Conclusion: With all the talk of RAGE 128's "hitting the wall" on the new G4's, it's great to know there are alternative graphics boards that "leap tall buildings in a single bound."

The 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 (with and without the ROM tweak) is the "King of 3D." But the Formac ProFormance 3 is the "King of 2D," especially with its new drivers (5.6.0b7). It even works with Quake II, but only if you use OpenGL version 1.1.1.

Best all around? 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 (or better yet, the new 3000 PCI or AGP board).

 

* READ THIS STATEMENT FROM 3DFX INTERACTIVE BEFORE YOU LOAD THE 166MHZ ROM: "The company position is to never advocate overclocking, however we do understand that some people may want to do this. It voids the warranty, but If people still choose to overclock their card, we would definitely recommend adding additional heat sinks or a dedicated fan to maximize performance."

• The test computer was a G4/400 "Yikes!" with 256MB of PC-100 memory and MacOS 8.6. (plus OpenGL 1.1.1 from MacOS 9 -- Formac's card needed it).
• By running Quake II in 1024 x 768 mode, I was able to highlight the limits of the RAGE 128. For Voodoo3 to work in OpenGL mode, it requires a special version of the "ref_gl.lib" from Mesa3DGraphics in the Quake II folder. It also requires a document called "Mesa3DGraphicsLibQuake2" (version 3.1b8 or later) to be placed in the Quake II folder.
• Unreal 3D tests were run with the viewport set to 1024 x 768. (Edit the unreal.ini document). The test used was the Castle Flyby that comes up at startup. To get the average and minimum frames per second with version 2.x.x of Unreal, you press "~" and enter "TIMEDEMO 1." Then press "~" to open up the full screen again. It begins the fly sequence at the castle entrance. (Get the latest latest UNREAL Beta from Westlake's Site.)
• Photoshop 5.5 was given 120MB of application size. The test file was a 16.9 MB Photoshop document. The SCROLL test was performed at 400% zoom. Scroll arrow held down while the document was scrolled from top to bottom.
• For the WordPerfect 3.5.3 scrolling test, I use a 120 page document containing the sentence "The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dogs" repeated over and over in paragraphs of 8 sentences each in 14 point Times font. Using a stopwatch, I time how long it takes to scroll from the beginning to the end of the document while holding the mouse button down with cursor over the scrolling arrow. (Font smoothing is turned off. If it's on, it will take you 50% longer to scroll through a document!)

A big MAHALO to...

...ATI for the use of the Orion RAGE 128 board

...Formac for the use of the ProFormance3 and newest drivers

...3Dfx for the use of the use of the Voodoo3 2000 and the new beta 5 drivers.

SAN JOSE, Calif., October 21, 1999 3dfx Interactive® Inc. (NASDAQ: TDFX) today announced that it has released Beta version 5.0 of its Macintosh developer drivers, with support for the recently announced Voodoo3(tm) 3000 PCI board. The drivers include two selectable ROMs for the 143MHz and 166MHz clock speeds, featured on the Voodoo3 2000 PCI and Voodoo3 3000 PCI respectively. The release of the drivers shows a continued commitment to the Apple® Macintosh® market, by enabling developers to utilize the Company's fastest PCI board, on the Mac.