Gamasutra - News - "3dfx says Voodoo5 Card for Mac Available Immediately" [08.10.00]

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3dfx says Voodoo5 Card for Mac Available Immediately

3dfx, following through on its promises to Mac users announced that its Voodoo5 5500 PCI card is now available for immediate delivery from major retail outlets.

Announced this past spring, unveiled publicly at Macworld Expo in New York this July, the new card is the first officially supported Macintosh-compatible video card from 3dfx. The only way Mac users could get 3dfx performance prior to the Voodoo3 PCI card was through a bulky OS run over the Mac operating system, which hurt performance comparative to a Voodoo on a standard PC. When the Voodoo3 PCI came out, Mac users could install a Voodoo3 PCI, and download beta-quality drivers from 3dfx, and run software designed to take advantage of the 3D features. The warm response by Mac owners seems to have spurred 3dfx into its recent offering of the V5500.

The Voodoo5 5500 features 64MB of on-board RAM and support for SVGA or DVI-based displays. The DVI connector enables the card to support Apple's first generation of flat-panel 15" Studio Displays and 22" Cinema Displays, as well as SGI's 1600SW and any other display that uses Digital Visual Interface connectors. . The card's 350MHz RAMDAC provides users with the ability to drive displays up to 2048x1536 pixels at up to 85Hz.

The twin-chip architecture of the new card is based on 3dfx's VSA-100 chipset. It provides hardware-based full-scene anti-aliasing, which renders 3D images with smoother, more realistic looking imagery free of the "jaggies" and interference patterns, providing better visuals that could not be obtained by Mac gamers before this product. Other special features of the card include support for 3dfx's T-buffer special effects, which provide game developers with the ability to perform cinematic "camera trick"-type special effects in their games, like depth of field blur and motion blur. T-buffer also provides game developers with the ability to do detailed lighting and shadowing effects.

The Voodoo5 5500 PCI card carries a suggested retail price of $329. Mac users can expect a single-chip video card variant, the Voodoo4 4500 PCI card, to emerge sometime within the next couple of months. Although its performance will be more limited than the 5500's is, the 4500 should carry a price under US$200.

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