3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP

    theExtremist
Go do that VooDoo, that you do so well!
 3dfx has had the best-looking accelerator cards on the market since the Voodoo1 add-in card was introduced in 1997. This may be, in large part, due to well-worked color saturation, and texture smoothing. That not withstanding, the Voodoo3’s overall performance hasn’t been up to par when compared to its third generation competition. The Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP stacks quite well against the competition; even with the lack of extended AGP features typically expected in third generation video cards. Features lacking in the Voodoo3 include 4x AGP, texturing in system memory, 32-bit color support, side banding, hardware T&L, and a stencil buffer.
 The Voodoo3 3500 is more than its Voodoo3 2000 or 3000 counterparts as it has a built-in TV and FM tuner along with MPEG-2 video capture and editing capabilities. Basically, a fat cable plugs into a proprietary interface on the back of the card. This cable then splits into two cables. The first is approximately 12 inches long and terminates in a female DB15 connector used for typical analog monitors. The other is 6 feet long, and over half-an-inch thick, terminating in a blue, flat-bottomed, pod shaped video I/O port. While ungainly in a cramped space, the I/O box is clearly marked and has audio connectors for stereo RCA and video connectors for composite and S-Video. It also comes with the Visual Reality package by Ligos, which while being feature packed, is a bit busy on the TV control side. It does, however, let you select skins for it much like Winamp. Also included is a copy of Ulead Video Studio – more on that later.

The Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP comes with a fat heat sink instead of a fan. Unfortunately, since the card seats upside down, the heat sink can’t take advantage of the airflow typically happening above the card around the processor. A heat sink/fan combo would have been better…

 We threw the 3500 up against what we felt was typical competition in the marketplace – the Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (32Mb) and the ATI All in Wonder 128 (16Mb). Although we realize the Voodoo3, while pumping more power than it’s SLI Voodoo2 predecessor, is still limited to 16MB of RAM, like the ATI All-in-Wonder 128, will it hamper it’s assault on the current third-generation gamer’s choice which is currently the nVidia TNT2 Ultra?

 

The Features, sans AGP

Here’s a breakdown of features offered in the Voodoo3 series of 3dfx cards:

    • Single Pass, Single Cycle Multi-Texturing
    • Dual 32 Bit Texture Rendering Pipeline
    • Alpha Blending
    • Single Pass, Single Cycle Bump Mapping
    • Single Pass, Single Cycle Trilinear MIP-Mapping
    • Gouraud Shading
    • Programmable Fog Tables
    • Sub Pixel, and Sub Texel Correction
    • 128 Bit 2D acceleration
    • 8 Million Polygons per second peak processing
    • MPEG-1, 2 Playback
  • Real-Time MPEG-2 Video and Audio Capture

 These specs make for fine looking rendering and fast framerate performance. Unfortunately, you won’t be getting any 32-bit color rendering in 3D or any AGP texturing support for large textures due to memory limitations. 3dfx planned on minimal developer support for these features. Bad plan since both Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament running beautifully in 32-bit color on the cards that do support it.

 2D desktop performance is good at resolutions up to 1152×768 where the test monitor frequency tops out at 75Hz using 32-bit color, and with active desktop enabled, minimal redraw was observed. We observed that Adobe Photoshop 5.0 functions very well at this resolution (with active desktop Off of course) with no undue layer-to-layer lag. The 2D desktop image is crisp, even at 1280×1024 with “show Icons with all possible colors” selected the desktop icons looked excellent, and comparing vidcaps of them they were identical. This card fully supports video overlay which is a must for desktop video editing, DVD playback, and video conferencing software (CU-CME, NetMeeting, and the like).


DVD playback is provided by the full version of InterVideo WinDVD. This software-only DVD solution offers playback that very nearly rivals our sweetheart, the RealMagic Hollywood Plus hardware DVD decoder!


