3dfx Voodoo3 2000 User manual

Voodoo3™ 2000/3000 Reviewer’s Guide
For reviewers of:
Voodoo3 2000
Voodoo3 3000
DRAFT - DATED MATERIAL
THE CONTENTS OF THIS REVIEWER’S GUIDE IS INTENDED SOLELY
FOR REFERENCE WHEN REVIEWING SHIPPING VERSIONS OF VOODOO3 REFERENCE BOARDS.
THIS INFORMATION WILL BE REGULARLY UPDATED, AND REVIEWERS
SHOULD CONTACT THE PERSONS LISTED IN THIS GUIDE FOR UPDATES BEFORE EVALUATING
ANY VOODOO3 BOARD.
3dfx Interactive, Inc.
4435 Fortran Dr.
San Jose, CA 95134
408-935-4400
www.3dfx.com
Copyright 1999 3dfx Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION Page 4
SECTION 1: Voodoo3 Board Overview Page 4
•Features
•2D Performance
•3D Performance
•Video Performance
•Target Audience
•Pricing & Availability
•Warranty
•Technical Support
SECTION 2: About the Voodoo3 Board Page 7
•Board Layout
- Hardware Configuration & Components
- System Requirements
•Display Mode Table
•Software Drivers
•3dfx Tools Summary
SECTION 3: About the Voodoo3 Chip Page 10
•Overview
SECTION 4: Installation and Start-Up Page 11
•Installing the Board
•Start-Up
SECTION 5: Testing Recommendations Page 14
•Testing the Voodoo3 Board
•Cures to common benchmarking and image quality mistakes

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Table of Contents (cont.)
SECTION 6: FAQ Page 16
SECTION 7: Glossary of 3D Terms Page 19
SECTION 8: Contacts Page 20
APPENDICES
1: Current Benchmark Page 21
•3D WinBench
•3D Mark
•Winbench 99
•Speedy
•Game Gauge 1
•Quake II Time Demo 1 at 1600 x 1200
•Quake II Time Demo 1 at 1280 x 1024
Expected Performance of Popular Benchmarks
2: Errata: Known Problems Page 23
3: 3dfx Tools User Guide Page 24

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INTRODUCTION:
The Voodoo3 2000/3000 Reviewer’s Guide is a concise guide to the Voodoo3 143MHz,
and 166MHz graphics accelerator boards. Included are a board overview and feature set, a
display mode table, installation procedures, and Voodoo3 evaluation guidelines. It is assumed
that the reviewers are well-versed in the various aspects of graphics hardware and software.
Accordingly, the installation description is concise. If issues or questions do arise during the
review please contact the 3dfx Interactive contacts listed later in this document.
The information provided in this document is not for publication.
SECTION 1: Voodoo3 Board Overview
The Voodoo3 boards deliver the ultimate in 3D and 2D performance, while supporting the
new generation of ultra-high resolution displays. The Voodoo3 2000 is designed for the
mainstream computer user looking to upgrade his graphics subsystem. The Voodoo3 3000
boards are designed for consumers and game enthusiasts seeking the most compelling
entertainment experience available on a PC. With optimized software drivers for 3dfx Glide®,
Direct 3D™, and OpenGL®, PCs equipped with Voodoo3 can run more than 500 enhanced
games developed for the Voodoo Graphics
®
family.
Both the retail and PC/OEM versions of Vooodoo3 2000 PCI and AGP feature an internal
core and external SDRAM clock rates of 143MHz. Both the retail and PC/OEM versions of
Vooodoo3 3000 AGP and PCI will feature an internal core and external clock rates of 166MHz.
The Voodoo3 product line is rounded out by the Voodoo3 3500 TV, 3dfx's highest-end graphics
accelerator, which also includes complete TV, VCR and FM stereo capabilities. The Voodoo3
3500 TV details will be provided in a separate reviewer's guide.

