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| Video Card History (1996 to the present) |
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Page 2 of 4 In March of 1999, 3dfx came out with the Voodoo3. This time, the Voodoo 3 was separated into different steps to cover different consumer needs (sound familiar?). The Voodoo3 2000 was the low-end budget card, and it had a core speed of 143 MHz to offer. 
On the next rung was the Voodoo3 3000, which offered up a 166 MHz clock speed. At the top was the 3500 version, which featured a TV-out port, and a 183 MHz clock speed. All these cards were offered in PCI and AGP versions (a new concept, also shared with an ATI card called the 3D Rage Pro). 
Like many underdogs, the competing companies started catching up to the hardware giant. NVIDIA released a card around the same time as the Voodoo3, called the TNT 2. The TNT 2 was the successor of the TNT, and upped the ante from 8 million to 10.5 million transistors - a huge jump in complexity. It also offered 32-bit color support, and digital flat panel support. The Voodoo3 barely beat the TNT2 in pure FPS, but the TNT2 had much higher visual quality, so people started checking out the competition. It didn't cripple 3dfx, but it let them know that they better have something groundbreaking with their next release. ATI, possibly one of the cleverest (or maybe luckiest) of all three companies was content to sit in the corner and watch NVIDIA and 3dfx battle it out. ATI still released new cards - they weren't spectacular, but by no means were they horrible. The cards were just enough to keep them in the race. ATI's strategy seemed to be to lie in wait for their time to strike, which wouldn't come until later. |
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