3D GRAPHICS HARDWARE CONTACTS
Rumours abound that the next revolution is a three dimensional one:
Accelerated 3D is continuing its race to the mass market. Intel insiders
are
privately/publicly leaking estimates that by early 1997,
over 50% of new compute will ship with 3D rasterization acceleration.
Combine this with Intel's latest processor roadmap,
which forecasts home market 200MHz systems for 4th quarter 1996
at $2,500-3,000.
Computer
Graphics Enter a New (Third) Dimension
Hardware comes in many shapes, sizes, and prices.
I outline below two of the main players in this rapidly evolving new world,
the world famous Silicon Graphics, and its hot contender the PC.
The PC currently requires a graphics accelerator to enable it to reach anything
like the power of the SGi,
althougth there are now software only solutions (eg
RenderWare)
producing quite stunning realtime 3d rendering, mainly aimed at the games
world (thanks to Doom).
The accelerator has a lowlevel software/hardware graphics interface, the
Application Program Interface (API),
OpenGL (OpenGL
3-D Graphics )
appears to be the industrial graphics interface standard, created by
Silicon
Graphics,
whereas Direct3d from Microsoft
(Microsoft
Direct3D Backgrounder)
appears to be the low-end (home/ business/ games) contender,
supported by nearly all the new forthcoming games 3D accelerators (less than
£500).
If any battle appears to be on the horizon, it could be a battle of standards
with Microsoft calling the shots..
Netscape may also be a target, their 3D rendering software being Renderware
(RenderWare Datasheet)
Microsoft is aggressively targetting the upper platforms with the acquisition
of
SOFTIMAGE
means that a previous SGi only product will now run on a PC platform.
General high powered computer processing
Silicon Graphics' Silicon
Surf
Pentium Pro's
Intergraph Software Solutions
Micron
Electronics Price Sheets
Intel Pentium(R)
Pro Processor On-line Introduction
INFORMATION ON PC GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR BOARDS
Games quality - less than £500, some of these are only chip sets,
and not yet available as boards (May 1996)
GLINT 300SX
Technical Specification
GLINT based Graphics Boards
PERMEDIA - Technical Overview
SurRender - Real-Time 3D Surround
GFX Render Engine
3Dlabs Online
Hercules Terminator
64/3D
3Dfx Interactive Voodoo
Graphics
Pyramid3D Details
PowerVR
(Videologic&NEC)
Stratos 3D Press Release
Rendition: Press Releases
Industrial quality 3d accelerators:
Intergraph International
Online
Evans&Sutherland Product
Information ( 1-Apr-1996)
Lockheed Martin REAL 3D®
Serious overview of all possible graphics cards
contenders:
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~bm/3dcards/3d-cards1.html
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~bm/3dcards/3d-cards1.html
Games accelerators overview
Jérôme
Muffat-Méridol - 3D game accelerators for the PC
A shorter overview:
3D
Card analysis
General 3d hardware overview link lists
3D Industry
Contacts
Hardware - Dimension
3D
Three D Viewers
3D
Stereoscopic Video Display Project Page