MadOnion Benchmarks

Here are the specs of the test system used in the review:

    • Intel Pentium III 600E Coppermine (100MHz)
    • 128MB 133MHz SDRAM (6ns)
    • ASUS P3C2000 (Intel 820-based) motherboard
    • USWC for AGP selected in bios
  • 64MB gate for AGP selected in bios


 The Voodoo3 3500 clearly spanks the ATI All-in-Wonder 128 in 3D gaming and better imaging, but bear in mind, the 128 came out months before the 3500, and it only supports AGP 1x mode. ATI’s board did give much better CPU marks though and it supports more bump mapping features. But then again, 3dfx passed all the rendering speed tests…

To see the full MadOnion 3Dmark2000 results, click here… 


 We find this new MadOnion benchmark very handy for testing the desktop video subsystem. I is designed to benchmark the video stream pipeline used in DVD playback, video editing, and many other applications that would overlay a video image over your desktop. The “VideoMarks” are a total of all three of Video2000’s tests. Quality measures the overall image quality generation of the Video card, Performance is video playback, and processing speed (and is affected by system/CPU speed), and Features are a measurement of how many Desktop features your card supports (overlay scaling, upscale/downscale, and the like).


 The desktop/DVD performance narrows the margin quite a bit between these cards. Where the 3500 rocks on the Qualitymarks and 2D performance, the ATI spanks on the features. Two things of note; the Video2000 DVD tests wouldn’t run on the ATI because it didn’t recognize ATI’s software Cinemaster, and during the Overlay test, we nearly had to abort the benchmark due to video corruption (buttons not refreshing, mouse disappearing).


Gaming Benchmarks

 


 Gaming is clearly No Contest. Above resolutions of 640×480, Q3A becomes unplayable with the All-in-Wonder 128. At 1024×768, the 3500 ran smooth with only the rare occasional jerk when Q3 hit the hard drive to access data. Only having the option for 16 bit color sucks. The visual quality of this game is Much better at 32 bit. It is playable, and textured very nicely, but in things like fog, and smoke, there is a definite graininess. The ATI didn’t fare well at all over 640×480, but in 32 bit color looked better than the 3dfx.


 The Unreal Tournament Wicked400 demo is more designed for overall system speed rather than just the video subsystem. There usually aren’t great variants in performance, but it does hammer the video real good. The 3dfx, and ATI are nearly neck-and-neck until 1024×768, however that was with 3dfx using the setting for 3dfx/Glide, and ATI using OGL. When set to OpenGL (which according to 3dfx this card supports) the 3500’s performance was reduced by a third.


The final word…

Specifications:

    • Controller: 3dfx Voodoo3
    • Bus Type: AGP 1x and 2x
    • Memory: SDRAM (16MB)
    • Core Clock: 183 MHz
    • RAMDAC: 350 MHz
    • Vertical Refresh: 60Hz-160Hz
    • Maximum Resolution: 2046×1536
    • API Support: DirectX, Glide and OpenGL (Yes, OpenGL)
    • Connectors: TV and FM coax inputs, an I/O pod connector and VGA
  • I/O Pod: S-Video In/Out, Composite Video In/Out, Left & Right Audio In/Out


 The Voodoo3 3500 AGP TV actually packs the FULL version of Unreal with a free mail in upgrade to Unreal Tournament (although you pay shipping and handling). This is far better than a disc with a bunch of small demos.

 It also comes with Ulead Visual Studio, for video editing, as well as the video capture/TV/FM radio application 3dfx Visual Reality. We took it upon ourselves to benchmark AVI performance against ATI’s All-in-Wonder as it’s known for its dominance in this area. We found the area lacking most was the limited 320×480 capture size offered by the 3500 compared to the 640×480 resolution capture size supported by ATI, which is compatible with Adobe Premiere.

 We’ll be covering Video Editing and TV playback software in the upcoming roundup of current 2D/3D/TV cards that will feature combatants from ATI, ASUS, 3dfx and Matrox.

 All in all, this is a really good multi-feature card – just not a Great one. If you have a limited budget and a low-end machine that needs a quick shot of gaming adrenaline, this will do the job. We look forward to pushing the next-generation Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 cards from 3dfx – maybe they’ll offer features and performance that will make them better comparable to the likes of nVidia…

 

Verdict: 85%
The Good: The Bad:
– Excellent visual image rendering
– Beautiful, near hardware, DVD playback quality
– CABLE READY TV tuner (And all that that implies)		 – Unruly I/O Cable
– Lack of a Number of AGP Features
– Limited to 16 MB Memory
– No DB15 Connector on the card (You have to use the I/O cable)
Company: 3dfx
Price: $200 (retail box)
Company URL: www.3dfx.com
Product URL: www.3dfx.com/prod/voodoo/v3-3500-overview.html