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Voodoo3
Voodoo3 was a series of computer gaming video cards manufactured and designed by 3dfx Interactive. It was the successor to the company's high-end Voodoo2 line and was based heavily upon the older Voodoo Banshee product. Voodoo3 was announced at COMDEX '98 and arrived on store shelves in early 1999. The Voodoo3 line was the first product manufactured by the combined STB Systems and 3dfx. History The 'Avenger' graphics core was originally conceived immediately after Banshee. Due to mis-management by 3dfx, this caused the next-generation 'Rampage' project to suffer delays which would prove to be fatal to the entire company. Avenger was pushed to the forefront as it offered a quicker time to market than the already delayed Rampage. Avenger was no more than the Banshee core with a second texture mapping unit (TMU) added - the same TMU which Banshee lost compared to Voodoo2. Avenger was thus merely a Voodoo2 with an integrated 128-bit 2D video accelerator and twice the clock speed. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voodoo Banshee
3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the late 1990s until 2000. The company's original product was the Voodoo Graphics, an add-in card that implemented hardware acceleration of 3D graphics. The hardware accelerated only 3D rendering, relying on the PC's current video card for 2D support. Despite this limitation, the Voodoo Graphics product and its follow-up, Voodoo2, were popular. It became standard for 3D games to offer support for the company's Glide API. The success of the company's products led to renewed interest in 3D gaming, and by the second half of the 1990s, products combining a 2D output with reasonable 3D performance were appearing. This was accelerated by the introduction of Microsoft's Direct3D, which provided a single high-performance API that could be implemente ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
3dfx
3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the late 1990s until 2000. The company's original product was the Voodoo Graphics, an add-in card that implemented hardware acceleration of 3D graphics. The hardware accelerated only 3D rendering, relying on the PC's current video card for 2D support. Despite this limitation, the Voodoo Graphics product and its follow-up, Voodoo2, were popular. It became standard for 3D games to offer support for the company's Glide API. The success of the company's products led to renewed interest in 3D gaming, and by the second half of the 1990s, products combining a 2D output with reasonable 3D performance were appearing. This was accelerated by the introduction of Microsoft's Direct3D, which provided a single high-performance API that could be implemente ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RIVA TNT2
The RIVA TNT2 is a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT (NV4). RIVA is an acronym for ''Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator''.RIVA 128 Brochure Nvidia, accessed October 9, 2007. The "TNT" suffix refers to the chip's ability to work on two s at once (''TwiN Texel'').TNT2 Nvidia, accessed October 12, 2007. Nvidia removed RIVA from the name later in the chip's l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Announced on August 31, 1999 and released on October 11, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor (RIVA TNT2) by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, and adding hardware motion compensation for MPEG-2 video. It offered a notably large leap in 3D PC gaming performance and was the first fully Direct3D 7-compliant 3D accelerator. The chip was manufactured by TSMC using its 220 nm CMOS process. There are two versions of the GeForce 256 the SDR version released in October 1999 and the DDR version released in mid-December 1999 each with a different type of SDRAM memory. The SDR version uses SDR SDRAM memory from Samsung Electronics, while the later DDR version uses DDR SDRAM memory from Hyundai Electronics (now SK Hynix). Architecture GeForce 256 was marketed as "the world's first 'GPU', or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voodoo 5
The Voodoo 5 was the last and most powerful graphics card line that 3dfx Interactive released. All members of the family were based upon the VSA-100 graphics processor.Lal Shimpi, Anand3dfx Voodoo5 5500 Anandtech, July 11, 2000. Only the single-chip Voodoo 4 4500 and dual-chip Voodoo 5 5500 made it to market. Architecture and performance The VSA-100 graphics chip is a direct descendant of "Avenger", more commonly known as Voodoo3. It was built on a 250 nm semiconductor manufacturing process, as with Voodoo3. However, the process was tweaked with a 6th metal layer to allow for better density and speed, and the transistors have a slightly shorter gate length and thinner gate oxide. VSA-100 has a transistor count of roughly 14 million, compared to Voodoo3's ~8 million. The chip has a larger texture cache than its predecessors and the data paths are 32 bits wide rather than 16-bit. Rendering calculations are 40 bits wide in VSA-100 but the operands and results are stored as 32-bit. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voodoo2
