For an updated in-house preview of the Voodoo3 3500 click here

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Voodoo3 but were afraid to ask:

One of the highlights at Comdex '98 was undoubtedly 3Dfx Interactive's 'big announcement'. At Sharky Extreme, we were all entirely sure that the announcement to be made at Steven Spielberg's (3Dfx and Sharky Extreme agreed that Spielberg doesn't cut it in terms of coffee) Dive Café was the second generation Voodoo Banshee (Banshee2 or the like). Instead 3Dfx announced the Voodoo3. In all honesty we were at first rather startled. But after speaking to Peter Wicher, the Voodoo3 Senior Product Manager, we realized that what we had been speculating all along in our Voodoo Banshee reviews (that the next Voodoo banshee product would be on .25Micron with two TMUs and 32MB) was actually close to being spot on.

The Voodoo3 technology actually uses the same core as the Voodoo Banshee, except that the dye has been shrunk from .35micron to .25micron. As a result of some 8.2 million transistors and a few new features, the dye is a 'little' fuller. Wicher went on to state that two months ago, 3Dfx Interactive actually dropped the 'Voodoo Banshee' brand name. Instead they believed that this new product (Voodoo3) deserved a 'Voodoo' branding due to its speed capability. Another reason must surely have been that the 'Voodoo' brand is much more widely renowned than the 'Banshee' brand. So call it a marketing and PR turn. But is it fair to the end user? Yes it its, so long as the final silicon, which should go out to OEM partners sometime in March 1999, delivers a significant increase in performance over the current Voodoo2. As you'll see from the benchmarks later on in the article, the Voodoo3 looks like being a worthy successor to the Voodoo2 especially once the final silicon is ready and running some 20-25% faster than it is currently.