It's a little surprising that Falcon even included multimedia extras on their Voodoo3 3500SE. After all, when you think of Falcon, you think speed, and the TV-out and A/V Pod are additions many 3dfx fans might think superfluous. There is a definite benefit to having a TV-tuner on your video card, but offering the Falcon Voodoo3 3500SE in a few different flavours would have been a great idea. The high-grade Voodoo3 and 5 ns SDRAM, combined with the spartan design of the 3dfx Voodoo3 2000, or even the TV-out of the Voodoo3 3000, would have created a couple of excellent 200MHz gaming cards. The decision to go with the Voodoo3 3500 design is still a good one, but I can't help but think how rabid 3dfx fans would drool over the prospect of a less-expensive, 'Plain Jane' 200MHz Voodoo3.

The Voodoo3 chip reminds me of the famous "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." line from A Tale of Two Cities. The 3dfx Voodoo3 is 3D power personified, but it also sacrifices some features in the pursuit of all-out performance. The main knocks against the Voodoo3 are its total reliance on 16-bit rendering and a less-than complete AGP implementation. The AGP portion doesn't really bother most gamers, but 32-bit rendering is rapidly becoming a standard 3D game feature.

Another troubling aspect to the ongoing features war doesn't just concern 32-bit rendering with current 3D cards, but with products like the Matrox G400 pushing the image envelope even further with features like environmental bump mapping. On the flip side, many gamers value exceptional 16-bit performance, don't really care about having features they won't use and are very satisfied with the "32-bit internal/16-bit external" image rendering of the Voodoo3. This position is most prevalent with the online gaming community, where a higher frame rate can literally mean the difference between online life and death.

3D game support is also one of the Voodoo3's most important features. The 3dfx Voodoo3 supports Direct 3D, as well as OpenGL through both a mini-GL driver and a full ICD implementation. Glide is the wild card in this equation, and tossing it into the mix gives the Voodoo3 the highest level of 3D game compatibility. Whether you love or hate Glide, you must also realize that it is part of the 3D gaming spectrum and may well remain so into the near future. Having access to a Glide-compatible card means never having to check demo specs to ensure that you will be able to play the newest game. I remember when the Unreal Tournament Demo was released and then hearing all the comments condemning Glide as an API. Instead of joining in, I just whipped on over to my Voodoo gaming box and went online for some incredible UT deathmatch action. Whichever side of the Glide fence you're sitting on, there is no denying that having a Glide-compatible 3D card (3dfx or even Creative's Unified) is never be a bad thing.

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