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Feature Summary
3D Feature Set
•7 million triangles per second (Voodoo3 3000 at 166 MHz)
•6 million triangles per second (Voodoo3 2000 at 143 MHz)
•333 megatexels per second fill rate (Voodoo3 3000 at 166 MHz)
•286 megatexels per second fill rate (Voodoo3 2000 at 143 MHz)
•128-bit 3D acceleration
•Dual, 32-bit texture rendering architecture
•True multi-texturing. 2 textures per-pixel per-clock
•Full hardware setup of triangle parameters
•Support for multi-triangle strips and fans
•Single Pass, Single-cycle Bump mapping
•Single Pass, Single-cycle trilinear MIP-mapping
•Sub-pixel and sub-texel correction with 0.4x0.4 resolution
•Per-pixel atmospheric fog with programmable fog zones
•Floating point Z buffer (W buffer)
•True per-pixel, LOD MIP mapping with biasing and clamping
•Texture compositing for multi-texture and special effects
•Support for 14 texture map formats
•8-bit palletized textures with full bilinear filtering
•Texture compression through narrow channel YAB format
2D Feature Set
•Fully integrated 128-bit VGA and 2D engine
•High-speed 128-bit Windows GUI acceleration
•Hardware acceleration for Bresenham line draw, 2-edge polygon fill, scissor/rectangle
clippers and full 256 ROPs
•Internal 256-bit datapath
•Source and destination chroma-keying for DirectDraw
•Color expansion and single-cycle block writes
•Accelerated 8, 16, 24 (packed), and 32-bit modes
Video Subsystem
•Support for ultra-high resolution displays on PC monitors
•Resolutions of up to 2046 x 1536 at a full 75Hz screen refresh rate
•YUV 4:2:2 and YUV 4:2:0 planar support
•30 frames per second DVD playback with no dropped frames
•Supports the latest MPEG2 software CODECs via DirectShow™
•De-interlacing using Bob and Weave
•Separate gamma correction for video and graphics
•Auto page flipping using VBI for smooth motion video
•350MHz Integrated RAMDAC
•Supports up to 24 bits per pixel or 16.7 million colors
•Sub-pixel image scaling technology

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Pricing and Availability
Both the Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 boards are available now on retail shelves worldwide,
and through some of the world's leading PC makers.
The suggested U.S. retail price for the Voodoo3 2000 is $129.99. The suggested U.S.
retail price for the Voodoo3 3000 is $179.99.
Warranty
Retail versions of the Voodoo3 2000, and 3000 are covered by a lifetime warranty in the
US and a 10 year warranty internationally.
Technical Support
For technical support, questions, or additional information during the review process,
contact:
Brian Burke, Public Relations Manager
972-234-8750, ext. 2113
[email protected]
PT Barnum, Field Applications Engineer
972-234-8750, ext. 2226
[email protected]
Consumers can access toll free technical support by calling 1-800-234-4334. For 24-hour
BBS support dial [phone]. 3dfx's Technical Support Fax number is: 214-669-1326. Or
contact 3dfx on the Web at www.3dfx.com

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SECTION 2: About the Voodoo3 Board
Board Layout
Hardware Components
Graphics Subsystem
•Graphics Controller – 143MHz Voodoo3 2000 or 166MHz Voodoo3 3000
•Frame Buffer – 16MB of 512Kx32 SDR SDRAM for the 166MHz
•RAMDAC – up to 350MHz
•Video Input – 8-bit VMI 1.2 video input port to support video peripherals such as:
- TV tuners
- MPEG2 decoders
•24-bit (12-bit dual-edge) digital RGB data output to support video output devices such as:
- NTSC or PAL TV encoders (Brooktree Bt868 included on board)
Bus Interface
•Graphics bus interface – AGP 2X with sidebands
I/O Connectors
•HD15 – VGA output and monitor detection I/O
•Video – Composite Video-Out (S-Video)
•CCR-601

