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Worst job in the world?
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Price: $299 (12MB), $229 (8MB) Contact: www.soundblaster.com PROS: King of the Quake II-accelerator hill (for now); great API support. CONS: Direct3D drivers still need some tweaking; expensive; 3D-only. 
Without a doubt, the mostly hotly anticipated chipset for 1998 has been 3Dfx's Voodoo2, 3Dfx's first new chipset in almost two years. It's a testimony to the first Voodoo's staying power in this rapidly evolving market. Voodoo2 adds several rendering features, including trilinear per-pixel MIP-mapping, a more advanced - and computationally intensive - technique to achieve better filtering. Also new for Voodoo2 is a full triangle setup engine, further off-loading rendering duties from the CPU.
The version of Creative's 3D Blaster Voodoo2 we tested packs 12MB of memory onto a single board (4MB frame buffer and 4MB for each of the texel processors) and comes in at a rather steep $299. A good price for a 12MB board, but it's still 3D-only, and it's still $300 simoleons. For those truly intent on having the fastest 3D on the block, you can strap two of these guys together using 3Dfx's SLI technology - and another $300 - and have yourself one hell of a party. Looking at the 3D WinBench 98 numbers, this 3D Blaster is the hands-down best of the lot on both boxes, and at both resolutions. But 3D Blaster's numbers running Direct3D games don't make it the clear winner, and in several cases it was bested by original Voodoo parts. In some cases, the 3D Blaster was simply waiting for the CPU to give it more triangles, but in others, it became apparent that the Direct3D drivers are still in need of some tuning. For Quake II on the baseline system, 3D Blaster turned in numbers similar to the Quantum3D Obsidian, but on high-end rigs, nothing else even comes close. Voodoo2 has reestablished 3Dfx's position as "on the bleeding edge" of 3D performance, and Creative's 3D Blaster will let you burn through Quake II with a vengeance. But in order to beat rival board-maker Diamond Multimedia to market, Creative opted to use 3Dfx's reference drivers, whose Direct3D performance is not all there yet, and while this performance will almost certainly head north, it's not quite what we expected. Still, it is Voodoo2, and Direct3D performance is by no means shabby, so if you've got to do Voodoo2, then check this guy out. - DS
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