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So how do you think that the aforementioned announcement will affect the current Voodoo Banshee sales?
We expect Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo2 sales to continue to be strong. The truth is, games are just starting to become available that really start to use the power of Voodoo2 and Voodoo Banshee. Voodoo2 SLI, at its new price points should flourish. Voodoo2 and Voodoo Banshee are hot products today. I'd be surprised if we don't have a really great holiday season.
If you had to draw up a list of hardware-specific features that the high-end 2D/3D accelerators of 1999 will have to have, what would be included on it?
The list would include everything that will appear on our products in 1999, nothing more, nothing less.
Do you see the future of DX6 geometry-pipelining taking place on board the video-chipset, or through new instructions such as KNI (MMX2) and 3DNow! for 1999?
We're not comfortable with this question due to the proprietary knowledge we have.
You've certainly proven that with the Voodoo2 (SLI), 3Dfx produces the fastest 3D solution on the block (competitor's press releases aside). But what about image quality? Are you planning to get back onto equal terms with the best of the crop and go to 24 and 32 bit rendering? What's next for 3Dfx? (This is where the WORLD sexclusive on the Rampage, Voodoo Banshee2 et .al go and the check's in the post)
You should NEVER judge image quality without considering frame rate, at least for games. Hey - RenderMan quality blows away any hardware chip! But it's still a little slow right now. My point is that 32-bit rendering is obviously better quality than 16-bit rendering. That is not the point. The right question to ask is the combination of 32-bit rendering and the lower performance it entails better than 16-bit rendering and the higher performance it delivers. At this point, I would say 16-bit rendering still wins out for a better gaming experience. When 32-bit rendering gets a lot faster, it won't be so, but we will support 32-bit rendering by then. Look at games on Banshee in 16-bits - they look pretty darn amazing. In many games, you can't even tell the difference. Don't judge our 16-bits just by the fact that it's 16-bits! There's actually a lot of work we do to make it look better than just plain old 16-bits. It's actually more like 22-bits on the screen.
Well three big cheers to Mr. Tarolli for taking time out from that busy schedule to answer these poncy questions and our very best wishes on the new mega-hotel chain venture. Sharky Extreme eagerly awaits the 3Dfx annual COMDEX announcement. Look for full coverage on it here as well as a review of the Kool and the Gang performance at the 3Dfx party and full Tequilla disclosure. We highly recommend that 3Dfx goes with a quality product like Clinique rather than a generic soap which can be drying to delicate skin.
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