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System Requirements
•Windows 95 or Windows 98 (Windows NT4.0 for 2D benchmark test)
• PC with a Pentium, Celeron ™, Pentium II, or Pentium Pro Processor (Pentium 233 and up
recommended), AMD K6-2, K6-3 with 3DNow! and a free AGP or PCI slot.
•32MB of system RAM (64MB recommended)
Display Mode Table: Driver Modes for Win95, Win98, WinNT, and Win2000
Resolution Vertical Frequency
(Hz)
Color
Depth
Comments
320x200 70,85 8,16 Ddraw, SW D3D only, No Desktop Support: WHQL
Requirement
320x240 60,70,75,85 8,16 Ddraw, SW D3D only, No Desktop Support: WHQL
Requirement
400x300 60,70,75,85 8,16 Ddraw, SW D3D only, No Desktop Support: WHQL
Recommended
512x384 60,70,75,85 8,16 Ddraw, SW D3D, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel, No
Desktop Support: WHQL Recommended
640x400 70,85 8,16 Ddraw, SW D3D, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel, No
Desktop Support: WHQL Requirement
640x480 60,72,75,85,100,
120,140,160
8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel(less
24,32 bit color), TV Out support: NTSC and PAL
720x400 60,72,85 8,16,24,32 VIDEO ONLY Ddraw only: Video, No Desktop
support
720x480 60,72,85 8,16,24,32 VIDEO ONLY Ddraw only: Video, No Desktop
support, WHQL Requirement
720x576 72,100 8,16,24,32 VIDEO ONLY: Ddraw only: Video, No Desktop
support, WHQL Requirement (PAL)
800x600 60,72,75,85,100,
120,140,160
8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel(less
24,32 bit color), TV OUT support: NTSC and PAL
920x768 60,75,85 8,16 Desktop, Ddraw, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel(less
24,32 bit color)
1024x768 60,70,75,85,100,
120
8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel(less
24,32 bit color)
1152x864 60,70,75,85,100,
120
8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel(less
24,32 bit color)
1280x960 60,75,85 8,16 Desktop, Ddraw, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel(less
24,32 bit color)
1280x1024 60,75,85,100 8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel(less
24,32 bit color)
1600x1024 60,76,85 8,16,24,32 16x10 Aspect Ratio
1600x1200 60,65,70,75,80,
85,100
8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw, D3D, Glide, OGL HW Accel(less
24,32 bit color)
1792x1344 60,75 8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw
1856x1392 60,75 8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw
1920x1080 60,72,75,85 8,16,24,32 16x9 Aspect Ratio
1920x1200 60,76,85 8,16,24,32 16x10 Aspect Ratio
1920x1440 60,75 8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw
2046x1536 60,75 8,16,24,32 Desktop, Ddraw, 75Hz and 85Hz (Voodoo3 3000
only with 350MHz RAMDAC)
•Note: All refresh rates supported by Voodoo3 3000 unless otherwise noted.
•Note: All refresh rates greater than 85Hz will use pre-calculated GTF timings.

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Extended VGA Modes in BIOS
Resolution Vertical Frequency (Hz) Color
Depth
Frame Buffer Alignment
320x200 70 8,16,24 Banked (Windowed) + Linear
320x240 70 8,16,24 Banked + Linear
400x300 70 8,16,24 Banked + Linear
512x384 70 8,16,24 Banked + Linear
640x400 70 8,16,24 Banked + Linear
640x480 70 8,16,24 Banked + Linear
800x600 70 4,8,16,24 Banked + Linear (4bpp banked only)
1024x768 70 8,16,24 Banked + Linear
1280x1024 70 8,16,24 Banked + Linear
Software Drivers
Drivers included with this kit:
•Voodoo3 Driver Kit
•Voodoo3 DirectX Driver
•Voodoo3 Win9x 2D/3D Display Drivers
•Voodoo3 Glide 2.X Driver
•Voodoo3 Glide 3.X Driver
•Voodoo3 Control Panel
•3dfx MiniGL 1.49
•OpenGL ICD
3dfx Tools Summary
3dfx Tools make it easy to adjust and control various aspects of the system’s display and
performance. For a complete overview and guide to the 3dfx Tools available with Voodoo3
boards, please refer to Appendix 3.

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SECTION 3: About the Voodoo3 Chip
Overview
At the heart of the new Voodoo3 boards is the Voodoo3 chip. Debuted at COMDEX in
November, the much-anticipated Voodoo3 is the most advanced graphics processor
technology available in PCs today.
With 8.2 million transistors and manufactured in an advanced .25 micron CMOS process,
Voodoo3 is designed for optimal performance on both Pentium II, Pentium III, and future CPUs
from Intel, as well as the AMD K7, AMD-K6
®
-II and K6-III processors featuring 3DNow!
technology.
The latest in 3dfx Interactive’s long line of highly acclaimed 3D and 2D accelerators,
Voodoo3 provides complete compatibility with the largest library of enhanced 3D entertainment
titles available: more than 300 titles are currently available, with over 500 expected by the end of
1999. Voodoo3 is optimized for Microsoft’s Direct X application programming interface (API), as
well as other standard API’s including Glide
®
from 3dfx and OpenGL from Silicon Graphics.

