by Bubba "Masterfung" Wolford

My question is this: Why buy a product that supports features that you will not find in more than a handful of games for probably 8 months, when you could get a different product that supports features you can use right now to give awesome visual quality and then upgrade in six months to get a product that supports T&L while games that support T&L are on the shelf? We are in a 6-month product cycle for video cards.

Answer #1: I do not upgrade my video card more than once a year or once every two years. This is a TOTALLY legitimate answer and one I completely respect (and admire!! - only upgrading once a year or less would be HARD for me to live with!)

In this case, I think we need to weigh advantages of each card and see how they stack up. Again, I cannot stress enough the option of waiting until you see how each card performs on the games you enjoy before making a monetary decision. Just be patient and allow us to lead you to the best choice. Numbers don't lie. Hype can be very manipulative!

Answer #2: I do upgrade with each new video card cycle. This is where I question those who buy cards which support features that you cannot use for more than six months! If you are going to buy a newer card in six months that supports the feature you want now but cannot get (due to lack of support), wait and buy the newer card when products to support it are on the shelves!!

Of course, the best action is to wait until we post some numbers and see which one is the best for your $$$.

Q) During the recent interview at Thresh's FS, Scott Sellers stated that Nvidia "appears to be delivering a product that's high on marketing checkmarks and low on real-world benefits, but I guess that's their strategy. . . " What's your strategy going into the new millenium?

A: As I stated in the previous question, our goal is to deliver a product to market that substantially improves games that people can buy today, but also has substantial technology to allow a continued compelling gaming experience as the titles better take advantage of the new technology. The announced T-Buffer is a classic example. With its full-scene spatial anti-aliasing capability, our next generation product will make any existing game look substantially better, and in some cases actually completely change the look and feel of the game (in a positive way, of course!).

Once you've experienced full-scene spatial anti-aliasing in a product, you'll never settle again for the aliased rendering of our competitors' products. So, the full-scene AA capability offers the consumer an incredible "out of box" experience and the entire game library is immediately upgraded. This is very exciting for the consumer.

And yet, the T-Buffer has additional capabilities such as real-time motion blur, depth of field effects, soft shadows and reflectance, etc. that allow games to look and play better moving forward. So, we believe we've invented the ultimate "one, two punch" product, delivering a product which not only remarkably improves today's games, but also has substantial technology "legs" to remain leading edge for future games. No one else has delivered this type of exciting capability before.

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This has been 3dfx's policy ever since the T-Buffer presentation. Delivery is now the key for them. Their competitors now have their products seemingly "out the door." 3dfx NEEDS to execute right now.

Q) Also in that same FS interview, Scott Sellers mentioned the following, "we believe hands down we will have a faster product than GeForce 256 across the majority of games." What games do you see the GeForce 256 being faster and on what games do you believe you might be faster?

A: Well, as Nvidia has not announced any performance specs for GeForce, and we have not announced our next generation product, it's really hard to get into specifics. But by-and-large we are going to be focused on being the best and fastest solution for games running in high resolution (greater than or equal to 1024x768) and 32-bit color. We believe the grand majority of games running in such modes will run substantially better on our next generation hardware.

Clearly, the vast majority of gamers want higher resolutions at 30+ FPS with 32-bit color and eye candy to boot. Whomever can execute this better will win the 3D wars for this product cycle.

Q) You mentioned you believed that the next generation 3dfx card would be faster ("in most games") than GeForce 256, can you talk about what your position is versus the Savage 2000? Where do you see the Savage 2000 being strong and where is the products weaknesses?

A: Since Savage 2000 has not been shown publicly to my knowledge it is difficult to really understand how it is going to perform. In the past we have seen products come out from competitors whose specifications are dramatically different than the spec sheets they promoted when the product was just on paper. We always take announcements that lack a product or performance data to back it up with a grain of salt. We do not like setting false expectations for our customers.

As has been the case for some time, we believe S3 has likely delivered a feature-rich product which will be very successful in the OEM markets but likely has not delivered a product which has the performance to be successful in the gamer market. I think the biggest weakness of the Savage2000 is going to be their lack of memory bandwidth, as they only now have delivered a 128-bit solution, whereas others have had 128-bit solutions for several years. Fill-rate performance is all about memory bandwidth, and it appears they're a generation behind in that category.

We have been hearing that memory bandwidth is going to be the Achilles heel of Savage 2000. Without a product in hand we cannot confirm nor deny this issue. It won't be long though before we will know. It should not be long before we see the products running out the doors. It is going to be one awesome Christmas for those looking to upgrade! Who is really the best should be decided soon!

Go to Part IV: T-Buffer vs. Geometry