Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/401
Introduction
3dfx considers themselves to be the performance leader in the market. In fact, they feel that they’ve always led the market and will continue to do so in the future. Their Voodoo3 3500 offered the highest fillrate at the time of release, and maintained its lead until the release of NVIDIA’s GeForce 256.
But selling really expensive, high performance cards is not the best way to garner large market share or serious volume shipments. And volume means profit – the goal of any business and the only way to stay alive in the tough technology market. OEM’s are where the volume is at, and 3dfx’s merger with STB opened up a whole boatload of connections to OEM manufacturers with whom STB was very close. However, while it is nice to be the performance leader, OEM’s are driven by the price/performance ratio of a product. The Voodoo3 would be just fine for an OEM’s high-end system, but there’s even more volume on the low end. 3dfx’s answer?
On July 26, 1999, 3dfx quietly announced the Velocity line of cards, borrowing the name STB previously used for their top of the line NVIDIA products. In this press release, very little information was given out regarding the chipset used or performance potential, but there was a clear emphasis that the Velocity was for business users. There was speculation that this was perhaps a "cut-down" Voodoo3 or even a revival of the Banshee, but nothing was certain and 3dfx was not particularly interested in talking about the Velocity.
AnandTech recently received a Velocity 100 sample for evaluation – it’s time to dig in and find out what the real deal is with this card. Do we have a great card for business users and the casual gamer alike, or is this just a quick and dirty attempt by 3dfx to garner OEM market share by rebadging older technology?
Specifications
- Integrated 128-Bit 2D, 3D and video accelerator
- 8MB high-speed SGRAM memory
- AGP 2X - No AGP Texturing
- Single Pass, SingleCycle Multi-Texturing
- 300 MHz RAMDAC
- 2D Resolutions as high as 2046x1536
- 3D Resolutions as high as 1600x1200
- DVD Hardware Assist
- AMD 3D NOW! and Pentium SSE Optimizations
- Legacy Support for Windows 3.11, Windows NT 3.51 and OS/
- 128-bit 2D Accelerator
- 300 MHz RAMDAC for flicker free display
- 2D Resolutions of up to 2046x1536
- Microsoft WHQL Certified
- Optimized Direct 3D accleration
- Optimized OpenGL Support
- Designed for Glide 3.0 acceleration
- Complete DirectX 5.0 and DirectX 6.0 support
- 100% hardware triangle setup
- 32-bit internal graphics pipline
- 2 texture-mapped, lit pixels per clock
- Single pass multi-texturing support (DirectX 6.0 and OpenGL)
- Square and non-square texture support
- TextureBlend support
- Point-Sampled, Bilinear, Trilinear Mip-mapping
- Multi-texture
- Bump Map
- Texture modulation
- Light maps
- Reflection maps
- Detail textures
- Environment maps
- Procedural textures
- Per-pixel perspective-correct texture mapping
- Fog: Exponential Fog Table
- 16-bit floating point depth buffer
- 8-bit palletized textures
Reading over the specs on the Velocity 100 on the 3dfx website, it sounds like the Velocity is a Voodoo3 2000 with just 8MB of RAM. Everything else seems to be complete – a full 128-bit memory bus, single pass multitexturing, AGP 2x support, and even a 300 MHz RAMDAC. Note that Voodoo3 3000/3500 products do feature a 350 MHz RAMDAC, but this only comes into play at the very highest of resolutions and will not affect most users.
It’s interesting to note that RAM is SGRAM instead of the SDRAM used on the rest of the Voodoo3 line. SGRAM is, in fact, faster and more expensive than SDRAM, but was likely chosen to maintain the 128-bit memory bus with just 8MB of memory.
Exploring the Velocity
Once the Velocity arrived in the AnandTech labs, we were able to probe more carefully into its abilities and features. Although Voodoo3 drivers did not recognize it as a Voodoo3, although Powerstrip did detect it as such. Upon closer inspection, the drivers on the CD all use the same filenames as the "real" Voodoo3, but contain strings specifying their use for Velocity cards. We explored further still and found that as long as the .inf file from the Velocity was used, we could get Voodoo3 drivers to work on the Velocity. So far, it sounds a lot like the Velocity is a Voodoo3 in disguise. As noted above, the latest version of Powerstrip detected the Velocity as a Voodoo3. The clock speed was reported as 143 MHz, just like the Voodoo3 2000.
