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Voodoo3 Boards: 3D Lightning

Two new 2D/3D boards from 3dfx set performance records with 3D games.

By Grace Aquino, PCWorld   

The latest generation of graphics boards is here, and our tests show these boards to be the fastest 3D-games performers we've ever tested. We looked at two new AGP boards from 3dfx: the $130 Voodoo3 2000 and the $180 Voodoo3 3000. While we will rank them against our other top boards for gamers soon, we thought we'd give you a sneak peek right now.

Overall, the boards earn high marks: They're blindingly fast with 3D games, and they support fast refresh rates at high resolutions. It seems, though, that the drivers of these first shipping products need some work if 3D image quality is to improve.

Blazing 3D Performance

In our tests, both the Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 delivered top speeds, spitting out the fastest Quake II frame rates we've ever seen: 78 and 79 frames per second, respectively. These results are more than a third faster than the speeds of boards that set our previous AGP records. The Voodoo3 3000, with its 166-MHz bus, showed only a slight edge in the games we use for testing (Flight Unlimited II, Quake II, Redline Racer, and Turok) over the 143-MHz Voodoo3 2000--but the pricier Voodoo3 3000 has some other advantages.

Like most boards (using either S3's Savage4 chip set or NVidia's TNT2) due to hit stores shelves, the 3dfx models offer a 100-Hz refresh rate at a resolution of 1600 by 1200--more than enough to reduce the perception of flicker for most people. And if you have a large monitor that supports 2046-by-1536 resolution, these boards can refresh your monitor at a comfortable 85-Hz setting. A caveat: Your monitor must also be able to support these high refresh rates, or the graphics board will have to shift to a lower rate to match the monitor.

Aside from the higher clock speed, you'll get some nice extras with the Voodoo3 3000 that are missing on its lower-priced sibling: a 3D-games bundle that includes GT Interactive's Unreal and Need for Speed 3, along with a video-out port for playing games on a television. Both models come with 16MB of SDRAM, as well as support for 2X AGP technology and 16-bit color. (Most soon-to-be released models using the Savage4 or TNT2 chip sets will support 32-bit color.)

Better Drivers Wanted

But the news about these 3dfx boards isn't all rosy. In our gaming tests, graphics quality was uneven in some scenes and objects. In Quake II, for instance, the boards displayed beautiful transparency effects, but scenes were a little too dark and colors were faded. As with other graphics boards, these kinds of glitches may be corrected with later driver versions you'll find on the vendor's Web site.

As with most 2D/3D boards, you won't see a dramatic improvement in 2D performance--especially in basic office applications such as PowerPoint or Word.

Overall, these 3dfx boards are worth considering if you need support for higher monitor resolutions and an accelerated 3D-gaming experience. But until driver improvements come along, you'll occasionally bump into less-than-pleasing 3D images.