The Voodoo2 (or Voodoo2) is a set of three specialized 3D graphics chips on a single chipset setup, made by 3dfx. It was released in February 1998 as a replacement for the original Voodoo Graphics chipset. The card runs at a chipset clock rate of 90 MHz and uses 100 MHz EDO DRAM, and is available for the PCI interface. The Voodoo2 comes in two models, one with 8 MB RAM and one with 12 MB RAM. The 8 MB card has 2 MB of memory per texture mapping unit (TMU) vs. 4 MB on the 12 MB model. The 4 MB framebuffer on both cards support a maximum screen resolution of 800 × 600, while the increased texture memory on the 12 MB card allows more detailed textures. Some boards with 8 MB can be upgraded to 12 MB with an additional daughter board. Each of the three chips present on the card has its own 64-bit RAM interface, giving the card a "total" bus width of 192 bits or 800MB/s per chip. The Voodoo2 has an increased chip-count compared to the original two-chip Voodoo car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ATI Rage
The ATI Rage (stylized as RAGE or rage) is a series of graphics chipsets developed by ATI Technologies offering graphical user interface (GUI) 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration developed by ATI Technologies. It is the successor to the ATI Mach series of 2D accelerators. 3D RAGE (I) The original 3D RAGE (also known as Mach64 GT) chip was based upon a Mach64 2D core with new 3D functionality and MPEG-1 acceleration. The 3D RAGE was released in April 1996. The 3D RAGE was used in ATI's ''3D Xpression'' video board. Additionally, this chip was found integrated into the IBM Aptiva 2176 line with the Stealth case, and came with a Free Copy of MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat that only worked with this graphics chip to showcase its abilities. The memory configuration on this integrated chip was 2 Megabytes. 3D RAGE II (II+, II+DVD, IIc) The second generation Rage (aka Mach64 GT-B) offered roughly two times greater 3D performance. Its graphics processor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S3 Graphics
S3 Graphics, Ltd (commonly referred to as S3) was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the Trio, ViRGE, Savage 3D, and Chrome series of graphics processors. Struggling against competition from 3dfx Interactive, ATI and Nvidia, it merged with hardware manufacturer Diamond Multimedia in 1999. The resulting company renamed itself to SONICblue Incorporated, and, two years later, the graphics portion was spun off into a new joint effort with VIA Technologies. The new company focused on the mobile graphics market. VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics was purchased by HTC in 2011. History S3 was founded and incorporated in January 1989 by Dado Banatao and Ronald Yara. It was named S3 as it was Banatao's third startup company. The company's first products were among the earliest graphical user interface (GUI) accelerators. These chips were popular with video card manufacturers, and their followup designs, including the Trio64, made strong inroads with OEMs. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radeon R100
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Rage design. The processors also include 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R100" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products. Development Architecture The first-generation Radeon GPU was launched in 2000, and was initially code-named ''Rage 6'' (later ''R100''), as the successor to ATI's aging Rage 128 Pro which was unable to compete with the GeForce 256. The card also had been described as ''Radeon 256'' in the months leading up to its launch, possibly to draw comparisons with the co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S3 ViRGE
The S3 ViRGE (Video and Rendering Graphics Engine) graphics chipset was one of the first 2D/ 3D accelerators designed for the mass market. Introduced in 1995 by then graphics powerhouse S3, Inc., the ViRGE was S3's first foray into 3D-graphics. The S3/Virge was the successor to the successful Trio64V+. ViRGE/325 was pin compatible with the Trio64 chip, retaining the DRAM-framebuffer interface (up to 4MB), and clocking both the core and memory up to 80 MHz. In Windows, Virge was benchmarked as the fastest DRAM-based accelerator of the era. The VRAM-based version, ViRGE/VX, was actually slower in lower resolutions, but had a faster RAMDAC to support high-resolution modes not available on the 325. Support Part of S3's marketing plan for the ViRGE included the "S3D" standard, stating that members of the ViRGE family carried the ''S3D Graphics Engine''. Games that supported ViRGE directly put this logo on their box so owners of the 3D card would know that it would run as well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unreal Tournament
''Unreal Tournament'' is a first-person arena shooter video game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. The second installment in the ''Unreal'' series, it was first published by GT Interactive in 1999 for Microsoft Windows, and later released on the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast by Infogrames in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Players compete in a series of matches of various types, with the general aim of out-killing opponents. The PC and Dreamcast versions support multiplayer online or over a local area network. Free expansion packs were released, some of which were bundled with a 2000 re-release: ''Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition''. Powered by the Unreal Engine, ''Unreal Tournament'' received universal acclaim, often being considered one of the greatest video games ever made, with reviewers praising the graphics, level design, and gameplay, though the console ports were noted for having limitations. The design of the game shifted the series' focus to competit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
