You've been hearing about it for months now: 3-D hardware that promises to take your PC game experience to levels never before imagined. Well, now that the technology is here, what should you do about it? Buying any new technology can be intimidating, so we put together this guide to help you sort through the confusing technology and lofty manufacturer claims, and find the right 3-D card.
     
   

We collected ten promising pieces of hardware, seven stand-alone cards that replace your current graphics hardware altogether, and three that are simply 3-D add-in boards that work with your current graphics card. We weren't disappointed. Without question, the right 3-D board can seriously enhance your PC's performance.
     
    There are many factors to questions which need answering before you run out and buy the first board you see on your local dealer's shelf. Should you buy a "stand-alone" card (a card which replaces your current video card instead of working with it) or an "add-in" card (which works in conjunction with your current card)? Will a stand-alone card degrade your trusty DOS and Windows performance? Just what is Direct3D anyway? And how does it work? Will it matter how many game developers decide to support a particular card, as card vendors themselves love to brag about? Finally, is a hot 3-D game card a substitute for simply plunking down the dollars for a faster machine?
     
   
     
    We found some interesting answers. First, you can relax about your DOS and Windows performance. Although they certainly presented some variety in performance, the eight stand-alone cards we tested all performed decently enough. For 3-D game playing, there are two issues that must be considered: How well these boards perform with games ported to work directly - and therefore, only - with specific pieces of hardware, and how well they function as Direct3D accelerators.
     
    Direct3D, Microsoft's attempt at giving users' all the advantages of "device-independence" without the disadvantages of slogging through Windows' notoriously slow graphics interface, has not been adopted with the zeal most experts expected. Basically, cards that support Direct3D (and they all do) will accelerate games ported to Direct3D. This means, hypothetically, that game developers can build one version of their title and still feel confident that a large array of hardware products will accelerate it.
     
   
     
    How each board performed during Direct3D tests varied far too greatly to sum up simply in this introduction; suffice it to say that performance was all over the map. However, as expected, titles using the Direct3D standard generally did not perform as well as titles ported directly to specific pieces of hardware. Nothing matches the experience of a killer 3-D card accelerating a game written specifically to take advantage of it.
     
     
 

 
 

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