By many Comdex veterans, last year's Fall Comdex (1998) was considered to be more of a disappointment than previous shows in the eye catching Las Vegas area. In spite of its critics, Fall Comdex '98 did hold one very interesting product release that essentially sparked the uproar in the graphics card industry that is finally dying down.

Seated in a glass display case lined with velvet, the first glimpse at what the Voodoo3 was going to look like. The 3dfx announcement came out of the blue and a number of Comdex attendees, present reviewer included, simply stumbled upon the chip while wandering away from VIA Technology's massive booth not more than 30 feet away.

At the Comdex announcement 3dfx (at the time they were known as 3Dfx, you all remember the big 'D' don't ya?) had announced two distinct versions of the Voodoo3, a 2000 and a 3000 model. The 2000 model was supposed to be clocked at 125MHz with 125MHz memory, and the 3000 model was supposed to be clocked at 183MHz with 183MHz memory. Just before its launch, due to relatively small performance differences between the previous generation Voodoo2 SLI setups and a 125MHz Voodoo3 in addition to high yields on Voodoo3 parts, 3dfx made the decision to up the clock speed of the 2000 to a more healthy 143MHz frequency. Unfortunately for users planning on buying the 3000 models, due to yield problems, the expensive price of 183MHz SDRAM and an unproven TNT2 product from NVIDIA, 3dfx dropped the clock on the 3000 model to 166MHz and promised a faster solution later on when such a move would be more viable.

Most users thought that the Voodoo3 3500 clocked at 183MHz with 183MHz memory would live up to the same fate as the 3dfx single card Voodoo2 SLI, and the 0.25 micron Banshee with TV-out. However at this year's E3 Expo 3dfx re-announced that the 3500 would be made available with a few new features that weren't in the original specifications for the card. Now targeted at the hard core gaming enthusiast with a desire for more multimedia features that your run-of-the-mill Voodoo3 or TNT2 equipped with TV-output won't give you.

3dfx finally started shipping the 3500 around 7 months after the first announcement for the Voodoo 3. Because of its support for TV-output as well as TV and FM input, the card is now officially called the Voodoo3 3500 TV and boasts a hefty $250 price tag, the only question that must be asked is whether or not it's worth it. At the release of the Voodoo3 and even the TNT2, the main point that we tried to convey was that both the Voodoo3 and TNT2 are intermediate solutions, they are essentially performance and feature upgrades to previous technologies and aren't based on revolutionary new cores. The "true" next generation graphics cards are due out this fall, and the real performance will come out of the solutions that debut in the next round.

So at the end of the road, when the smoke clears and only the winners are left standing where does the 3500 TV leave you?

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The Basics

The Voodoo3 3500 TV is based on the same Voodoo3 core as the 3000 model that has already made its way into the hands of many gamers. In spite of what 3dfx may claim, the 3500's chip itself is nothing more than a 3000 running at 183MHz, a 10% improvement in clock speed over the 166MHz clock of the 3000. As with all Voodoo3 products, the core and memory clock speeds are identical, meaning that the 3500 also features 183MHz SDRAM. As we investigated with our recent TNT2 roundup, the general requirements for memory is as follows:

Meaning that the 3500, unlike the 3000, must come equipped with 5.5ns SDRAM. Most Voodoo3 3000 boards featured Siemens manufactured 6ns SDRAM chips which generally speaking, had difficulties making it much higher than 180MHz although there have been some extreme cases. The 3500 3dfx sent to AnandTech for evaluation featured a very familiar Hyundai 5.5ns SDRAM outfitting which happens to be the same memory used on a large number of TNT2 Ultra cards. What this also means is that the overclocking potential, at least on the memory side, should be considerable for the 3500 with the highest achievable memory clock centering around the 215 - 230MHz range. Unfortunately the Voodoo3 technology requires that the memory and core operate at the same frequency, and frankly speaking, there is no way the 183MHz 3500 core will be hitting anywhere near 230MHz. As with all previous Voodoo3 boards, the 3500 TV features 16MB of SDRAM, no flexibility there.

