Voodoo Extreme: First off, what are you working on these days? Can you talk about your role at Verant and what kind of stuff you do on a day to day basis? What's your team like?

Hook: I'm currently working with over a half-dozen other programmers here on our next generation RPG technology (which is going to be used by Star Wars Online and other products). This covers graphics, sound, networking, GUI, AI, scripting, you name it. It's a very talented staff.

VE: So you're the lead developer with the technology group?

Hook: Oh, Christ, hell no! We have a dedicated engine lead who is really good at his job (and has a much better personality than me...quickest way to destroy this team would be to put me in charge =) ). In addition, we have developers working on areas as diverse as physics, networking, game play, scripting language implementation, GUI, tools, and path finding/AI. It's a pretty broad range of stuff that we're working on, and I'm basically just one piece of the machine.

The Cyrix III PR500 is a new CPU design, with a .18 micron die size, and features 256KB of integrated L2 cache, and 64KB of L1. These specs sounded good to me, and the chip also has the added speed bonus of running on the 133 MHz front-side bus. Unfortunately, VIA continues the Cyrix legacy of using the PR rating to determine the CPU performance, rather than the actual MHz. The PR500 really runs at 400 MHz (3x133), and is supposedly rated at the speed of a comparable 500 MHz Intel processor.

Nvidia: On the Nvidia front, the first thing that caught my eye is that the GeForce DDR 64 MB boards are currently priced higher than the 32 MB GeForce 2 GTS boards. I have a feeling this will change in the future, though the 64 MB GeForce 2 boards seem to be a card without a market. Now that the GeForce 2 cards will be on store shelves soon, the high-end market has changed drastically. Probably the best Nvidia value are the GeForce DDR cards, which offer an excellent price/performance deal. On the low-end, with the $20 difference between TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra cards, it makes the TNT2 Ultra the de facto Nvidia entry-level product, though the GeForce SDR prices are starting to look good too.

The RIVA 128, released several years ago, was the fastest 2D/3D accelerator board available, being outperformed only by the Voodoo2, a 3D only solution. This speed was enough to sign on big name OEMs like Dell. Since then, NVIDIA have never looked back. Their TNT was faster than competing Matrox and S3 products and was the first product to truly challenge 3dfx's dominance. The scary thing is, they keep getting better, and better, and better, particularly their high end. The RIVA 128 was fast but had terrible image quality. The TNT was fast, had great image quality, but ran at only 90MHz, as opposed to the promised 125MHz. The TNT2 (Ultra?) Fast, great image quality, great drivers, great overall product but 3dfx's Voodoo3 could still outperform it. The GeForce? was only threatened by a 700Mpixel/sec Savage2000 which was never to be. NVIDIA is clearly on top of the 3dfx, S3, and ATI when it comes to high performance gaming accelerators. The 0.18 micron GeForce 2 GTS announced recently will make sure they stay on top.

Intel has long been the king in the world of processors; it's had a stranglehold on the market for two decades. Until the release of the Athlon, though, it only had to deal with low-end market competition such as Cyrix and early AMD products; these companies provided viable x86 solutions, but often came with compatibility and performance issues. Intel's dominance has been seriously threatened since the middle of last year, however, when AMD pulled the extremely potent Athlon chip from out of its magic hat; the Athlon offered excellent performance at prices 20-30% lower than the Intel MHz equivalents and soaked up a lot of market share, climaxing with AMD's recent announcement of $1 billion in sales--the first time for the moderately sized Sunnyvale, CA-based company.

One of the major reasons ATI has yet to release a product which compares favorably with competing NVIDIA and 3dfx products is drivers. ATI's drivers haven't been up to par with NVIDIA and it is costing them; products which equal NVIDIA competition in fill-rate are being crushed in actual performance. The Rage128 actually competed very well against the TNT, but it came too late, the second one of ATI's major problems. It's not that they don't live up to their schedule, it's that their schedule isn't good enough. The Rage 128 Pro was released well after the TNT2 and TNT2/Ultras were readily available. The Rage Fury Maxx, which also never really caught on, partially because it was released several months after GeForce boards hit the market. But beyond drivers and timing, there is also the core product, the architecture, the chipset, and that is what the focus of this article is.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to cut today's update a little short, as I'm still beat from my late night GeForce2 GTS work earlier this week. This weekend I'll be doing some anti-aliasing testing with the GTS that I'll hopefully turn into a small feature article or a daily comment. Also, some other reviews looming in the future include an ASUS V6800 review and a review of ACT Labs' Gun System.