Friday, November 19, 1999

The Reverend on Voodoo4/5 -- 9:02 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Reverend has put up a sweet article on the hubbub at Comdex over 3dfx' recently announced Voodoo4/5 3D accelerators. The article is the most balanced I've seen from Comdex (so many others read like 3dfx marketing material, which it very well may be). Here's his take on the chip's lack of hardware T&L:

The way 3dfx have sounded off, it doesn't look like the Voodoo4/Voodoo5 is/are what gamers would keep for any substantial length of time. If any company is serious about a product of theirs', they should intend for that particular product to last any prospective consumer a reasonably long time. "By the time T&L games are a dime a dozen, we and most others would have a T&L card out by then" just doesn't cut it - I intend my money spent to be of a certain value for a certain length of time. And to play the the very latest of games without the itch to get another card that has a feature which a game will benefit from.

He makes one comment in an update dated today that I would like to comment on:

With all these, the USD$600 asking price for the Voodoo5 6000AGP just doesn't look so steep after all if you just judge it on feature and component value. I mean, for memory alone, how much does 128MB cost now? Get my point?

Point taken. The question is, how many people will really want to drop $600 (more than a number of whole systems are going for today) for a video card? It's one thing to be the fastest (and the 6000 undoubtably will be), but what does it matter if no one can afford it?

One marketing statement that gets blown up right away is the comment that every game will work with the Voodoo5's full-scene anti-aliasing and other T-Buffer tricks right out of the box. Reverend comments:

Whichever the mode [2x or 4x anti-aliasing], the uncertainty is whether it will work well in ALL games. It won't. It will be great in some and not others . . . It is all just very game dependent.

Reverend concludes his article with the most insightful comment of them all: "It all looks good. On paper." That's a key point. Ignore the marketing hype which is 50% exaggeration and 50% bold-faced lie (not just 3dfx, ANY marketing). Wait for the benchmarks, which never lie.

News for 11/19/1999

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