The board is available in an AGP 2X compliant part, however as with all previous 3dfx products, the Voodoo3 does not support AGP texturing (the transferring of textures to/from system memory via the AGP bus). This means that the only benefit this spec gives the Voodoo3 is the 66MHz operating frequency of the AGP slot versus the 33MHz of PCI slots.

As with the 3000 model, the 3500 TV features a 350MHz RAMDAC capable of driving resolutions up to 2046 x 1536 at 32-bit color depths (2D) at 75Hz. Unfortunately the image quality of the Voodoo3 3000 and 3500 at that high of a resolution is far from high quality, as the Voodoo3 experiences a severe drop off in 2D image quality after 1600 x 1200.

For 3D rendering support, the Voodoo3 3500 boasts the same capabilities as both previous Voodoo3 boards, including no support for 32-bit color rendering. The 16-bit vs 32-bit rendering debate has seemingly died down and there is no doubt about it that 3dfx's next generation product (after the Voodoo3, in the fall) will in fact support 32-bit color rendering. Until that point, 3dfx users will have to live without 32-bit color rendering support which only recently started becoming very noticeable in games, especially with the release of idSoftware's Q3 Test candidate.

If you're interested in comparing the highest image quality possible on a Voodoo3 using 16-bit color rendering versus that of a TNT2 using 32-bit color rendering, take a look at the below comparison using the most recent version of Q3 Test (1.07).

The Specifications

• 183MHz 128-bit 2D/3D core
• 183 Megapixels per second
• 366 Megatexels per second peak fill rate
• 8 Million polygons per second peak processing power
• Resolution support up to 2046 x 1536
• PCI/AGP Support - No AGP Texturing Support
• 16-bit 3D Rendering Support - No 32-bit 3D Rendering Support
• 350MHz Integrated RAMDAC
• 16MB SDRAM
• NTSC Composite/S-Video Out
• NTSC Composite/S-Video In
• TV/FM Tuner Input
• Direct3D/OpenGL/Glide API Support
• Per pixel perspective correct texture mapping
• 16/24-bit Z buffer
• Support for 8-bit palletized textures

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The Board

The 3500 TV board most closely resembles the 3000, however the resemblance isn't carried much farther than sharing a similar heatsink, which is black on the 3500 and silver on the 3000. The 3500 features eight 2MB SDRAM chips, with six located on the front of the board and the remaining two on the back. The board features two voltage regulators, one near the AGP connector in the same place as the voltage regulator on the 3000 and another one on the opposite end of the board for the FM/TV tuner.

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Just south of the second voltage regulator is a Micronas MSP3430G sound processor for converting the FM/TV input sound signals. The Micronas chip also drives the two audio interface ports at the top of the card for interfacing with your sound card.

The 3500 makes use of a Phillips made FM/TV tuner that takes up the majority of the "real estate" on the 3500's PCB. The FM/TV tuner features both coaxial FM and TV inputs that connect directly to the shielded Phillips tuner. Because of the tuner the 3500's layout is more densely populated with capacitors than the 3000 and 2000, however 3dfx kept the length of the 3500 equal to that of the 3000, only increasing the height of the card by about an inch.

The card features no VGA output, rather a 30-pin Plug & Display output port which has been used for Flat Panel displays in the past but now connects to the 3500's "break-out-box" which contains a split cable for an analog VGA input.

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The P&D port is powered by the Xilinx 9572XL controller that also functions as a sort of bridge between the video capture and the Voodoo3 chip itself therefore allowing 3dfx to leave the Voodoo3's current design unmodified while adding support for a FM/TV tuner and video capture. In theory the Xilinx 9572XL should be able to drive a Digital Flat Panel display off of the 30-pin P&D port on the board.

