If you haven't heard about 3DFX, I don't
know where you've been hiding for the past 2 years. When they
originally came out with the Voodoo Graphics card in 1996, they were
relatively unknown. 3D was virtually non existent on the PC and thus the
Voodoo Graphics chip was only for the elite, for those who could afford
it and wanted bragging rights to have the best money could buy. At
this time, 3DFX had pretty much the only 3D card that was actually worth
something, and it was VERY fast at that time also. 3DFX became
well known within a very small community of hardcore gamers and hardware
enthusiasts as the only manufacturer who actually made 3D cards that
were worth something.
Two years later, they released the
Voodoo2 card, with double the performance of the original Voodoo, SLI
capability and at that time, the best image quality you could possibly
hope for. This is when 3DFX started to become really well known to
people outside of that small community. The Voodoo2 has been and
still is a very viable solution to 3D gaming, especially if you have an
SLI setup. 3DFX then released the Banshee card, 3DFX's first
successful 2D/3D
single card solution (I won't even bother mentioning the Rush) and while not
living up to the hype, it was certainly a
great deal especially for lower end systems.
Today, "3DFX" has changed to
"3dfx" and is focused on branching out even further into the
homes of people who don't even know what 3D acceleration is. What I mean
by this, is they are trying to appeal to even the casual computer users
who only upgrade their computers rarely and are easily influenced by
good marketing. On a business standpoint, 3dfx is doing the right
thing to make money and increase their user base, but are there products good
enough for the hardware core gamer who wants the best they can possibly
get? We'll explore that issue as we progress. 
In this review, we will be taking a look
at 3dfx's mid-range Voodoo3, the 3000 AGP card. Actually, at present,
its their high-end solution because the 3500 is not out yet. The
3000 sports a
166MHz core/memory speed whereas the Voodoo3 2000 has a 143MHz clock and
the Voodoo3 3500TV will have a 183MHz clock
speed. The V3 3000 also has an S-video TV-Out port to play games
or watch DVD's on your big screen. We will examine how its TV-Out
compares to other cards later in the review.
