3dfx Velocity 100 Review

by FastSite
08/16/1999 | 12:00 AM

If we take a closer look at the computer market trends, we will easily notice that most manufacturersand sellers try to offer their customers the choice corresponding to their monthly income. Today you willhardly surprise anyone with a sub-$1000 PC, moreover, there appeared a totally new class of the so-called"free" PCs. Every educated user will probably chuckle and mention a famous saying: "cheese for freeis onlyin a mouse-trap". Quite evident that the low cost of the PC results from the total cost of its componentparts. It is more than clear that a cheap PC should be equipped with a cheap CPU, cheap HDD, cheap memory,graphics card, etc. And if you are reading this article, you have probably noticed that it is located in theVideo section, which automatically implies that we are going to speak about graphics cards. Since we startedtalking about low-cost component parts, it means that the market can now boast something new and at a reallyridiculous price. The thing is that almost every 3D graphics accelerator chips manufacturer has speciallow-cost chipset versions in its product range. And this relative cheapness can be achieved in severalways. For instance, the previous generation chips or the special (usually simplified) low-cost chipversions can be offered as a really cheap product. We consider Riva TNT2 M64 from nVidia the best examplehere. This chip has a 64bit bus instead of the usual 128bits, which undoubtedly tells on the performance.3dfx company is the only one, who is dragging behind the others in this sphere and who could provide onlyBanshee and Voodoo2 chips as a low-cost solution till recently. However, low-cost chips and graphics cardsbased on them are very popular mostly among OEM assemblers and system integrators. For sure Voodoo2 doesn'tsuit here and Banshee has to fight its way through the army of competitors. As a result, a few months ago wehappened to know that 3dfx was getting ready to launch a new cards family intended for OEM sector in thefirst place. And not so long ago this info got officially proven by a press release telling about new low-costgraphics cards with a familiar name - Velocity. Two graphics cards were announced - Velocity 100 andVelocity 200, but the most interesting and surprising thing is that the specs of both pieces contain noinfo about the chip these cards will be based on.<%BANNER[article]%>

The matter is that 3dfx acquired Velocity trade mark after it purchased another well-known company -STB. STB used this name for its graphics accelerators based on nVidia chips. We really doubt if 3dfxwill agree to utilize the chips of its main rival for its graphics cards. But on the other hand,Velocity trade mark is quite famous among STB's OEM partners, which were the main reason for 3dfxto purchase STB. However, we believe that this name is not the best one, which could have been chosenhere, although it may still be changed in the near future... Well, you may be confused with such a longintroduction, aren't you? It is not for nothing, you'll get it right away. Follow us!

For our benchmarks we got a new graphics card from 3dfx - Velocity 100. However, the fact that thiscard is based on 3dfx 500 chip isn't mentioned anywhere, There wasn't a single word about it even inVelocity 100 press release posted on 3dfx web-site. Besides, not all the specs listed in the pressrelease correspond to those of the sample we had for testing. But as to 3dfx, Velocity 100 graphicscards are intended for OEM market only, which means that the distributors have the right to callthese products any name they like having agreed upon it with 3dfx company.

We would also like to note that the second card of this family - Velocity 200 - won't differ much fromVelocity 100. The only distinction will be the local graphics memory size (16MB instead of 8MB SGRAM)and a few applications accompanying the card, which haven't been announced yet. And now let's pass overdirectly to the testing of the new card Velocity 100 from 3dfx designed for low-cost and corporate systemsmarket.

The card has a not very big PCB with AGP interface, on which there are 8MB local graphics memory(SGRAM 6ns) and 2D/3D graphics chip with integrated RAMDAC. And that's all. No additional slots likeFeature Connector, no TV-out, nothing...

As you can notice on the photo above, there is a new integrated 2D/3D chipset - 3dfx 500 (the card wassupplied with a radiator stuck to the chipset, but we took it away for a better photo). Besides, you canalso see that the card can boast a rather fast 6ns SGRAM memory, which makes us suppose that duringchipset overclocking the chip, and not the memory, will set the top frequencies.