However nowhere in 3dfx's specifications does the 3500 boast support for the technology, and without the means to test compatibility you can only assume that it doesn't support it. One interesting thing to keep in mind is that the original 3500 spec called for support for the LCDfx digital flat panel connector that 3dfx was going to make use of, however the changing demands of the market forced 3dfx to forgo the flat panel support in the final production design.

Although the 3500 board we reviewed was an AGP version, the design could theoretically be put on a PCI card, whether or not 3dfx would think about something like that is another question. There are a number of factors that need to be taken into consideration if 3dfx is interested in pursuing such a venture. Designing a PCI 3500 would take engineering resources and time that would have to be more than justified by the demand for such a product, so 3dfx would have to investigate the demand for a $250+ PCI gaming card with support for video in/out. At the same time, a 5V PCI version would obviously generate more heat than a 3.3V AGP version, and with the already "toasty" nature of the 3500, a PCI version may pose some heat problems. It's up to 3dfx, but it is possible.

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Performance

As we've repeatedly made note of in this article, the Voodoo3 3500 TV is essentially a 3000 operating at a higher clock speed (both memory and core). So the performance of the 3500 is essentially a certain percentage faster than that of the 3000, therefore eliminating the need to compare performance on every single platform at every single resolution or detail setting.

We tested on two different test beds, using a total of four different processors.  The first test bed was an ABIT BE6 motherboard, with 128MB SDRAM, and an IBM 22GB Ultra ATA 66 HDD.  The three processors used on the first test bed were the Pentium III 600, Pentium III 450, and Pentium II 300.

The second test bed was configured identically to the first one with the with the motherboard and CPU being the only exceptions.  The motherboard used was the Tyan Trinity S1598 MVP3 based Super7 board and the CPU used was the AMD K6-3 450. 

Expendable and 3DMark 99 were used to benchmark Direct3D performance.  All Direct3D tests were run at 1024 x 768 at a 16-bit color depth.  The Expendable timedemo was run by executing 'go -timedemo'

The Quake 3 Arena Test 1.07 benchmark was run at five different preset video settings.  The Fastest, Fast, Normal, and High Quality (32-bit) settings were all selected directly from the test's Graphics Configuration menu.  Due to the Voodoo3's lack of 32-bit rendering support, Trilinear filtering and all 32-bit rendering remained disabled in the High Quality setting which normally uses Trilinear Filtering and 32-bit rendering, this resulted in a High Quality (16-bit) test in order to even out the playing field.  

The Q3Test timedemo was run by typing 'timedemo 1' then 'demo q3testdemo1.dm3' in the console (hit '~' to bring up the console)

The latest drivers available as of August 2, 1999 were used for their respective cards.

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High End Performance - Pentium III 600

Expendable is a very CPU dependent benchmark meaning that its benchmark results are affected more from an increase in CPU performance vs an increase in graphics card performance. What does that mean? If there is a big difference between two graphics cards in Expendable, then it's a really big difference in the performance of the two cards. A difference of 1 fps in the Expendable test is considerable, so keep your eyes peeled for any differences here.

The 3000 and 3500 are on par with each other in terms of performance, the beauty of an alphabetical sort keeps the 3000 at the top of the charts though :)

The increased clock speed of the 3500 gives it the edge over the competition in terms of Direct3D performance, however Matrox and NVIDIA are close behind with very similar scores.

Although it isn't really a "game" the synthetic benchmark, 3DMark 99, proves that at the performance level of a Pentium III 600, 1024 x 768 is a seemingly playable resolution for most Direct3D games on all of the compared cards.

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Glide/OpenGL have always been strong points for 3dfx products, however when their MiniGL became useless with the first tests of Quake 3 many users grew worried about the future performance of 3dfx. After incredible performance tweaking, 3dfx's OpenGL ICD is finally shaping up to be a solid performer. In the two fastest settings of the game, the 3500 topples the competition. However things do change as the details are slowly turned on...

The Normal Graphics Setting is a bit more clean and detailed, and helps kick the 3500 to third place while both the TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra take the glory, although not by an incredible margin.

