- Graphics controller: 2x VSA-100
- RAMDAC/Pixel Cycle: 350MHz
- Memory: 64MB SDR RAM
- 667MPixels/s
- 11 Million Triangles/s
- Full scene anti-aliasing at 2 or 4 samples
- Focus: depth-of-field blur
- Motion: motion blur
- Soft shadows and reflections
- FXT1 and DirectX texture compression
- 2048 x 2048 textures
Dual pixel pipeline: 2-pixel per clock (single texture) or 2 textures per clock (single pixel), full hardware setup of triangle parameters, supports multi-triangle strips and fans, transparency/chroma-key with dedicated color mask, alpha blending of source and destination pixels, sub-pixel and sub-texel correction to 0.4x0.5 resolution, per-pixel atmospheric fog with programmable fog zones, dynamic environment mapping, perspective-correct true divide-per-pixel 3D texture mapping and Gouraud shading, single-cycle bump-mapping, single-cycle trilinear mip-mapping, true per-pixel Level of Detail (LOD) MIP-mapping with biasing and clamping, RGB modulation combines textures and shaded pixels, texture compositing for multi-texture special effects, support for 14 different texture map formats and 8-bit palletized textures with full bilinear filtering.
3dfx hasn't yet made the transition to a .18-micron process, so the peak core frequency of the VSA-100 is likely being held back by the current etching process. Due to a heat concern, we scanned the board with a Raytek ST-3 thermal sensor and found hot spots that peaked at 148.5 degrees F (64.7C). We didn't experience any heat related lockups, but there will likely be little overclocking potential.
In addition, it is important to remember that while 3dfx advertises 64MB of RAM (as ATI does with their MAXX), texture data is duplicated for each chip, so the performance gained by a 64MB GeForce card won't be realized by any dual-chip solution. This isn't an important issue for the time being since our tests have shown 64MB makes little difference in most real-world performance, but we do feel it isn't completely accurate marketing.
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