[About]        [Affiliates]         [Contact Us]            

Performance and Conclusion

Performance of the Voodoo 5 5500

As I already stated, the Voodoo 5 5500 is comprised of two VSA-100 scalable architecture chips, and 64MB of SDRAM. Taking into account that the current clock speed of the beta silicon is 166mhz, and that it renders two pixels per clock, the fill rate is about 666 megapixels, making it an industry leader so far. By way of comparison, nVidia's GeForce, clocked at 120mhz, manages 480 megapixels/second, with the aid of four texture pipelines. Despite it's superior fill rate, the V5 5500 runs flush with or slightly below the GeForce DDR at 1024 x 768 or under. This is mainly due to the GeForce's hardware T&L. However, at higher resolutions, the V5 5500 finally pulls way ahead, due to it's better fill rate. The V5 also does well in 32bit color, especially considering 3dfx's lack of experience in this field.   

Performance of the Voodoo 4 4500

The Voodoo 4 4500 will be the low-end offering from 3dfx, and is comprised of only one VSA-100, and 32MB of SDRAM. In effect, this card is not much better than a Voodoo 3, except that it runs better at higher resolutions due to twice the memory, and the fact that it supports 32bit color. When tested, this card proved that it could not even match the performance of an SDR GeForce, and thus has no real place in the modern videocard market. One point that I think I should mention is that none of the Voodoo 4's or 5's make use of AGP texturing, so the V4 4500 is available in a PCI version, and the V5 5000 is a PCI only card.

Conclusion

For the time being, the Voodoo 5's offer great performance and price, but within a couple of months, they will be rivaled and possibly beaten. The main threat appears to be nVidia's NV15, or GeForce 2, which is an improved, .18micron version of today's GeForce, and is slated to run at 200mhz. Also not to be forgotten is ATi's upcoming Radeon chip design. Of all the Voodoos, only the V5 6000, a four-chip, 128MB solution, will be able to beat these. Unfortunately, it looks like the Voodoo 4s and 5s will be victims of nVidia's killer six-month product cycle.

Last Page