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SECTION 4: Installation and Start-Up
Installing the Board
For Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0 Systems
Follow these simple steps and in just a few minutes you can easily replace your computer’s old
display card with the powerful new Voodoo3 accelerator card. The Quick Install software on the
Voodoo3 CD will analyze your computer and then open the Quick Install Guide which will lead
you through the installation process in a few simple steps and can even show you examples.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
•The On-line User’s Guide on the Voodoo3 CD is in HTML format. Your system must have
internet/web browser software installed (either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape
Navigator) to view the On-line User’s Guide.
•The “Hardware Installation” section of the On-line User’s Guide has important information
that you will need while your computer is shut down and the On-line User’s Guide is
unavailable to you. It is very important that you print this section so that you can refer to it
during the installation. Also, please watch one of the Quick Install videos to familiarize
yourself with the installation procedure before you begin.
•A simplified version of the hardware installation instructions is also included in this Quick
Install Guide along with some basic troubleshooting information in case you have any
difficulty getting your computer restarted after the installation of your new Voodoo3 card.
Quick Install Instructions:
1. Before you do anything else, start your computer normally and insert the Voodoo3 CD into
your computer’s CD-ROM drive.
If the Quick Install software does not open automatically, simply open Windows
Explorer, select your CD-ROM drive, and then double-click on the SETUP.EXE file
on the Voodoo3 CD.
2. The Quick Install software will perform a simple check of your computer’s configuration and
then it will open the On-line Quick Install Guide to Page 1.
If you see any error messages instead of the On-line Quick Install Guide, check the
Troubleshooting section in the back of this Quick Install Guide for important
information about your computer.
3. When you have read the instructions on Page 1 of the On-line Quick Install Guide, printed
the instructions on the next page that you will need during the hardware installation, and
watched the Quick Install video, then shutdown your system and proceed with the Hardware
Installation.

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AGP Connector
PCI Bus Slot Connectors
ISA Bus Slot Connectors
When your system is shutdown, open the computer and replace the old display
card with your new one. NOTE: Be sure to leave the Voodoo3 CD in your CD-ROM
drive when you shutdown the computer.
4. Use these Hardware Installation Instructions to install your new Voodoo3 accelerator card:
Hardware Installation Instructions
a. Turn off the power and open the computer’s case. Refer to the documentation for your
computer for detailed instructions on opening your computer’s case.
b. Locate the cable connecting your monitor to the current display card and disconnect it
from the card.
c. Remove the screw securing the mounting bracket of the old card and remove the old
card from your computer.
d. Locate the AGP slot for your new Voodoo3 card and install the Voodoo3 card into the
AGP slot.
e. Connect your monitor’s cable to the Monitor Connector of your Voodoo3 card.
f. Replace the computer’s cover and restart the system.
Overhead view of the expansion slots inside a computer
NOTE: Be sure to connect your monitor’s cable to the Monitor Connector of your new
Voodoo3 3000 card.
5. When you replace the old display card with your new card and restart your computer, the
Quick Install software will open the On-line Quick Install Guide to the next page, but your
system will be using the standard VGA display driver at a resolution of 640x480 with only 16
colors. Select your software installation options and press one of the buttons to finish
installing the Voodoo3 card’s display drivers and other software that may be needed to
complete the upgrade. You will then be prompted to restart your computer for the changes to

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take effect. Restart your computer and the installation of your new Voodoo3 accelerator card
is complete!
You will probably want to open the “Settings” page of the “Display Properties”
dialog box and select new display settings for your new accelerator card. If you
chose to install the 3dfx Tools software, then you will also want to open the
“Advanced Properties” dialog box and the “3dfx Tools” dialog box (located in the
Windows Control Panel) to select your 3dfx Tools options.
3dfx Tools make it easy to adjust and control various aspects of the system’s display and
performance. For a complete overview and guide to the 3dfx Tools available with Voodoo3
2000 and 3000, please refer to Appendix 3.

