Introduction

Not too much exiting is going on in the PC market right now, which gives me the chance to try and have an overview about what could and should be happening now or in the close future.

Delays, Delays, Delays, ...

What should be new in the PC graphics market? Well, there's a lot of companies we can talk about, but most of all is pure rumors. The first 3D-chip maker I'm thinking of is 3DLabs. Permedia 3 was announced ages ago and this possible super-chip with three 3D rendering pipelines, running at 125 MHz chip as well as memory clock has been highly anticipated last year. Now we already start forgetting about it. So let me ask the open question, what is the deal with Permedia 3, will it ever exist? ATI is another company that was delaying its chip, at least for the retail market. Apple is happily equipping the G3-machines with Rage 128 already for a while and PC OEMs are receiving Rage 128 shipments right now, so that you can soon buy PC systems with the new ATI chip. ATI just published their numbers from last year, showing that they now rule about 40% of the PC graphics market. The ATI stock has reached new dimensions and this is particularly due to their extreme success in the OEM business. It's certainly true that ATI doesn't have too much of a reason to worry about 1999. As a matter of fact they will most likely continue being the most successful graphics chip/card maker even if Rage 128 is only halfway decent. 3DLabs can not afford any further delay though, most people don't even remember Permedia 2 anymore. That chip's from 1997, isn't it? The only two 3D-chip makers that seem to be on track are 3Dfx and NVIDIA. NVIDIA's will soon ship first samples of TNT2 and I am expecting a fast chip. TNT2 is promised for end Q1/1999 and it looks as if it will be just on time. 3Dfx provides another very interesting story. Since they acquired STB they have the best chance getting into the league of ATI and Matrox, the same league 3DLabs are trying to get into as well. But this acquisition of STB raises a lot of tough questions. Will STB delivering Voodoo3 based cards exclusively? What will happen to Quantum3D? So far Quantum3D has only provided graphics solutions with 3Dfx chips, so one is wondering if they will still get those chips in the future. What impact will this story have on Diamond and Creative? Creative's position is still very good, after all they've got mega-sellers like the SoundBlaster cards, but Diamonds sales have been depending a lot on cards like the Monster or the Monster II. Diamond can only hope that Rio will be successful, otherwise they may be in trouble. Rumor has it that NVIDIA is finally going IPO next week, which could supply them with the cash, needed to also acquire a 3D-card maker. Everyone in the graphics business knows that combined 3D chip and card manufacturing is the way to go, I only wonder which company is going to be the one that NVIDIA could buy. What's going on with Matrox? G200 was a good chip and it's still offering the best 2D quality out there, but unfortunately it is too slow at 3D in comparison to Banshee, TNT or even Savage3D. Matrox deserves another praise for their highly excellent Marvel G200, the perfect card for mainstream video-editing. They have kept a very low profile in the last 6 months, but at least there wasn't any promise of a new wonder-chip, which finally turns out being seriously delayed as in case of 3DLabs and ATI.

Which Upcoming 3D Chip Do You Want?

Which 3D chips are most anticipated right now? No.1 is probably 3Dfx's Voodoo3. This chip will be very fast, although it's not offering any big miracles. Rendering 366 Mpixels/s with two pipelines at 183 MHz is not surprising, TNT(2) or Rage 128 could do the same if they should be running at that high clock speed. Everybody knows that Voodoo3 is lacking 32-bit color rendering support, something that 3Dfx is calling 'frame rate killer'. ATI's trick (some call it cheat ..?) of using only a 16-bit deep Z-buffer when rendering at 32-bit color shows however that there are ways of providing true color rendering without a big frame rate drop. TNT2 is another chip that could rock the boat. So far it's not quite clear what clock it will be running at, but the closer it will get to Voodoo3's 183 MHz, the closer its performance is going to be at Voodoo3's level too. The other upcoming chip from NVIDIA, code name 'NV10' will be a real 3D-Monster, but we'll have to see if it will indeed ship in early Q3/1999. ATI's Rage 128 could be an interesting 3D-solution for a short while at least, since it's performance is a tiny bit higher than what TNT is offering right now. ATI will have to come across with a faster solution very soon though, unless they want to look bad against NVIDIA's upcoming TNT2. S3 may actually get a real comeback with their next generation chip after Savage3D and Savage3D-2, a chip with four rendering pipelines running at a very high clock. It would not surprise me if that should happen, since Savage3D was already a pretty good performer that could have been a lot more successful if S3 wouldn't have made a few mistakes in the beginning. I guess that S3 really deserves a come back by now, they've suffered for their mistakes long enough. Then there is Permedia3, in case it should ever appear. It could offer very good performance especially in very new and complex games, but let's see about that. Matrox is the only 3D-chip-company that's very quiet, but who knows, maybe the G300 or G400 are closer than we think.

Pentium 3 Blurb

Finally the word is out now, and I have to say that it makes me happy to see that nobody less than my friend Dennis 'Thresh' Fong was the one to publish the first real Pentium-III-numbers on the Internet. This gets me out of a difficult situation, since I am only bound to a NDA as long as the subject of that NDA is not public knowledge. Now Pentium III performance is public knowledge and I can talk about it too. Thanks Dennis! After you read the Pentium III article at Thresh's FiringSquad , I'd like to add my own comments. I see the story around Pentium III a bit different. This new Intel CPU is not offering any noticeable improvement over Pentium II in any of today's software, it has only got the advantage of its new clock speed of 500 MHz. Game developers state that software, which uses the new 'streaming SIMD instructions', is showing a performance improvement of 10-15 %, which is not exactly a lot. We should also not forget that this software may not run faster on Pentium III CPUs, but only offer some nice visual enhancements instead. I am e.g. thinking of four shadows instead of one shadow as in case of Rage's Expendable. To cut a long story (which you will get in form of my very own Pentium III-review) short, the Pentium III release reminds me big time of the Pentium II release. Pentium II did also not show more of a real world enhancement over Pentium Pro than a higher clock speed and MMX. Can you still remember what MMX was good for? Maybe you can understand now, why I am saying that there's nothing exciting happening in the PC-hardware business currently. Pentium III is certainly not an overly exiting product and I wonder if a few fancy 3D games will be enough to push the sales of that CPU once it's out on February 26. One little note to Dennis' comment about the heat of Pentium III: The core voltage of Pentium III is 1.8 V, not 2V and many boards can not supply this new lower voltage, including the oh-so-wonderful BH6 from Abit (although it claims it does in the SoftMenu2). Thus Pentium III ran at 11% too high voltage already, which explains its high temperature, and running it at 2.2V for overclocking means an 'over-voltage' of no less than 0.4 V!

Please don't forget sending me suggestions for my next Monday Blurb!