The first sign that something was up came in Quake 3, where the driver info tab identified the card as a Voodoo Banshee with 1 TMU (Texture Mapping Unit). But the spec sheets claim single pass multitexturing as a feature of the Velocity. Further, while Quake 3 scores suggested that just 1 TMU was in use, Expendable scores were equal to or even higher than a Voodoo3 2000 in some cases. We’ve seen in the past that Expendable is definitely capable of taking advantage of multitexturing, so we cannot attribute this to the Velocity only having 1 TMU.
We wrote 3dfx inquiring about what was going on here. They let us know that the Velocity does in fact have 2 TMU’s, just like the Voodoo3, but that it is disabled in OpenGL/Glide for "memory management purposes."
Floating around the web and the newsgroups is a registry key that can enable the second TMU. If you’re comfortable editing the registry, simply go under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0000\Glide
And add the value
FX_GLIDE_NUM_TMU
And set it equal to 2.
Perhaps it was disabled for memory management purposes, but AnandTech observed no ill effects with it enabled – just a healthy performance increase in OpenGL and Glide apps, bringing it right up to par with the Voodoo3 2000.
So for all intents and purposes, the Velocity does use a Voodoo3 chipset combined with slightly modified drivers that disable one TMU under OpenGL and Glide. The only real disadvantage to the Velocity is that the memory is cut from 16MB on the "real" Voodoo3 down to 8MB on the Velocity.
The Card
The Velocity 100 is a bit smaller then the Voodoo3 2000/3000 cards, but not much. However, the layout is considerably cleaner than those cards, primarily because it offers no option for TV-out.
The heatsink is identical to the one used on the Voodoo3 2000. However, at least in this case, it’s attached less than optimally, using thermal glue that is not applied properly, leaving a large gap between the heatsink and the chip.
Our sample featured four 6ns 2MB SGRAM chips from Siemens. It’s interesting to note that 6ns RAM is designed to run at 166 MHz, despite the fact that the Velocity only runs it at 143 MHz. This of course practically begs you to overclock the card. All Voodoo3 series cards, including the Velocity, run the memory and core clocks synchronously (ie they cannot be set independently).
Our sample would run at 166/166 with just a few visual anomolies, while 160/160 was completely stable. Since the memory is designed for 166 MHz operation, 166 for the core is either causing the chip to overheat or we’ve reached the limit of our particular sample. We’ve already noted that the heatsink is not particularly well mounted; it appears that it’s overheating. With some additional cooling, 166/166 operation should easily be attainable. Note that SGRAM has traditionally not overclocked particularly well, so going significantly beyond 166/166 is not likely to happen.
As always, overclocking results will vary from card to card.
Drivers
As mentioned above, the drivers for the Velocity appear to be very closely based on those of the Voodoo3. That means a full OpenGL ICD is included for Windows 9x and NT 4.0, full DirectX/Direct3D support for Windows 9x, and, exclusive to 3dfx, Glide support under Windows 9x and NT. Fortunately for users of non-3dfx cards, but unfortunately for 3dfx themselves, the need for Glide has been diminishing greatly in recent times.
While the Voodoo3 drivers would not work directly on the Velocity, all the filenames were the same. To modify the Voodoo3 drivers to work on the Velocity, we simply had to use the Velocity’s .inf file with the Voodoo3 drivers. There was no performance difference between the drivers on the Velocity CD and the latest from the 3dfx website. It’s nice to know, however, that the Velocity should be able to use Voodoo3 drivers in the future if 3dfx ever stops supporting the card.
The driver CD also included the same 3dfx Tools that came with the Voodoo3, with one minor change – the Velocity logo is now in place. Screenshots of these tools are shown below. Notice how the information tab does actually give a fair amount of information about the card. Also important to note is the fact that there is no option for disabling vsync directly in the drivers – a third party utility, such as Powerstrip, will be necessary for this task.