The trend continues as the High Quality Setting is used. The TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra take the lead, with the 3500 following, this time by a greater margin of difference. If you turn on 32-bit rendering and Trilinear filtering, features not supported by the Voodoo3 (in Q3), the performance of the TNT2 drops significantly.

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Mid-Range Performance - Pentium III 450

With a slight drop in CPU power, the TNT2 and G400 MAX had the opportunity to step in and take 3dfx's place in the Expendable tests. The TNT2 Ultra takes the Direct3D performance award in this round...

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The 3500 as well as the rest of the Voodoo3 lineup take the lead in the two fastest Quake 3 settings. Although the Q3Test isn't necessarily indicative of the final performance of Quake 3 Arena, it is an excellent benchmark especially due to the complex nature of its engine and the flexibility of the configuration options.

At the normal setting, where the TNT2 once rested, now lies the 3500 due to the decrease in the test processor's performance from a Pentium III 600 to a Pentium III 450.

Deja vu? The results in the high quality tests mimic very closely the results of the high quality tests on the Pentium III 600.

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Mid Range Performance - K6-3 450

3DMark was not run do to the instability of the NVIDIA 2.08 drivers in the tests

3dfx stands strong with the Super7 platform, bringing in the top scores in all of the tests with the K6-3 450.

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Low End Performance - Pentium II 300

Take away the powerful CPUs and what do the current "cream of the crop" of 3D accelerators give you? First of all, the differences between graphics core clock speeds almost completely disappears out of most of the results. And secondly, the performance difference between different cards increases dramatically. See for yourselves...

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The Voodoo3 2000, 3000, and 3500 all tie for first place here. The 2000 model doesn't seem so weak anymore does it?

Where raw performance counts, the 3500 delivers, it's 183MHz clock frequency shines above the rest as it holds on to first place in the last OpenGL performance test. But as you're about to find out, 3dfx isn't betting on the performance of the 3500 alone in order to make this $250 investment worth while.

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Heat/Overclocking

The Voodoo3 3500 TV gets considerably warmer than any other current generation graphics card, including the TNT2 Ultra and the Voodoo3 3000. This is due to a combination of factors, primarily the 183MHz clock of the 3500's core as well as the addition of the second voltage regulator used for the Phillips FM/TV tuner.

Since the 3500 TV is an AGP solution, in most Slot-1 systems, it will be placed in close proximity to your CPU, another major producer of heat in your system. Without a well cooled case, the addition of the 3500 to any system can potentially increase the chances of heat related crashes during normal operation.

During normal operation (running through a few tests in 3DMark 99) the TNT2 Ultra core is the coolest at 127 degrees F, followed by the Voodoo3 3000 and then the 3500 at a steamy 151 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep in mind that the TNT2 Ultra is being cooled by a heatsink/fan combo while the 3000 and 3500 are limited to their heatsinks alone. Even with that taken into consideration, the 3500 does get extremely hot. But what affect does that have on the rest of your system?

We conducted a series of temperature tests, centering around normal gaming usage of the cards and took the ambient case temperature over a period of 2 hours per test. The temperatures were recorded every 6 seconds and the end result was averaged and graphed below.

An idle system, just sitting at the Windows desktop with a Pentium III 600 and a 5400 RPM Ultra ATA 33 HDD gave us a starting point of 105 degrees (F) in the generic test case we were using. The case was a roomy mid tower ATX with the only fans operating being the power supply fan, and the fan on the CPU (and on the graphics card in the case of the TNT2 Ultra). The TNT2 Ultra, while running Quake 3 and Expendable increased the ambient temperature by 11 degrees and the Voodoo3 3000 provided an increase of 13 degrees. The 3500 went above and beyond both of those contributors by increasing the ambient case temperature a full 18 degrees.