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SECTION 5: Testing Recommendations
Testing the Voodoo3 Board
When testing Voodoo3 2000 or 3000, we recommend you work in the highest resolution
possible. The key strengths of Voodoo3 are phenomenal graphics memory bandwidth and high
pixel fill rates. In other words, you can still achieve high frame rates at high resolutions. As an
example, when working with a Voodoo3 3000 card running on a 400MHz CPU or better, try
testing Quake II at 1024 x 768 resolution: You should expect to see well over 30 frames per
second! Leading triangle setup and pixel fill rates mean Voodoo3 will rarely be the “bottleneck”
to gaming performance in a PC system: Indeed, the faster your PC’s CPU, the more you will be
able to witness the extent of Voodoo3’s graphics power.
Voodoo3 incorporates many features to optimize the image quality of 3D content. For
example, to see the impact of Voodoo3’s per-pixel trilinear mapmaking and accurate LOD
calculations - simply look at a polygon in perspective, e.g. a floor or wall in Quake or Wiz and
move slowly forward/backward. You won’t see any mipmap bands (caused by bilinear or poor
trilinear filtering). Neither will you find aliening or sparkling (caused by inaccurate LOD), or
mipmap "popping," which is an abrupt change in sharpness or blur (per-polygon mapmaking will
cause this).
Cures to common benchmarking and image quality issues
•Be sure to use the New MiniGL drivers that are on the CD.
•When testing Quake II, go to the video options and turn off 8-bit textures. This
removes banding when viewing the sky by allowing the game to use the higher quality
16-bit textures.
•Prior to testing frame rates, ensure that vsync is disabled. Before you do any frame
rate testing make sure that vsync is disabled. You can do this by downloading
PowerStrip from http://www.entechtaiwan.com/ps.htm or by adding the following to
your autoexec for opengl/glide: SET FX_GLIDE_SWAPINTERVAL=0
•For D3D, you will need to edit the registry and enter a new string value under
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\xxxx\D3D]
(xxxx will be 0000, 0001 or higher) SSTH3_SWAPINTERVAL 0
•When grabbing screenshots, keep in mind 3dfx has a unique way of converting data
in the frame buffer before we send it to the screen to be displayed. As a result, we
store “unfiltered” data in the frame buffer - and the filtering is performed at scan-out on
the way to display. This improves the quality of the picture displayed on the monitor,
but doesn’t actually change the data in the frame buffer. Typically when you are
doing a frame grab, you are just grabbing data directly from the frame buffer, which is
“unfiltered” so the quality of raw images grabbed from the frame buffer is actually
lower than what is actually displayed. HyperSnap, a frame grabbing utility, actually
implements our filtering technique on their frame grabs, producing a more accurate

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representation of what the user would see on their display by actually running our filter
on the data and writing out the filtered, instead of the “raw” data. Get HyperSnap at
http://www.hyperionics.com/
•For a higher quality image, make sure you have “Use High Quality but lower
Perfromace Video” checked in the D3D/Direct Draw section of the “3dfx tweaks” page
in “3dfx tools” (see page 5 of Appendix 3 for details). It’s basically a 2x2 box filter,
which means we filter images to produce a more pleasing image by sampling and
filtering 2x2 blocks on scan-out. The reason this runs slightly slower than standard
filtering is that it consumes some additional frame buffer bandwidth to perform this,
which in frame buffer bandwidth limited applications can have a slight (a few %)
performance impact.
For a list of recommended benchmarks and expected results, see Appendix 1.

