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Number Nine Introduces New 3D Chip Set

New graphics chip set offers top-rated 2D plus high performance 3D graphics.

By Lisa Moskowitz, PCWorld   

Enter Number Nine, which on Tuesday announced the new Ticket to Ride IV chip. This chip will be sold to OEMs and featured on Number Nine%squots own boards. A preliminary demonstration of Ticket to Ride IV%squots technology at our offices showed highly competitive 3D features, plus the high-level 2D performance for which Number Nine is known--and the price is right.

Previously plagued with high price points that keep them out of the mainstream consumer market, Number Nine is working on plans to install the Ticket to Ride IV chip on an 8MB board that will sell for less than $200, said Phil Parker, a Number Nine spokesperson. This brings Number Nine%squots pricing in line with its competition, like Matrox, 3Dfx, and Diamond Multimedia. Plans for a 4MB and a 16MB board are also in the works.

The Ticket to Ride IV supports AGP2X, which means graphics are transferred from the board to the CPU via an AGP bus at up to 533 megabytes per second. It supports WRAM and up to 32MB of SGRAM. It uses two separate 128-bit graphics engines, one for 2D and one for 3D and video, to speed up rendition. High precision Z-buffering will improve 3D imaging by reducing texture seams. The new chip also supports true-color resolutions of up to 1920 by 1200, so graphics will retain their quality on big monitors. DirectX 5.0 and 6.0, Direct3D, and OpenGL are all supported.

If the new chip set is all Number Nine says that it is, you can expect a vast performance improvement in the new boards over the previous generation. For a brief review of the Revolution 3D, which used the last Ticket to Ride chip and didn%squott make the Top 10 graphics board chart, see the April 1998 issue (link to right).

The Ticket to Ride IV chip is expected to ship this quarter.