We received the drivers via e-mail from 3dfx. Interestingly, they weighed in at less than 500k. The ATI 1.0 software update alone is over twice that size. "Lean and Mean," we thought. Before we could even get down to testing, we received another version of the drivers that had been optimized for more speed. We opted for the faster drivers.

In order to install a regular PCI version of the Voodoo3 2000, you first need to flash the Voodoo3's bios with the Macintosh bios. You open your machine, slide the Voodoo3 in next to your current card, then power up. Things then start up normally without any change. There are four extensions (the Mac version of a .dll file) that come with the Voodoo3 driver. Two of them are Glide extensions, Glide being the 3D API that 3dfx designed for their cards. The other two extensions are drivers that enable acceleration. After dropping the extensions onto your system folder, you run the ROM flashing program. Three seconds later, you shutdown, pull the monitor cable out of your old slow video card, and plug it into your new fast Voodoo3. You must then take a powerful tranquilizer. If you do not, the blazing fast video you are about to experience could cause severe emotional trauma (at least for a Mac user - Ed.). Oh yeah, then you turn it on.

All in all, it's an installation any Mac user would be proud of. Even though the drivers we have are extremely early beta, 3dfx still managed to make installation a breeze. After installing and reinstalling video cards on a PC, this was child's play. The only problem with the setup is that you cannot flash the card back into being for a PC. This should be fixed in the future, but for now, who cares? We want speed! And boy did we get speed.