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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
High-End, Maximum
3D Acceleration: Cards Over $1,000
HP
VISUALIZE-fx2+, -fx4+, and -fx6+, Intense3D
Wildcat 4000, Intense3D Wildcat
4105, Intense3D Wildcat 4110,
3Dlabs Oxygen GVX210, 3Dlabs
Oxygen GMX2000, ELSA GLoria
XXL, Evans & Sutherland Tornado
3000
Intense 3D Wildcat
4110
 The
Wildcat 4110 is a recently announced product from Intense3D. Though not
yet available in workstation offerings, it will most likely become a ubiquitous
top-of-the-line option. In addition to topping all performance records
for Windows NT systems on Viewperf 6.1.1 benchmarks, the Wildcat 4110
breaks previous records on four out of five Viewperf benchmarks for UNIX
systems, making it one of the fastest 3D graphics options on any platform.
With up to twice the performance of previous generation Wildcat products,
the Wildcat 4110 renders a sustained 6M triangles/sec (Gouraud-shaded,
lit, Z-buffered), provides a peak 143 Mpixel/sec texture fill rate, and
features next-generation capabilities such as true multisampled scene
mode anti-aliasing and 3D volumetric texturing. The Wildcat 4110 also
supports the new 3D professional graphics board standard - AGP Pro - designed
for both AGP 2X and AGP 4X implementations. Available for Linux 4.0 upon
its release, Wildcat will include drivers to optimize graphics performance
on the Linux operating system.
The Wildcat 4110 is based on Wildcat 3D graphics technology that employs
Intense3D's ParaScale architecture to accelerate the entire 3D graphics
pipeline in hardware. It is the first 3D graphics accelerator on Windows
NT to feature groundbreaking SuperScene anti-aliasing -- true, multisampled,
scene mode anti-aliasing -- which delivers significantly improved image
quality using less memory than other multisampling schemes. SuperScene
anti-aliasing offers unprecedented realism by removing "jaggies" and "crawling"
edges from complex moving images. It supports 16 samples per pixel utilizing
the same amount of memory as other techniques that only use four. The
result is incredibly realistic imagery for training simulations, character
animations, and design visualizations.
The Wildcat 4110 features the industry's largest onboard memory -- a full
128 MB that allows professionals to simultaneously process large amounts
of texture data and operate at higher display resolutions, beyond that
of HDTV (1920 x 1080). The Wildcat 4110 also offers volumetric 3D texturing,
which enables cross-sectional texturing of 3D objects -- a highly advanced
feature for scientific/medical visualization, oil and gas exploration,
and other GIS applications.
The Wildcat 4110's advanced geometry chips accelerate all OpenGL geometry
operations. The dedicated 64 MB frame buffer and 64 MB texture memory
enable real-time display of richly textured models at true color resolutions
-- up to HDTV resolution, with double-buffering enabled, providing photorealistic
display of large-scale terrain databases, product prototypes, and 3D character
animations. The high-bandwidth, independent buses eliminate bottlenecks
by separately connecting the frame buffer and texture memory to the graphics
chipset.
The card offers support for all standard graphics APIs including OpenGL
1.2, 2D GDI, DirectDraw, and Direct3D. The Wildcat 4110 even offers support
for future APIs, such as Fahrenheit, through software upgrades for Wildcat's
programmable architecture. It also provides digital flat panel monitor
support by supporting the DVI standard, thus allowing graphics professionals
to take advantage of the fine dot pitch, high brightness, contrast, and
true color of digital flat panel displays. The Wildcat 4110 is currently
available to workstation vendors, and implementations will appear in the
marketplace shortly.
Lead
on to the 3Dlabs Oxygen GVX210
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