The fallout of the 3Dfx/STB merger has affected many performance video card manufacturers in various ways. Some have decided to instantly jump on another chip manufactuer's product line. Some have decided to leave the difficult direct to consumer aspect of the business to concentrate on system OEM wins. And some have gone back to the proverbial drawing board to develop future products that can not only compete with 3Dfx/STB's offerings for 1999, but could actually surpass them.

Metabyte, armed with a literal army of highly skilled software and hardware engineers chose to pursue the latter path, diving head first into a pool of brand new research and development. They're not attempting to simply match the now public specifications of the various upcoming Voodoo3 parts, they want to beat the part's performance by a wide margin.

We know you're skeptical as to how this can be done, when even companies like nVidia struggle to currently match the performance level of 3Dfx's product range.

Keep reading.