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3DFX VELOCITY 100 REVIEW
"3DFX Velocity 100 review featuring Videologic VividXS using a Duron 900Mhz cpu and a Jetway 663AS Pro. Software used was:- 3dmark 99 Max, OpenGL Stars and Quake 3 Arena."
 3DFX's merger with STB opened up the OEM market in a big way, previously 3DFX was a small time player in a market which was dominated by companies like SIS. The main difference between the Velocity 100 and the Voodoo3 range was that the Velocity 100 was supplied with 8MB memory instead of 16MB and the 2nd Texture Mapping Unit was disabled for "memory issues". It was quickly discovered that by applying a registry fix the 2nd TMU could be activated with no ill effect and a nice performance increase. With the 2nd TPU the Velocity 100 performed almost identical to the more expensive Voodoo3 2000. With some benchmarks the Velocity 100 was even faster due to the use of faster SGRAM memory compared to the Voodoo3's slower SDRAM memory.
For this benchmark we are comparing the Velocity to the new Kyro 2 video card. I fully expect the Kyro to win hands down, I picked the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 because like the Velocity it has no hardware transform and lighting which would give any video card which uses it an unfair advantage.
SPECIFICATIONS
Integrated 128-Bit 2D, 3D and video accelerator
8MB high-speed SGRAM memory
AGP 2X - No AGP Texturing
Single Pass, SingleCycle Multi-Texturing
300 MHz RAMDAC
2D Resolutions as high as 2046x1536
3D Resolutions as high as 1600x1200
DVD Hardware Assist
AMD 3D NOW! and Pentium SSE Optimizations
Legacy Support for Windows 3.11, Windows NT 3.51 and OS/2
128-bit 2D Accelerator
300 MHz RAMDAC for flicker free display
2D Resolutions of up to 2046x1536
Microsoft WHQL Certified
Optimized Direct 3D accleration
Optimized OpenGL Support
Designed for Glide 3.0 acceleration
Complete DirectX 5.0 and DirectX 6.0 support
100% hardware triangle setup
32-bit internal graphics pipline
2 texture-mapped, lit pixels per clock
Single pass multi-texturing support (DirectX 6.0 and OpenGL)
Square and non-square texture support
TextureBlend support
Point-Sampled, Bilinear, Trilinear Mip-mapping
Multi-texture
Bump Map
Texture modulation
Light maps
Reflection maps
Detail textures
Environment maps
Procedural textures
Per-pixel perspective-correct texture mapping
Fog: Exponential Fog Table
16-bit floating point depth buffer
8-bit palletized textures
IS THE 3DFX VELOCITY 100 STILL A VIABLE VIDEO CARD?
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GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION
| PROCESSOR |
AMD DURON 900 MHZ |
| VIDEO CARD |
3DFX VELOCITY 100 8MB AGP |
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VIDEOLOGIC VIVID XS KYRO 2 32MB AGP |
| 3DFX DRIVER |
v1.07.00 |
| POWERVR DRIVER |
v1.00.08.0162 |
| MOTHERBOARD |
JETWAY 664AS PRO VIA KT-133 REV1.2 |
| MEMORY |
512MB PC-133 SDRAM |
| OPERATING SYSTEM |
WINDOWS 98 SE |
| DIRECTX VERSION |
v8.1 |
OPENGL STARS
 | 83 |
 | 163 |
| 54 |
| 108 |
| 34 |
| 68 |
3DFX VELOCITY 100 VIDEOLOGIC VIVIXS KYRO 2
COMMENT - "The Kyro 2 performs very well in this benchmark and is almost twice as fast as the Velocity 100 at every resolution tested. So far the only video card to run this test really well is the Kyro 2." |
BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Benchmark Mode Enabled
Fullscreen Enabled
Hardware Only Enabled
Particles Enabled
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QUAKE III ARENA
| 84 |
| 103 |
| 63 |
| 98 |
| 43 |
| 81 |
3DFX VELOCITY 100 VIDEOLOGIC VIVIXS KYRO 2
COMMENT - "The Kyro 2 wins this benchmark easily, as shown in 3dmark 99 max the 3DFX Velocity 100 runs very poorly at 1024x768, image quality is again very good." |
BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Demo001 Benchmark
32Bit Colour Depth
Texture Compression Enabled
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometric Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering
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CONCLUSION"The Velocity 100 is no speed demon, it's showing it's age badly especially at higher resolutions. The Velocity has an optimum resolution of 800x600 and at this resolution you can get very playable frame rates. 3D image quality is very good for a video card which doesn't support 32bit, it's 16bit is vastly superior to most other video card. 2D quality is very clear upto 1024x768 and screen updates are very fast. I recommend the Velocity 100 for light gamers or for general computer use, it will make a great budget video card which costs only $15-$20 on Pricewatch!"
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