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As far as overclocking is concerned, the 3500 didn't seem to do too poor of a job.   With a default clock of 183MHz it is already faster than most overclocked 3000 boards, but how high can you push the 3500? Our experience with the 5.5ns Hyundai SDRAM on TNT2 boards indicated that memory speeds of around 220MHz+ can be achieved realistically with this very type of SDRAM, so in the case of the 3500, the memory shouldn't be the limiting factor but how far can the core go?  Anyone's first instincts would be to push a nice round number, and in the case of our tests we picked 200MHz.  Using PowerStrip, the 200MHz core and memory frequencies were achieved on the 3500 without a single crash during the temperature tests we ran for the heat testing of the 3500.  The 200MHz mark is a full 10% increase in clock speed over the default 183MHz clock and resulted in an average performance increase of around 6% across the board. 

Achieving clock speeds above 200MHz will vary from one board to the next and will depend on the yield of your particular 3500, however the chances that you'll be able to push above and beyond 200MHz with the 3500 shouldn't be too bad at all.

Making up for lost time

As mentioned at the start of the article, 3dfx reassured the public that the 3500 would be out as they had originally promised at this year's E3 Expo in Los Angeles. In order to "make up" for not delivering on the original 3500 spec, 3dfx made the 3500 into, in their opinion, the ultimate multimedia card for gamers. The 30-pin P&D port from above connects to a heavily shielded blue cable that leads to 3dfx's "break-out-box."

The cable features a Y-split with one end going directly to the break-out-box and the other end allowing for analog VGA output to your monitor. The plastic break-out-box is connected to the 30-pin P&D connector via a 6" cable that is very well shielded simply due to the nature of the signals that will be traveling through it.

The VGA output connector is connected to the 30-pin P&D cable via a cable that is reminiscent of the old Diamond Monster 3D-2 pass-through cables in terms of thickness. The real monster is the cable going from the P&D connector to the break-out-box itself which measures around 0.5" in diameter. In spite of its thickness the cable is quite flexible and its length makes connecting your TV/VCR/Camcorder to the break-out-box much easier if your computer is far away from any of those devices.

The plastic break-out-box features 4 inputs and 4 outputs cleverly indicated by an arrow pointing "in" to the break-out-box and an arrow pointing "out" of the box. The box features L/R RCA audio ports, a composite RCA video port, and the obligatory S-Video port for high quality video input and output.

The bottom of the box features 6 rubber pads designed to keep the box from slipping around on wood floors or desktop surfaces. The box itself is smaller than a CD and is much more manageable than the Matrox Marvel G200's break-out-box that performs essentially the same tasks.

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Video Output

Just like the Voodoo3 3000, the 3500 TV's TV-output is driven by the Brooktree 869 controller placed on the back of the board. However as our own comparison of TV-output image quality illustrated, not all Brooktree implementations are created equal.

Luckily that statement means good things for the 3500, as the picture quality of the TV-output was top notch, definitely superior to that of any other graphics card with TV-output ever reviewed on AnandTech, including the Matrox Marvel G200 and the G400. The strengths of the 3500's TV output doesn't lay in its sharpness, as displaying text on our Sony test TV screen proved the display to be very blurry and not well defined at all. Where the 3500 did excel in was where the type of user that would buy a 3500 would use it, in games.

In idSoftware's Quake 3 Arena Test, the 3500 easily outperformed all competing solutions with TV output in terms of the resulting image quality on the TV, the results were truly amazing. Although it seems out of place commending 3dfx on image quality after the performance vs image quality debates of the past few years, credit has to be given where credit is due, and for the 3500, the TV output is truly top notch for gamers.

For users looking to run presentations or use the TV output for word processing or other applications where sharpness is more important than how vibrant the colors appear on the TV screen, then the 3500 most likely won't be your ideal choice. In those cases, the 3500 is easily outpaced by the Matrox G400 and the Marvel G200.

