3dfx Voodoo3

Final Words, the Future, and Should You Buy it?

3dfx has come a long way since the days when relatively few people even knew what GLQuake was, many will say that 3dfx will never have the glory they once attained with the original Voodoo, and there are others that will say that the Voodoo3 was everything that they expected it to be. Realistically, it seems like the Voodoo3 was everything a single-card SLI should have been, although one could argue that the higher clock rates would indicate a large enough difference to justify calling the Voodoo3 a dramatically new product, with the public availability of the 3000 boards quite limited, and the availability of the 3500's delayed for at least another month, that argument can easily be put to rest, for now.

3dfx did a good job with the Voodoo3, it wasn't a stellar production on 3dfx's part, the lack of 32-bit color rendering and AGP texturing support are among the two biggest gripes you'll have with the video card, and its lack of a true OpenGL ICD will keep most professionals from going down the path of the Voodoo3 as most professional 3D rendering programs require a fully functional OpenGL ICD to work properly. The 2D performance and 2D quality of the Voodoo3 are amazing, considering just last year 3dfx was a 3D-only company, whereas now they are going head to head with companies like Matrox that have been boasting their incredible 2D image quality for quite some time now.

The drivers 3dfx supplied AnandTech with were beta drivers, and did provide a few problems during some extended gameplay tests. While playing Shogo, the drivers did seem to exhibit some texture problems, where the walls would display artifacts every now and then while running at higher resolutions. Other than that, there were relatively few problems AnandTech experienced with the cards. The Voodoo3 did tend to get considerably hot during long-term operation, and although 3dfx will be shipping the boards with heatsinks, you may want to consider attaching a fan onto the board to keep things running smoothly. 3dfx did supply AnandTech with a list of known issues, with most of them having been fixed since the release of the erratum list. The most glaring problems involved incorrect textures being drawn, however the final revision of the drivers should put an end to all problems of that nature. The drivers 3dfx supplied AnandTech did feature a few interesting control panels and utilities, however the look and feel of the final revision may be different depending on what 3dfx chooses to do with them.

So now we get to the final decision, should you buy the Voodoo3? If you currently own a single Voodoo2, an upgrade to a Voodoo3 should only be made if you don't want to take up another slot with a second Voodoo2, or if you desperately feel the need to run at resolutions greater than 1024 x 768. For those of you with slower processors, once again, you're better off with a single Voodoo2 or a TNT and putting the extra money towards a CPU upgrade to something like a Celeron.

Voodoo2 SLI owners will find it quite difficult tossing out three of their video cards in favor of a single Voodoo3 solution that isn't all that much faster, the only reason for pursuing the Voodoo3 in this case would be to cut down on the number of slots/IRQs occupied and to be able to play at resolutions greater than 1024 x 768. In terms of performance, the Voodoo3 3000 doesn't offer too much over the 2000, so it would seem that the 2000 would be the best overall choice for any user, unless you desperately need the TV-Output of the 3000 model.

Since all of the boards will be coming out of the same plant, in a few months time you can probably expect to see what AnandTech likes to call, the Celery-effect, where a 2000 will sometimes be able to make it up to higher clock speeds such as those of a 3000 or maybe even a 3500 if the yield on the processor and the quality of the RAM is high enough. With video cards, overclocking is a bit more difficult to accomplish, since the stability of the RAM is difficult to guarantee at greater frequencies, however it may be worth a try.

The image quality of the Voodoo3 is a noticeable improvement over the Voodoo2, pretty much on par with that of the Banshee. So migrating from a TNT to a Voodoo3, if you're in the position that you absolutely must have the added performance, shouldn't put you in too bad of a position in terms of image quality, and plus, the improvement in 2D image quality should make up for any 3D image degradation.

Now comes the long awaited mention of nVidia's lurking monster, the TNT2. Preliminary benchmarks have already shown the TNT2 to be able to go head to head with and pretty much dominate the Voodoo3, however there isn't a person out there that doesn't remember nVidia's 125MHz TNT fiasco of 1998, where they promised one thing, and delivered a part that was considerably slower. At the same time, video card manufacturers are already shouting 150MHz clock speeds to everyone that asks, so it seems like nVidia may have the potential to pull through this time, with the TNT2, scheduled to begin shipping in May. Whether or not the TNT2 will live up to expectations and dominate the market, including the Voodoo3, is up to time to tell, rest assured that AnandTech will have a thorough comparison of the Voodoo3 and the TNT2 as soon as the specifications are finalized and the cards ready to begin shipping. Until then, April seems like it will be the month of the Voodoo3, let's hope, for 3dfx's sake, that nVidia won't make a fool out of them in May.