3Dfx's Reasons to Boast

In two separate announcements, 3Dfx states that it has retained its lead in the 3D market.

Mercury Research has stated that the Voodoo2 has earned a top rating for the fastest 3D accelerator on the market. Out of the 20 cards tested, the Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo Rush chipsets took fifth and sixth positions. The tests, conducted using Ziff-Davis' 3DWinBench98, focused on 20 other 3D chips including nVidia's Riva 128, ATI's Rage Pro Turbo, Chromatic's Mpact2, 3Dlabs' Permedia II, and Rendition's V2200.

Andy Keane, vice president of marketing for 3Dfx Interactive, said, "We believe the true test of our technology is on cutting-edge games, and it is here that our performance differential is significant and still shows the leading performance in gaming."

In the other announcement, 3Dfx Interactive stated that according to a recent PC Data report, 3Dfx earned 87 percent of the total US retail sales revenues for add-in 3D-only graphics accelerators in 1997. In the report, 3Dfx pointed out that this number is 6.7 times higher than competitor NEC's PowerVR. It may be of interest to note that an NEC report citing Jon Peddie Associates' figures recently said that NEC had a 36 percent market share versus 26 percent for 3Dfx.

"3Dfx Interactive has become a standard for 3D entertainment," said Greg Ballard, president and chief executive officer of 3Dfx Interactive. "Our growth and momentum is based on delivering the best real performance for 3Dgames along with great software titles and strong brand recognition."

PC Data's numbers are acquired through the data it receives from computer retailers, which makes up about 35 percent of the US computer market. "We believe that, in total, the figures from PC Data may actually understate our market share," said Andy Keane, vice president of marketing, 3Dfx Interactive. "On a worldwide basis or with a survey that was more weighted towards smaller, independent stores, our market figures would most likely be higher."