The Brooktree 869 does allow for simultaneous output to TV and your monitor, however since the 3500 only allows for a single video output both your monitor and TV must use the exact same resolution/refresh rate. For the Brooktree 869 implementation on the 3500 that means that 640 x 480 and 800 x 600 are the only two resolutions that can be used in conjunction with TV output. During our tests on the 3500, enabling TV output while leaving the display enabled on the monitor sometimes resulted in distorted colors on the monitor while the TV's picture remained untouched. The problem seemed to occur randomly and also has been known to occur with some ATI products that feature TV output as well.

The 3500's 3dfx TV control panel does allow for the size, color, and sharpness to be controlled via sliders within the utility. Enabling/disabling TV output as well as enabling disabling monitor output (when TV out is enabled) is also controlled from within the 3dfx TV control panel.

More Driver Screen Shots

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Video Input

The 3 RCA and 1 S-Video output ports are complemented by 3 RCA and another S-Video input ports that start to give meaning to the 3500 TV name. The inputs allow for still frame and full motion video capture from your TV/VCR/DVD/Camcorder or any other device with either RCA or S-Video output.

The input is controlled using 3dfx's bundled VisualReality software. VisualReality is essentially like a TV remote that sits on your desktop, you can select the input source for your signal (Composite, S-Video, or Coaxial) and you can view the signal coming in from your source either in a window or full screen.	Click to Enlarge
There is nothing revolutionary about VisualReality, Matrox did it before 3dfx with their PC-VCR Remote, and ATI did it before Matrox with their first All in Wonder card.

VisualReality also gives you the option of freezing a particular frame of video, and even capturing the still picture to your hard drive. Once again, these two features aren't revolutionary, but they are nice to include as they are things neither your TV, VCR, nor DVD player will do. While it's doubtful that there are many gamers out there losing sleep over not having the ability to capture stills from their TVs or VCRs, it is a cool feature to have, although not worth the $250 price tag by a long shot.

While the Video Output of the 3500 was excellent, the same can't be said about its input. What you first need to understand is 3dfx is targeting the 3500 TV at gamers, not at home video enthusiasts, however they are providing the hard core gamers with something they've honestly never been given before, high performance and video in. Matrox and ATI have been, in the past, the only offerings for users that wanted video input as well as the ability to play games. Unfortunately neither Matrox or ATI (G400 excluded which still hasn’t found its way into the mass retail market) have been able to release a hard core gaming solution with video capture features. 3dfx attempted to succeed where those two failed with the 3500 TV, and from an informal interview we conducted with 3dfx behind closed doors at this year's E3 we gathered the same. Were they successful?

3dfx accomplished what they set out to do, but between the Matrox Marvel G200, the ATI All in Wonder 128, and the Voodoo3 3500 TV, the 3500 TV has by far the worst capture quality of the three. Capturing still shots directly from a DVD player using an S-Video cable resulted in the below two screen captures from Bad Boys.

As you can see, the quality isn't the best in the world, the reasoning behind it is the 320 x 240 resolution limitation of the captures.  The thumbnails look fine, but click on them to view the captures at 640 x 480 and you'll see where the 320 x 240 resolution limitation can be a problem.

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TV-Tuner

The Phillips FM/TV Tuner built on to the 3500 is essentially the silver box you see sitting on the card. The two coaxial inputs on the connector plate are, from top to bottom, for the FM and TV inputs respectively. The same VisualReality application is used for the TV tuner input, and when using the coaxial input the remote control becomes useful as it now controls channel tuning. The same capture options apply to the TV-Tuner as it uses the same VisualReality application we just talked about.

The TV window is fully scalable up to a full screen resolution, as discussed before, and a few unique features such as channel blocking (for parents) as well as closed captioning are included in the VisualReality application. The ability to zoom in the TV window is also a neat feature, and to top of the feature list is the ability to preview many channels at once and choose different "skins" for your remote control, sort of like the ever-so-popular skins for Winamp, the MP3 player.

