 2048x1536
- Full
128-Bit 2D accelerator
- 350
MHz RAMDAC
- DVD
Hardware Assist
- Supports
DirectX, Glide and OpenGL
- Alpha-Blending
- Single
Pass, Single Cycle Bump Mapping
- Single
Pass, Single Cycle Trilinear MIP-Mapping
- Patented
Multi-Texturing
- Programable
Fog Tables
- Sub-Pixel
and Sub-Texel Correction
- Gouraud
Shading
There
are very few differences between the
Voodoo3-3000PCI and the Voodoo3-3000AGP.
Obviously, this is a PCI card vrs. AGP and it is
designed for the the cost conscious. There
is no TV Output on this card. Other than
that, the song remains the same. A solid list of
specifications. Our board also came with
the same speedy memory that is on the high end
Voodoo3-3500, 5.5ns Hyundai SDRAM. That
may or may not be the memory everyone gets on
this card. Regardless, this board had a
robust memory subsystem.
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| Voodoo3
3000 PCI Installation / Setup |
| Tried
and true compatibility. |
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| There
is so much to like about the compatibility
of 3dfx product. The card installed in
our test system in a matter of minutes and
gave us no trouble at all. Things were
very stable and the 2D Desktop image quality
of the V3-3000 PCI is top shelf. Text
is crisp and graphics are well balanced and
rich. The drivers are the standard
Voodoo3 drivers that we are all use to
seeing. There is a fair amount of
tweaking you can do in both Glide, OpenGL
and D3D apps. Here is a shot of the
driver control panel.
I
really like the fact that the drivers give
you the ability to set up your preferences
in the desktop, Direct 3D and Glide/OpenGL,
all in on panel.
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On
with the testing....
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