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SECTION 6: FAQ
Q. Are the Voodoo3 2000, -3000 and –3500 TV based on the same chip? What are the
differences?
A. All three boards are based on the same chip design and are pin compatible; however, each is
a different configuration. The Voodoo3 2000 operates at 143 MHz and produces 286 million
texels (megatexels) per second. The Voodoo3 3000 operates at 166 MHz and produces 333
megatexels per second, and the Voodoo3 3500 TV operates at 183MHz and produces 366
megatexels per second. Additionally, the Voodoo3 3500 TV includes multimedia, TV tuner and
FM stereo capabilities.
Q. At Comdex, you introduced Voodoo3 as a 125MHz chip and a 183MHz chip. Why the
change?
A. When we put Voodoo3 into production, three things happened which we think are very
exciting for consumers and hard-core gamers.
First, we discovered that we could beat our projected internal clock rate of our entry-level chip,
so we decided to power the Voodoo3 2000 with a faster 143MHz chip. This still is offered under
the price point we had pegged for the 125MHz chip, so it’s a real bonus for consumers.
Second, we were able to yield excellent performance from a 166MHz version of the chip, so it
made sense to make that the heart of the Voodoo3 3000, the high-end mainstream product. The
Voodoo3 3000 offers industry-leading performance for the vast majority of game enthusiasts,
and promises to be an enormously popular product for us. We think consumers will agree that
it’s a tremendous value and very powerful graphics accelerator.
Third, we discovered that the 183MHz chip again yields performance that exceeds even our
expectations. Based on the relative performance of this chip versus the other Voodoo3 chips
(not to mention the technology available from our competitors), it was clear that this processor
was an ideal engine to drive the Voodoo3 3500 TV product. The 3500 TV is an ideal product for
hard-core gamers and multimedia enthusiasts.
Q. When will 3dfx offer AGP 4X?
A. We’ve announced that a 4X member of the Voodoo3 family will be available to our OEM
partners in time to intercept the debut of AGP 4X in the market. The AGP 4X member of the
Voodoo3 family is timed to ship with the high-volume ramp of the first 4X AGP chipsets.
Q. Why doesn’t 3dfx offer 32-bit rendering?
A. The answer is frame rate. Our internal rendering calculations are done at 32-bits but, as our
press release has explained, we focus on achieving the highest frame rate possible to provide
the best possible content experience. This means that we’ve chosen to limit our frame buffer
format, which is the external data storage format, to 16 bits per pixel. The visual difference in an
individual frame is imperceptible, but the frame rate, the number of frames that we can render
per second, is dramatically increased. We believe frame rate is the single most important
feature for end users and should not be compromised for imperceptible increases in the
graphics display. (For additional information on this topic, please refer to the Frame Rates white
paper we are publishing in February 1999.)

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Q. Does Voodoo3 support texture compression?
A. Yes, Voodoo3 supports 3dfx’s “narrow channel compression” or NCC, a texture compression
format that we’ve used since the original Voodoo Graphics. Developers favor NCC because
visually, it is virtually lossless, meaning that you can’t really see the difference between a
compressed texture and a non-compressed texture.
Q. Does Voodoo3 support anisotropic filtering?
A. When we launched at Comdex ‘98, this was primarily a software feature that we decided not
to productize after having reviewed the resulting image quality.
Q. Does Voodoo3 support full scene anti-aliasing?
A. This is primarily a software feature that is currently under review.
Q. Can you use Voodoo3 in SLI mode?
A. No.
Q. With the introduction of Voodoo3, will there be any revisions made to Glide?
A. We use Glide to tie together all of our hardware offerings with a common API. Glide 3.0 has
recently been released and Voodoo3 is fully compatible with Glide 3.0. Voodoo3 is also
backward compatible with the older Glide 2.X API.
Q. Will Glide be updated prior to the release of Voodoo3?
There will be unique Glide drivers for Voodoo3; however, the core Glide functionality and
programming interface will be unchanged for Voodoo3.
Q. Is Voodoo3 faster than Voodoo2 SLI? If so, how much faster?
A. Yes, the Voodoo3 3000 is faster than two Voodoo2 boards used together in the SLI
configuration. In terms of raw texture rate, the Voodoo3 3500 TV provides 366 million texels per
second versus 360 million for the Voodoo2 SLI, but that’s just the beginning of the story.
Efficiencies stemming from Voodoo3’s single graphics and texture frame buffer, as opposed to
the separate graphics and texture memories used by the Voodoo2, will produce further 3D-
performance improvements.
Q. Does Voodoo3 have any special support for AMD’s K6-II, K6-III and 3DNow!
instructions?
A. We have worked diligently with AMD to ensure that our drivers for Voodoo3, as well as
drivers for Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo2, will get the maximum benefit from the 3DNow!
instruction set.