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Brightness, contrast, color and tint controls are provided in the Video Settings tab of the 3dfx TV properties panel. The 3dfx TV properties panel is where you can set what channels you want blocked as well as change their blocked passwords. Using the Video Capture and Timed Record tabs, your PC can turn into a VCR. You can select what resolution you want to capture still images in (up to 640 x 480) and what resolution you want to capture video streams in. Unfortunately you are limited to 320 x 240 or 160 x 120 when you're capturing video streams in either AVI or MPEG2 format.

The FM Tuner uses a separate application, 3dfx FM, that lets you capture, you guessed it, audio. The FM application also lets you preset up to 9 radio stations (if it could only weed out the annoying radio announcers) as well as provide you with all the standard FM tuner functions.

Web TV

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With the release of Windows 98, Microsoft has included their WebTV for Windows software that allows for a whole new way to watch TV using your PC. WebTV for Windows is nothing like the set top boxes that allow you to browse the internet on your TV without a computer. WebTV for Windows should allow a whole new level of interactive TV - once it is completely supported that is.

A program guide is downloaded and shows you everything that is on in plain text. A small preview of the channel is shown at right. You can then select what you want to watch with the click of the mouse.

The 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 is compatible with WebTV, and it can be a useful feature as watching TV on your PC in a window while you work is sometimes much easier than watching TV on your TV that is 10 - 20 feet away from your PC. Unfortunately, a program guide for my area was unavailable, so none of that information is filled out in the picture above. However, it is quite clear that the interface is very clean, working much like some DSS programming guides. 

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Video Editing

The 3500 does come bundled with a copy of Ulead's Video Studio for editing things like home videos, once again keeping in mind that the 3500 was not intended to be a professional home video editing solution.   Video Studio isn't an outstanding program at all, actually its only strong point is its ease of use as it pales in comparison to more professional packages such as Premier and even the professional version of the Ulead package.  It's not bad for a free piece of bundled software, but it's not great either.

The 3500 supports full motion video captures of up to 720 x 480 (NTSC) or 720 x 576 (PAL) in either uncompressed AVI format or using MPEG-2 compression.  This obviously doesn't leave you with a handful of options to choose from when capturing video, and our basic counting skills tells us we're left with two options, AVI or MPEG-2.  For the home user, the better option would be MPEG-2, however an even better option is a not included but definitely desired support for Motion JPEG which is what the Matrox Marvel G200 uses.  MJPEG manages disk space much better than both of the above storage methods and is much better for video editing, if you plan on editing more than a couple minutes of video on the 3500 then be prepared to eat up a lot of hard disk space.  In the end, MJPEG can always be converted to MPEG-2, so the 3500's video capture feature does leave a little more to be desired from.  In retrospect, the Matrox Marvel G200 couldn't hold the 3500's jock in terms of gaming performance.

It's a tradeoff, but once again, the 3500 TV was never intended to be a high quality video editing solution, rather a cool set of multimedia add-ons to a hard core gaming solution.

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Conclusion

Had the Voodoo3 3500 been released with the rest of the Voodoo3 line earlier this year, it would've been an easy recommendation to make.  However now, close to the year's end, a "go out and pick one up" recommendation is very difficult to make.  The 3500 will set you back at least $200 with the current estimates at cost being around $250, and even for a gaming solution, that is pushing the budget quite a bit.  If you do happen to have $250 to kill, here's another thing you need to take into consideration: the true "next-generation" graphics accelerators are going to begin shipping before the year's end, we've all known about this and it should come as no surprise, so investing $250 in the fastest 3dfx product today will most likely take you out of the running for spending $250 in 2 - 3 months on a product that'll most likely give you 2 - 3x the gaming performance.

If you need a graphics card now, your best bet would be to buy the cheapest thing you can get your hands on that does the job you need it to do.  The Voodoo3 3500 TV is a decent solution, but at this point in time it won't be a sound investment, there is too much just around the corner for the 3500 TV to be a "good deal." 

3dfx has basically committed to an October release of their next generation product, and with rumors flying around about a September release of NVIDIA's next product, do you really want to spend $250 on "old" technology?

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