As expected,
3dfx has officially
announced their new products, including the Voodoo 4 and 5, both of which
utilize their new VSA-100 chipset. There are full details
in
the press release and their newly updated
website about
specific products (which range from low end Voodoo 4 cards, all the way up to
a 128 MB Voodoo 5) and their new technology, but here's a quick rundown of features of the new chip:
At
the heart of the VSA-100 is a new advanced 3D engine which enables extremely
high fill rates. Sustaining high fill rate is critical to deliver real-time
frame rates at high resolution, with significant depth complexity, digital effects
and the highest visual quality. For the consumer market, products based on the
VSA-100 deliver from 333 megatexels/megapixels per second up to 1.47 gigatexels/gigapixels
per second fill rates using 16-128 MB of video memory and one to four processors
per board. In the professional market, Quantum3D will manufacturer systems that
will utilize eight to thirty-two VSA-100 processors and 128 MB to two gigabytes
of video memory to attain fill rates greater than three gigatexels/gigapixels
per second in their Alchemy product line.
The VSA-100, composed of over 14 million transistors, is fabricated in an enhanced
.25 micron, 6-layer metal semiconductor process. The architecture incorporates
industry standard 3D features including 32-bit RGBA rendering, 24-bit depth-buffer
(Z and W), 8-bit stencil rendering, DXTC and FXT1 texture compression support,
32-bit textures, 2048x2048 texture size support, and advanced texture and color
combine capabilities. Additional support is provided for both AGP 4x and PCI,
DVD hardware assist, and the worlds most powerful 128-bit 2D engine. All
VSA-100-based products include support for all major APIs including DirectX®,
OpenGL® and GLIDE® providing the highest possible software compatibility.
The VSA-100 is designed for optimal performance on current and future CPUs from
Intel and AMD.