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Q. Are you providing optimizations for Pentium III? How about optimizations for
Pentium II?
A. Collaborating with Intel, we have optimized current and future Voodoo products for the
Pentium III processor, enabling consumers to enjoy greater levels of realism in their games and
entertainment content. All of the application programming interfaces (APIs) supported by
Voodoo3 – including Microsoft’s Direct X6, Glide from 3dfx and OpenGL from Silicon Graphics –
have been optimized for the Pentium III processor. As a result, content developers can
incorporate more intricate models and scenes, and apply significantly greater realism to the
movements of characters and objects.
As for Pentium II, we introduced a patent with Voodoo Banshee to directly handle out-of-order
commands from the Pentium II so that there are no CPU stalls. This hardware optimization
results in as much as a 20 percent performance improvement.

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SECTION 7: Glossary of 3D Terms
Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)
An expansion bus developed by Intel specifically for the video card subsystem. It operates independent of the PCI
bus and normally runs at 66MHz (i.e., 1x). Whenever you see multipliers attached to AGP, such as 2x or 4x, they
are referring to how much faster the bus will run--2x means 66MHz x 2, or 133MHz.
Alpha Blending
The most common and one of the most important methods of blending 3D accelerated games. Used primarily to
create visual effects like transparency (water or glass), translucency (artifacts that partially obscure objects, such as
smoke, clouds or explosions), lensflare and reflections.
Anti-Aliasing
Techniques for eliminating the stair-step jaggies on lines and edges. Makes edges smooth and realistic.
Application Programming Interface (API)
The software-to-hardware interface that makes your game run 3D.
Bi-Linear Filtering
Blends the colors together for a smoother appearance. As you walk toward a wall in a game, bi-linear filtering
smoothes it out. In the software version, the textures would become chunky.
Bump Mapping
Bump mapping gives an object a rough, textured appearance. As light passes over this texture, different shadows
and reflections appear across the surface, which shift according to the light’s movements and placement. For
example, viewing a rug from a distance, the rug looks smooth. But were you to look closely, you would notice
ridges and bumps, crevasses and shadows.
Chipset
Refers to the key components of silicon that drive the graphics of your game. Another way of referring to the
Voodoo Graphics, Voodoo Rush, Voodoo2, Voodoo Banshee or Voodoo3 cards.
Environment Mapping
The process of applying a reflection of the surrounding environment to a model. For example, in Ultimate R@ce
Pro, environment mapping is used to reflect the cloud in the car’s rear window.
Frames Per Second
The number of times the monitor draws a screen. Often mistakenly referred to the speed of the game. It actually
refers to the smoothness with which a game runs.
Frame Buffer
The memory used to hold pixels. Voodoo2 cards can have either 2MB of frame buffer or 4MB. The more memory in
the frame buffer, the larger the size of the resolution you are able to display on the screen.
Fill Rate
How fast a system can place pixels on the screen. A Voodoo2 card is capable of displaying up to 90 million pixels
per second.
Level of Detail (LOD)
The difference in textures when objects are at different distances or scales. LOD varies the detail of a texture
according to the distance.

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MIP Map
A pyramidal organization of gradually smaller, filtered subtextures or an individual texture map within the set. For
example, to simulate a plane approaching, an artist would draw one small plane for the distant view, a series of the
same object, and end in a large, highly detailed plane. MIP mapping swaps in the different-sized objects to simulate
the movement towards you.
Multi-Texture
Method of combining two different textures to create special effects (projected textures, detail textures). It is unique
in that it can combine textures with no performance penalties due to the Voodoo architecture’s second texture
memory unit.
Texture Mapping
The process of applying a texture to a triangle.
Tri-Linear Filtering
A higher quality texture filtering technique than bi-linear. Voodoo2 can perform this at full speed.
W-Buffering
A much more precise way than Z-buffering of storing depth values to reduce the amount of pixels drawn on a
screen. Voodoo2 is one of the very few architectures that can process W-buffering, allowing it to run at full speed
while others are forced to slow down for similar levels of accuracy.
Z-Buffering
Removing polygons from a scene that aren’t visible to improve performance. By using Z-Buffering, the computer
checks each object’s value, then doesn’t have to draw it if it’s hidden from the camera viewpoint.
SECTION 8: Contacts
Brian Burke, Public Relations Manager
972-234-8750, ext. 2113
[email protected]
PT Barnum, Field Applications Engineer
972-234-8750, ext. 2226
[email protected]