These charts are largely outdated covering mostly old technology, but I hope that they can still serve some sort of purpose.

Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or fixes to report.

3D Chipsets Feature Chart

All of the chipset in the above tables have at least the following Features:

Anti-Aliasing Alpha Blending Bilinear Filtering Gouraud Shading Mip Mapping Perspective Correction Texture Mapping Z-Buffering Fog Vertex

This Table is a not designed to be a comparison table for ALL 3D chipsets. This table is designed to list the the current top of the line consumer oriented 3D gaming chipsets.

These figures are based on using DirectX 6 (Build 287 or better) which in general increases the benchmark performance by approximately 150 points.  In the case of the 3Dfx Voodoo 2, the S3 Savage 3D, and the Nvidia Riva TNT the figures go up drastrically due to the ability of those chips to take advantage of improvements of DirectX 6. It is expected that the NEC/VideoLogic PowerVR Next Generation (PVRNG) chip the PMX1 will also take advantage of directX 6 features.

The approximate benchmark numbers that I have used in the table above come from personal testing or testing from insiders within the industry.  You can see all the results that I have obtained on FPS's Benchmarks Page.

• The Nvidia TNT figures are from testing on A3 silicon from Nvidia- still very buggy, but very very fast. These do not come from my direct testing.  Recent reliable reports suggest that new drivers from NVidia are breaking the 1700 barrier and beyond. Apparently these faster drivers currently do not handle anti-aliasing correctly.  Turning anti-aliasing off will adjust the figures down to around 1500 (oh so slow:)
• The Intel i740 figures are based on a Stealth II G460 which scores consistantly 100+ more on benchmark scores than its competitors. Since the i740 chip price has fallen through the floor don't expect a lot of upgrades to the drivers in the future.
• The 3Dfx Voodoo 2 figures are based on reference drivers, and are a huge step up from the figures seen with DirectX v5
• The 3Dfx Banshee figures are scores are reported by some of my contacts who have done the testing.
• The S3 Savage 3D are based on build 10 of their drivers. The scores are reported by some of my contacts who have done the testing.
• The figures for PMX1 also known by the broader names of PVRSG and PVRNG are from estimates given to me by NEC. They should not be taken seriously, yet!
• The figures of the rest of the chips are also based on Direct X v5 figures +100 and are only extimates. I will complete retesting all the chips with DirectX 6 soon.

If you hook up 2 Voodoo 2 boards together in SLI mode you can get 1024x768 resolution.

Currently there are a few honorable mentions that don't quite make the cut; although, I am certainly willing to listen to any arguments. I'm sure some of the chipsets not mentioned are good quality chips, but they are either not yet released and proven, are too slow to be a serious contenders, or have limitations that prohibit a realistic 3D feel (for instance chips that lack the required features at the top of the list.)

There may be some errors on this comparison chart. If you find any please e-mail me and let me know. Also feel free to ask me questions, or provide me with any information to add to this or other pages.

Thanks,
Jack

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