May 23rd, 2000

[3:00 PM] 3dfx Ships Voodoo5 5500, Mac Version Coming In July by Staff In one of the most anticipated announcements in the gaming industry in years, 3dfx has announced that the Voodoo5 5500 AGP will be on retail store shelves this Friday, May 26th. 3dfx has also announced that they are taking pre-orders for the PCI version of the Voodoo5 5500. While today's announcement did not include the release of a Macintosh specific version, 3dfx officials told The Mac Observer that we can expect the Mac version, "...sometime in July." This is indeed good news, and something to look forward to. Meanwhile, 3dfx had this to say about the PC version of the latest Voodoo offering: 3dfx Interactive® Inc. today announced the company has begun shipping its highly-anticipated Voodoo5(tm) 5500 AGP. The product will be available to consumers Friday May 26. Voodoo5 5500 is the only consumer graphics board to offer application-independent, real-time full-scene hardware anti-aliasing (FSAA) that is compatible with all major APIs including Direct3D®, OpenGL® and Glide® titles. It features dual 3dfx VSA-100 (Voodoo Scalable Architecture) processors with the T-Buffer(tm) digital cinematic effects engine and 64MB of total graphics memory. Voodoo5 product delivers a stunning out-of-box experience when compared to what competing products offer. Voodoo5 products were recently demonstrated at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 2000) in Los Angeles, Calif., where 3dfx gave many editors their first opportunity to experience FSAA in action. The results of seeing this technology in action, rather than just anti-aliased screenshots, were overwhelmingly positive. Previously available only in professional visual simulation systems, such as military flight simulators, FSAA removes visual artifacts such as "jaggies" and pixel "popping." Voodoo5 5500 AGP delivers much smoother video-like images that create a dramatically improved immersive experience. "Once you see FSAA in action, you will never want to go back," said James Yu, Hardware editor of The Firing Squad. "After seeing it once, you can't help but notice the flaws in image quality when you go back to playing games without FSAA. When I saw Homeworld on the Voodoo5 5500, I was blown away." "4X FSAA is absolutely stunning ...," reported Billy Wilson of VoodooExtreme. The Voodoo5 5500 AGP includes the T-Buffer digital cinematic effects engine. This exclusive 3dfx technology enables content developers to easily use realism-enhancing digital-Hollywood techniques, such as motion blur, depth-of-field blur, and soft shadows and reflections, previously available only in high-end movie production studios. The Voodoo 5 5500 AGP is available for US$299. You can find more information at the 3dfx web site. The Mac Observer Spin: The Mac Observer staff has gone giddy with anticipation and The Idiots have had to be restrained in "The Closet." The Voodoo5 5500 is the best graphics card for the Mac ever announced and we simply can't wait for it to arrive. 3dfx has hoped to offer a simultaneous release of the Mac and PC version of this card, but this simply was not possible. The company's dedicated Mac team has worked incredibly hard to bring the Mac version to market, and we are ecstatic that this will happen soon. 3dfx