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Today in DCC Workstation
3D
Graphics Cards for DCC
Intro,
Why Accelerate?, What
to Look For, PCI vs. AGP
Entry-Level,
Low-Cost, High-Speed 3D Acceleration: Sub $300 Cards
Mid-Range, High-Speed
3D Acceleration: Sub $1000 Cards
3Dlabs
Oxygen GVX1, 3Dlabs Oxygen RPM,
Intense3D Wildcat 3510, E&S
Lightning 1200, E&S AccelGalaxy,
Appian Jeronimo Pro, Diamond
Fire GL1
High-End,
Maximum 3D Acceleration: Cards Over $1,000
Intense3D
Wildcat 3510
 The
Wildcat 3510 from Intense3D, the
newly formed offshoot from Intergraph, is an AGP 2X and AGP 4X- based
3D graphics accelerator designed for users on a budget who still need
an advanced 3D rendering and texturing engine.
The Wildcat 3510 sustains real-time on-screen response for photorealistic
output, including images with extensive textures. Users working with graphics
of moderate to high complexity can expect a real-time graphics experience
with the Wildcat 3510. A large, dedicated frame buffer supports true-color
output at high resolution; its dedicated texture memory supports large
and intricate textures with no impact to real-time performance.
The Windows NT drivers for the Wildcat 3510 are optimized to support the
new Streaming SIMD extensions incorporated in Intel's latest Pentium III
processors. These driver enhancements deliver much improved 3D geometry
processing performance for mainstream 3D graphics applications.
The Wildcat 3510's large dedicated 16 MB frame buffer and 16 MB of texture
memory (standard at no extra cost) allows true color textures with maximum
depth accuracy, and with double buffering enabled. This texture memory
supports bilinear and trilinear MIP-mapped filtering with full 32-bit
texels. The wide, independent buses connect frame buffer and texture memory
to the graphics chipset for maximum performance.
Intense3D Wildcat 3510 graphics chips provide hardware acceleration of
triangle setup, texturing, and pixel operations. The chip also specifically
accelerates the following features in hardware: 2D and 3D vectors; 2D
and 3D triangles; rectangle fills; BitBlit (screen-to-screen copy); anti-aliased
vectors; get block (screen-to-system copy); put block (system-to-screen
copy); clipping; put bit map (for drawing text); fast window-mode double-buffering;
alpha blending; masking; fog effects; texture mapping; Gouraud shading;
stenciling and overlays; Z-buffering; and fast window clears.
In addition, the Intense3D Wildcat 3510 supports: all standard graphics
APIs, including OpenGL, 2D GDI, and RenderGL; 10-bit gamma correction;
four video look-up tables; eight stencil planes; eight overlay planes;
32-bit Z buffer at resolutions up to 1 M pixels; 24-bit Z buffer at 1.3
M pixels; high-performance DACs that directly drive display devices; YUV-to-RGB
color conversion; hardware cursor; DDC2B Display Data Channel standard;
DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling); as well as frame sequential
and interlaced stereo required for head-mounted displays and shutter glasses.
The Wildcat 3510 is currently found in workstations from Siemens and Intergraph.
Its street price is expected to be below $850.
Lead
on to the E&S Lightning 1200
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