The chipset works at the frequency synchronous to that of the memory - 143MHz, which corresponds to3dfx Voodoo3 2000. You may think that 3dfx resorted to a pretty simple trick: provided the already existingcard with twice as little memory and here you are: Velocity 100. But things are not as simple as they seem,another idea about a cut down chipset version keeps on coming to your head, otherwise it would hardly makeany sense to rename the chipset (they could simply ship a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 with 8MB memory). Besides, theprice is still too low for a Voodoo3 - about $50, which again suggests an idea of the chip modification.

Getting ahead of the story we would say that all these suppositions came true. 3dfx decided to reduceneither the memory bus nor the chipset working frequency. Instead it kept to the beaten track. The drivers(both versions: the one supplied with the card and ver. 1.02.11) found only one TMU that's why we haveevery right to suppose that 3dfx 500 chip doesn't have a second TMU module and hence the single-passmultitexturing is simply impossible. Although the card features stated in the press release includethis regime as ok.

Besides, there is one more restriction - 8MB memory without AGP-texturing. It means that thisgraphics card will be able to normally perform in 3D graphics only at resolutions under 1024x768(which is exactly what we've got in out tests). As we see, this card possesses all the featuresrequired for an office PC, which is equipped with a not very large monitor (about 15 inches) anddoesn't need to be perfect for higher resolutions. Well, let's check if this card corresponds tosuch a description.

At first we would like to offer you a list of 3dfx Velocity 100 main features bearing in mind allthe restrictions mentioned above:

• Fillrate - 143Mpixels per second;
• All 3D graphics API support: Glide, Direct3D, OpenGL;
• Max resolution in 3D: 1024x768@16bpp;
• Max resolution in 2D: 1920x1400@32bpp;
• All main 3D functions support: MIP-mapping with bilinear and tri-linear filtering, anti-aliasing, etc.;
• OpenGL support as both: ICD and via mini-driver.

Of course, 3dfx 500 chip is not deprived of the drawbacks typical of all Voodoo3 chips, such astotal absence of larger textures (over 256x256) support, for instance, as well as the lack of 32-bitrendering in 3D, no DIME and AGP 2x.

Well, enough for discussions and suppositions, let's turn to the real work. For our tests we utilizedtwo systems.

The system based on Intel Pentium III was configured as follows:

• Intel Pentium III 500MHz CPU;
• ASUS P2B-B (i440BX) mainboard;
• 128MB PC-100 system memory;
• IBM DTTA 371010 HDD;
• ViewSonic P810 monitor (21");
• Windows 98.

The system based on AMD K6-2 was configured as follows:

• AMD K6-2 - 450MHz CPU;
• Chaintech 5AGM2 (VIA MVP3) mainboard;
• 128MB PC-100 system memory;
• IBM DTTA 371010 HDD;
• ViewSonic P810 monitor (21");
• Windows 98.

The card is supplied together with the drivers ver. 1.00 beta. They don't differ much from Voodoo3version: only the card name is different, however, we preferred to utilize for our 3dfx Velocity 100drivers ver. 1.02.11, which showed better results.

We'd like to start with 2D graphics. What did we see in Winbench 99? The results achieved at1600x1200x32 resolution on Pentium III based PC are given below:

At a lower resolution of 1924x768x32 we got the following results:

As we can see the simplifications made to the chipset greatly told on its performance at1600x1200x32, which fell down almost twice compared to 3dfx Voodoo3 2000. However, at 1024x768x32(the most widely spread resolution for office PCs) the performance drop got greatly reduced, whichallows us to estimate this card as a good one.

As far as the 2D image visual quality is concerned, we can only say that it is not bad. The imagesare very clear-cut at the resolutions up to 1280x1024.

