3dfx Meeting Rooms ::
By far one of the most eye opening events during our three day excursion to E3 was our private meeting with representatives from the 3dfx corporation. 3dfx actually had three meeting rooms
which were set up like cubicles. In the first room we had a 15 minute demonstration of the new Voodoo 5 5550 on Mac and PC. 3dfx is pushing their new anti-aliasing features which will render
2 or 4 frames per each viewable frame and meshes them to provide an anti-aliasing effect that is MIGHTY impressive. With almost no noticable drop in framerates, objects near and far
simply lost their jagged edges revealing detail that is otherwise missed. Textures and models with small lines such as power wires and park benches were now dicernable at long distances therefore easily
providing a new level of emmersive gameplay. The Mac was running StarWars Pod Racer while the PC was showing Need for Speed. Both games got a big boost from the realtime anti-aliasing and
neither exhibited any negative side effects.
On to meeting room number two where we were presented with an interesting side by side comparison of identical systems. You guessed it -- one with the Voodoo5 5500 and the other with the
currently available Gladiac geForce2. The demonstrations were running Quake III Arena executed at a resolution 1024x768 with identical graphical settings. Notice the post-it notes? Well,
that was to cover up the fps counter while we based perfomance soley by the naked eye. Not surprising was the fact that the 5500 beat out the geForce2, but rather by around 40%-50%! The geForce2
exhibited a noticable frame drop during heavy action sequences while the 5500 remained strong.
In addition to the 5500 showcase, we moved on to room three for a sneak peek at the Voodoo5 6000! Boasting 4 processors, 4 heatsinks, 4 fans, and an external power supply, this card has
POWER written all over it. To show it's raw capabilities we were shown Quake III Arena with full grpahics settings at a mind-boggling 2048x1536. 3dfx even admitted having problems finding a
monitor that would go that high. Even still, the Voodoo5 6000 was able to maintain about 30fps throughout the demonstration. Check out this
short clip (4mb)
for some video of the 6000.
