July 10
Mac Voodoo5 Preorder Starts Today
Graphics accelerator works in 33 MHz, 66 MHz PCI slots

by David Nagel
Executive Producer

3dfx says it's now accepting orders for the Voodoo5 5500 PCI graphics accelerator for the Mac. The company has also announced that the card will offer a DVI port alongside the analog port to power flat-panel digital monitors. The Voodoo5 5500 includes 64 MB video memory, full-scene hardware antialiasing and a fill rate of 667 megapixels per second. It supports resolutions up to 2,048 x 1,536 with an 85 Hz refresh rate at 32 bits. It's now selling for $329. The card is supposed to be released by the end of this month, along with the Voodoo4 4500, a lower-powered version of the Voodoo5 with 32 MB graphics memory and a slower fill rate. Both cards support QuickDraw 3D Rave, in addition to Glide and OpenGL. The Voodoo4 card is expected to ship for about $200.

Both cards offer hardware anti-aliasing, T-Buffer digital cinematic effects and FXT1 texture compression. Both cards can be upgraded for Mac OS X.

Voodoo4 4500
The Voodoo4 4500 PCI for Mac features a single VSA-100 processor and 32 MB of graphics memory. The VSA-100 (Voodoo Scalable Architecture) incorporates 3D features like 32-bit RGBA rendering, 24-bit depth-buffer (Z and W), 8-bit stencil rendering, FXT1 texture compression support, 32-bit textures, 2,048 x 2,048 texture size support, advanced texture and color combine capabilities and the native support of Macintosh data formats. It also includes an enhanced 2D engine and a 350 MHz RAMDAC.

The Voodoo4 4500 renders two fully featured pixels per clock and will deliver up to 333 megatexels/megapixels per second fill rates. It's expected to come in below $200.

Voodoo5 5500
The Voodoo5 5500 PCI for Mac features dual VSA-100 processors and 64 MB of total graphics memory. It's targeted toward 3D Professionals and serious gamers, providing support for 3D modeling, CAD, animation and virtual reality applications. The multi-chip capabilities of the VSA-100 allow 3D rendering that employs full-scene hardware anti-aliasing at real-time frame rates. Additionally, the Voodoo5 5500 PCI enables T-Buffer digital cinematic effects, including motion blur, programmable depth of field, soft shadows and soft reflections. The Voodoo5 5500 PCI, which renders four fully featured pixels per clock, will deliver up to 667 megatexels/megapixels per second fill rates.

For more information, visit http://www.3dfx.com.

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