But what's the purpose for a company, which major is 3D graphics cards to develop a 2D graphicsaccelerator for low-cost PCs? Well, it's very simple: the office employees are also ordinary people,who may get tired of tables and charts and who may also like to play games from time to time just torelax or simply for fun when the boss is out. So, let's take a look at what 3dfx offers us in 3D. Fora better comparison we also provide the results for Velocity's relatives - Voodoo3 2000 and 3000. Youare probably wondering why we decided to include the latest one as well? The thing is that when overclocked3dfx Velocity 100 can work at 166/166MHz frequencies.

To begin with we want to mention that some of the games we use for 3D benchmarks utilize multitexturing(i.e. when two TMU modules are active, which superpose two textures over one pixel per time step). Thiswas exactly how we learned that the card we'd got didn't have this feature at all. First of all, theseare Quake2 (massive1.dm2 demo) and Quake3 (Q3test v.1.07 - q3testdemo1.dm3, we provide the example with16-bit textures with the highest quality and enabled gaming effects).

We may notice that Velocity 100 lags far behind all the rest, and its performance is so poor thateven overclocking doesn't help to catch up with at least Voodoo3 2000. However, if we take a closerlook at the numbers given in the charts, we will be surprised to find the situation not so dramatic:at 800x600 the gaming performance in Quake2 is on a pretty high level, even in Quake3 the card performednot so displeasingly and this game may now remain in the list of the games one can play with this card.And if you disable maximum detailization and a number of gaming effects, then 3dfx Velocity 100 can evenbe regarded as really good in these games.

Here we would like to note that for Quake3 tests we used the last drivers version for Voodoo3 from3dfx 1.02.11 (with ICD OpenGL). And for Quake2 we took a mini-driver ver. 1.48 (mini OpenGL).

Let's continue. Here are the results obtained in 3D Mark99 MAX, which gives the performance of the cardin DirectX 6.1:

Here we see that at the resolution 800x600 the things stand just perfectly. The performance is almostas cool as that of 3dfx elder brothers Voodoo3 2000 and 3000. But as soon as we pass over to 1024x768 theperformance suffers a very tangible drop. However, it is quite understandable since the card has only 8MBmemory, which is not enough for a number of tests in 3DMark 99 MAX.

Now let's take a look at Rage Incoming, which allows estimating the card's performance in Direct3Dwithout multitexturing:

We can see that the results shown in this game are just brilliant, and all the cards work in equalconditions, i.e. without the second TMU-processor for multitexturing. Moreover, Velocity 100 even managesto leave 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 slightly behind.

Now it's time for Monolith Shogo (we used Revshogo demo):

This data seems to prove the results obtained before, which show that 3dfx Velocity 100 appears almoston the same level as 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 in games without multitexturing.

We actually think this data is more than enough to illustrate the performance of this card in 3D.

Well, let's sum up. At first sight it looks as if we could cry out: the epoch of Intel 740, S3 Savage3and nVidia Rive128 is over! A new very worthy graphics card has come out, which can easily replace them all!Those cards can win the users attention only due to additional features, such as TV-in/out, which areabsent by 3dfx Velocity 100. By and large, we would eagerly recommend this card to low-cost PCsassemblers, because it combines good 2D with just perfect 3D (there is no need to compare 3dfxVelocity 100 with the other ones of the same price category: it is an indisputable leader!). Yes, thisgraphics card supports the resolutions over 800x600 in 3D though we believe that this resolution isquite sufficient for a not very large monitor. Besides, we would also like to add that PCI versions ofthis card will be also available in the market as well as AGP ones.

Of course the main tendency is towards price reduction for the previously launched graphics cards,however, the market will hardly see any other graphics card as cheap and as good at the same time as thisone. The only graphics cards, which may threat the position of 3dfx Velocity 100, are nVidia Riva TNT2 M64based ones, which get cheaper and cheaper day by day.

And in conclusion we would like mention once again that we had a test sample of this card, and massshipments of this product haven't been started yet. That's why we can't guarantee that a sly seller, wholongs for easy money, won't raise the price on 3dfx Velocity 100, which will undoubtedly reduce most ofits advantages to naught.