Image Quality
Image quality in 2D and 3D is identical to the Voodoo3 2000. That means 2D output is excellent, easily running up to 1600x1200 without any problems. The 300 MHz RAMDAC keeps refresh rates at 75 Hz or high until you exceed 1920x1440. However, 3D image quality is not quite as good. 3dfx has yet to implement a chip that supports 32-bit rendering or texture sizes greater than 256x256. Granted, 3dfx has arguably the best 16-bit rendering out there using the latest set of drivers, but it’s still not as good as other cards’ 32-bit.
The Test
Windows 98 SE Test System |
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Hardware |
||
CPU(s) |
Intel Pentium III 450 |
AMD K6-2 450 |
Motherboard | ABIT BH6 | Epox MVP3G-2 |
Memory |
128MB PC133 Corsair SDRAM |
|
Hard Drive |
Western Digital 8.4GB AC28400 UDMA/33 |
|
CDROM |
Kenwood 40X TrueX |
|
Video Cards |
3dfx Velocity 100 8MB SGRAM
(default clock - 143/143) |
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Software |
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Operating System |
Windows 98 SE |
|
Video Drivers |
Matrox Millenium G400 5.25 with
Beta TurboGL |
|
Benchmarking Applications |
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2D Graphics |
ZDBop
Graphics Winbench 99
|
|
Gaming |
id Software Quake 3 Test 1.08
(OpenGL) |
Pentium III 450 OpenGL Performance
Celeron 450A OpenGL Performance
Celeron 300A OpenGL Performance
AMD K6-2 450 OpenGL Performance
Pentium III 450 Direct3D Performance
Celeron 450A Direct3D Performance
Celeron 300A Direct3D Performance
AMD K6-2/450 Direct3D Performance
2D Graphics Winbench 99
Performance Analysis
Notice that with its second TMU enabled, the Velocity 100 performs virtually identically to the Voodoo3 2000 under both Quake3 and Expendable. This similarity is despite the fact that the Velocity 100 only has 8MB of RAM and, like the rest of the Voodoo3 series, does not support AGP texturing.
Without the second TMU enabled for OpenGL and Glide apps, which is the default setting for the Velocity 100, Quake3 takes a major performance hit at all resolutions. This is not unexpected, as it is the same result we observed over a year ago when 3dfx introduced the single TMU Banshee.
Although 3dfx claims they have implemented all Windows GDI calls in hardware for all chips since the Banshee, which should give extremely fast 2D performance, the NVIDIA chips manage to come out ahead in Graphics Winbench 99. Further, the Velocity 100 has appeared to match the Voodoo3 2000 in every benchmark so far, but falls about 33% behind in Graphics Winbench 99, despite the fact that the Velocity features SGRAM memory, which is theoretically faster. The only plausible explanation is that the Velocity is limited by its 8MB of RAM. Note that in normal use, it would be nearly impossible to differentiate between the cards based on 2D performance differences. We have reached a level now where 2D performance is not a bottleneck in the system at all.
Conclusion
We weren’t sure what to expect with the Velocity 100 as its specifications and press release from 3dfx were somewhat vague. What we found was essentially a Voodoo3 2000 with only 8MB of RAM. The second TMU has been disabled by 3dfx under OpenGL/Glide for "memory management purposes," but we saw no disadvantage to enabling it via the registry key mentioned earlier.
With both TMU’s pumping out pixels, the Velocity 100 also performs identically to the Voodoo3 2000 in nearly all situations. Further, with a bit more cooling, our sample card would have overclocked to 166/166, putting it right in the Voodoo3 3000 range.
With its lack of AGP texturing support, the Velocity may fall behind as future games begin using more textures. Then again, we’ve been saying that since the dawn of AGP.
With all this in mind, the Velocity 100 makes an excellent budget alternative to the Voodoo3 2000. The performance is virtually identical, but the Velocity is about 1/3rd cheaper, currently hovering around $50. It has all the advantages, and shortcomings, of the Voodoo3 line. If you’ve wanted a Voodoo3, but couldn’t afford it, the Velocity is your answer.