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Background:
Known for its workstation-class accelerators, 3Dlabs' Permedia (pervasive multimedia) line was designed to break into the mainstream PC market. The lackluster 3D game performance of the first two generations of the chip, however, made them popular only in the Windows NT space. Executives at 3Dlabs expect Permedia 3 to broaden 3Dlabs' appeal.
Timing:
Graphics chipmakers are notorious for overpromising delivery dates, and 3Dlabs has been one of the worst offenders. Currently, the company expects Permedia 3-based boards to be available at the beginning of 1999. But with samples of the chip not yet available, there's no predicting actual ship dates.
Special Features:
Like the RIVA TNT and the 3D-only Voodoo 2, Permedia 3 will have the ability to process two textures in a single clock cycle. That's a useful feature for games such as Quake II and upcoming DirectX 6.0 titles that take advantage of multitexturing. According to 3Dlabs, Permedia 3 will also be the only chip capable of both bump mapping and applying a surface texture in a single clock cycle.
Permedia 3 will feature hardware support for "virtual texturing," caching frequently used textures in local graphics memory. This is designed to provide greater efficiency when accessing textures stored in main system memory, bringing them over the PCI or AGP bus.
Game Performance:
On paper, the specs look great. Running at 125 MHz with support for single-pass multitexturing, Permedia 3 should run faster than Voodoo 2. But remember: that's on paper.
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