In the beginning 3dfx was the king of the 3D accelerator market with its Voodoo and Voodoo2 chipsets. Then came the twist in the tale - out of the blue came nVidia, producing new chipsets in an astonishingly quick period of time, adding new innovative features along the way. However, brand loyalty aside, a major factor for choosing the 3dfx route is GLide support. This, along with hardware full-scene anti-aliasing, means a new 3dfx card supports features you can use straight from the box. The Voodoo4 addresses the Voodoo3s lack of 32-bit rendering support and, unlike the Voodoo5 5500 (see Labs, issue 34, p51), at $399 its also affordable.

Using a single 3dfx VSA-100 chip clocked at 166MHz, with 32Mb of 166MHz SDRAM and supporting two-sample anti-aliasing, this is the budget runt of 3dfxs new range. However, the 2D image quality is astounding, with vivid colours and an exceptionally sharp picture. The 350MHz RAMDAC places it above budget competition like the 270MHz VideoLogic Vivid! (reviewed issue 38, p82), and also gives it a maximum resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 pixels at 75Hz. The Video2000 score of 1,761 also gives it the budget 2D performance edge over the Vivid! and the Hercules 3D Prophet II MX (reviewed issue 37, p95).

The Voodoo4 promises a 25 per cent 3D performance increase over the Voodoo3, which is a modest claim now. However, running at a resolution of 1,024 x 768 in 16-bit colour on our 128Mb Pentium III/800 machine, the Voodoo4 knocked out an impressive Quake III frame rate of 56.3fps, putting it ahead of the Vivid!, which only managed 38.6fps. However, the cheaper Hercules 32 Prophet II MX still holds its own, with a stunning 71.6fps. The performance drops dramatically if you increase the colour depth to 32-bit though, which slowed down the Voodoo4 to a still usable 35.6fps.

The story was similar with the 3DMark2000 tests, and at the same resolution, the Voodoo4 only managed a score of 3,224 in 16-bit colour, and a disappointing 2,006 in 32-bit colour. The lower scores may in part be due to the tests optimisation for Transform & Lighting (T&L) functions, which arent supported by the Voodoo4, although to be fair this didnt stop the Vivid! from clocking up an impressive score of 3,289 in 32-bit colour. Its also worth noting that the Voodoo4 failed to perform the bump-mapping tests correctly at anything under three passes.

The Voodoo4s main appeal though is GLide support. Despite being open source since December 1999, no-one else offers GLide drivers and, contrary to many beliefs, its far from dead. GLide gives backward-compatibility with early classic 3D titles, and also visually enhances anything using the Unreal engine. So its likely to get more real-world usage than T&L or Environment Mapped Bump Mapping.

We may have to wait for the Voodoo5 6000 to see if 3dfx still has the upper hand in the high-end of graphics development, but for now, the Voodoo4 has great 2D image quality, quick 3D performance and a reasonable price. If you want a good budget GLide solution then this is it, but for overall faster performance, the cheaper Hercules 3D Prophet II MX is the way to go.