By: Amer Ajami
Designed
By: Val Prusmack
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| Comdex draws over 200,000 attendees |
Every year in November, technology, hardware, and consumer electronics companies converge on Las Vegas, Nevada, for what has recently become one of the largest computer trade shows in the world: Comdex. The show is a forum for companies to announce their upcoming products and is used to introduce the public to new technologies that range from server-specific operating systems to mobile MP3 players. While the majority of these products aren't exactly geared toward the average gamer and technophile, GameSpot was on hand to sift through the junk and give you a first-hand look at the companies at the forefront of the PC gaming hardware industry and the products that got them there.
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| Blowing off some steam |
Comdex: Day One
Like it does nearly every year, 3dfx chose to unveil its next-generation
graphics chip, the VSA-100, at Comdex. Held at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum
on the first day of the show, the announcement confirmed what most had been
speculating for some time: 3dfx would finally implement 32-bit color depth
and support textures larger than the meager 256x256-pixel size of the
Voodoo2/Voodoo3 in its next chip.
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| Consumer electronics were out in force |
Previously code-named "Napalm," the new VSA-100 chipset uses the same scan-line interleave, or SLI, scaleable architecture found in the Voodoo2. That doesn't mean you'll be able to pair up two VSA-100-equipped boards for a boost in performance like a lot of gamers did with the Voodoo2. Instead, 3dfx has taken the initiative and will release video cards equipped with one, two, and four VSA-100 chips already onboard.
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| The Microsoft booth was a big draw |
The VSA-100 chip itself shares a lot of features with the older Voodoo3 processor, like the 166-183MHz internal clock speed, but boasts a number of enhancements that significantly improve its performance and appeal, the most important of which is the aforementioned support for 32bpp rendering, 2048x2048 texture size, and SLI. The VSA-100 also supports 3dfx's new T-Buffer
technology, which gives developers the ability to implement a number of cinematic effects into their 3D games. T-Buffer also allows any existing Direct3D, OpenGL, and Glide title to be run with full scene anti-aliasing with little overhead. For more on T-Buffer, be sure to read our extended coverage.
Next:
Voodoo4 and Voodoo5
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