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Banshee vs. TNT
Going for the 2D/3D Crown
No company, in recent years, has served more to revolutionize PC gaming than 3Dfx. No name has become more synonymous to the concept, no name ever spoken in the same breath as the 'King'. Yet in recent months, 3Dfx's "throne" has been seriously challenged, as PC gaming transitioned from the elite few who can afford Voodoo2, to a new generation of low cost 2D/3D graphics accelerators.
Before 3Dfx came to the scene, PC gaming was often quite laughable compared to arcade machines and even against a new breed of 32 bit game consoles. Early 3D accelerators like the ATI Rage and the S3 Virge were jokingly called 'Decelerators', since it often was the case that software based 3D rendering proved faster than the hardware 'acceleration' in these cards. It wasn't that 3D technology wasn't available. There was. But the PC market has become very price conscious, and nobody dared to see the prospects of a costly, dedicated 3D processor made just for games to be a commercially feasible idea, especially when such a card alone could cost more than two game consoles. It was such a daring concept that even now---even when 3Dfx has more than proven its point many times over---no one other than 3Dfx ever dare to release a high end dedicated 3D gaming board.
The ground breaking Voodoo isn't revolutionary in the technological sense, with 3D technology already commercially present in expensive workstations or professional graphics adapters. But the marketing and product placement was truly bold. To ever think there would be people who would spend so much money on a 3D processor just for games. In fact, if memory prices had remained higher, 3Dfx would have failed. Because of the drop of memory prices, the Voodoo is still expensive, but the low memory pricing allows for enough of a price drop for some hardcore gamers to reach out and buy one. The original Voodoo is now history, and the Voodoo2 now reigns in its place. With its SLI mode (the infamous dual Voodoo2 setup), 3Dfx takes PC gaming to untraveled heights and absurd monetary commitments---a single Voodoo2 adapter isn't cheap, and this one takes two to tango. But this one is a true 3Dfx hallmark---being cutting edge to the point of insanity.
Even with all of the commercial success that 3Dfx has enjoyed with the Voodoo and Voodoo 2, these chipsets are limited by a pretty important fact.... They support 3D rendering *only*. A separate 2D video card must be used for standard video acceleration.
So, even though the Voodoo lines have been successful, trends suggest the inevitability of the low cost combined 2D/3D graphics accelerator. All the graphics chipset makers continue to quest for this "Holy Grail" of graphics markets. It is now practical for graphics chipset makers to pursue the 2D/3D accelerator market. Practical in this sense meaning hardware acceleration has proved to be significantly faster than pure software rendering. This makes the effort worth it.
One company began to stand out for its speed---nVidia, and its Riva 128. The Riva 128 was undoubtedly the fastest of what seems to be the 'second generation' of 2D/3D accelerators. In its standard reference form, which most card makers adhere to, it comes with 4MB of SGRAM, has AGP1X and PCI support. Despite its speed, which remains respectable by today's standards, it was reviled for its terrible image quality and drivers that were somewhat immature. From my perception it could have been the drivers, since with the later, mature drivers, the image quality has improved to the point that it's more than acceptable. The ZX version certainly improved on the image quality, and supported up to 8MB of video RAM.
The world never stands still, and chipsets like the Riva 128, Permidia and Rendition have proved the viability of the low cost 2D/3D accelerator. The writing is on the wall. This species of graphics accelerator will prove inevitable. Early this year, Intel itself entered the market with its i740, and everyone thought that it's blend of price, performance and excellent image quality would revolutionize the market. But it was quickly overtaken by the Matrox G200. This card is first to initiate what is probably the third generation of 2D/3D accelerators. It would have its brief moment of glory as well. The G200 has the defining characteristics of a third generation accelerator---32bit image quality, AGP2X support, dual 64 bit buses.
For Riva, it stood on solid ground. The Riva 128 was a technological achievement; its design of using dual 64 bit buses (hence the name '128') which gave its vaunted bandwidth was the performance breakthrough that enabled the third generation of accelerators to reach their current level. nVidia already have a strong solid design, and all it needed to do was take it to the next level (32 bit image quality and AGP2X) and address its criticisms like bad image quality with vengeance. The next generation would be called TNT.
3Dfx hasn't been sitting still. Its first attempt at a combined accelerator was the Voodoo Rush, which was essentially the first generation Voodoo accompanied with another vendor's VGA chip onboard. The Rush was a failure. 3Dfx's first taste of it. With the traditional names of graphical acceleration hot on its heels, names like S3, ATI and Matrox, it was time for 3Dfx to really take the offensive and challenge the mainstream market with economical 2D/3D accelerator with both 2D and 3D performance that will take no prisoners. This time, it would take an indigenous 2D core, matched to the already proven Voodoo2 engine. This would become the Banshee. You know when 3Dfx has gotten serious with the mainstream (e.g. non gaming) market, when they say the Banshee has the fastest *2D*.
