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SE: In the past, 3dfx has focused on pushing the envelope in terms of speed. Now that sustained 60fps has been achieved for 16-bit, can we presume going forward that this will also hold true for 32-bit?
Scott Sellers: Yup. We've always said that when we deliver a product capable of rendering in 32-bit, we'd do it at 60 fps rendering rate.
SE: With the emphasis on T-Buffer it seems that 3dfx's current focus is on improving image quality and photorealism. Will it be necessary to improve speed performance to accommodate the improved image quality features or is the goal to make them 'free' of speed penalty? Is there some trade off point that 3dfx is willing to make to sacrifice speed for the sake of image quality and added realism?
Scott Sellers: There is no doubt that because we're now using multi-buffer rendering approaches that the standard/traditional rendering performance must be increased in order to sustain 60 fps overall rendering rate even when using the T-Buffer effects. We could have made the decision for the implementation that we were going to run at a "constant" rate when the T-Buffer was enabled so that there would be no performance loss (this is, btw, the model that ATI followed with their implementation of 32-bit color on the Rage128. They have claimed that they have very little performance degradation when using 32-bit color, which I believe is true. However, the reason that it is true is because their 16-bit performance is so darn slow!). The point here is that you can artificially slow down what could be made faster to make "constant" performance rendering, but we don't think this is the right approach. On the product which will include the T-Buffer technology, there's no doubt that as you go from 16-bit rendering to 32-bit rendering to 32-bit rendering with the T-Buffer enabled that fill-rate performance will degrade. The thing that really matters, however, is can you render at 32-bit color with the T-Buffer enabled at a sustained 60 fps, and the answer is an emphatic "yes" for the first product which will implement the T-Buffer.
SE: If the next-gen part with T-Buffer implemented is able to perform full-scene anti-alising on a Pentium 90Mhz as well as on a Pentium III 600MHz, what other factors play a part in performance? How do increased texture sizes and color depths affect the frame rate when AA is enabled?
Scott Sellers: Increased texture size and color depths are really totally independent of the T-Buffer. You can run the T-Buffer with larger textures, different texture formats, different color depths, etc. It is all independent of the T-Buffer capabilities. As I said above, there will be some performance loss when going from 16-bit rendering to 32-bit rendering to 32-bit rendering with the T-Buffer enabled, but the performance with all the advanced rendering effects enabled is still far-and-away sufficient enough to sustain 60 fps rendering rates…
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