Cards With 3DLabs' Permedia 2 Chip
Diamond Fire GL 1000 Pro, Elsa Winner 2000/office, Hercules Dynamite 3D/GL
I personally can’t help it, but really like the Permedia 2. Although this is certainly a professional card, it amazes me how ’gameable’ the Permedia 2 is as well. Still it’s certainly not worth the investion for any full time gamers, but professionals that like to play a game once in a while should consider nothing else but this chip. The Fire GL 1000 Pro comes even with stereo glasses output, my personal passion. The Fire GL 1000 Pro is currently a lot faster than the Dynamite 3D/GL from Hercules, but I would guess that this is mainly a serious driver issue.
Cards With NEC’s PowerVR PCX2 (add-on Cards)
Videologic Apocalypse 3Dx, Matrox m3D
The PowerVR chip never got the attention it really deserved and I guess that Matrox’ m3D is a little bit late for making this chip really successful. The performance is certainly pretty good, but in GLQuake it can’t compete whatsoever with 3Dfx’ Voodoo. The coolest thing about cards with PowerVR chip is their tinyness and the simplicity of their installation. No pass-through cable, no limitation to only 640x480 3D resolution, these are the pluses of cards with this chip. Low performance with slower CPUs and weak game support are on the negative side. The cards are pretty inexpensive and games written for it look really cool, but the future of this chip is questionable ...
Cards With ATI’s Rage Pro Chip
Asus AGP-V264GT3, ATI Xpert@Work/Play
... don’t run GLQuake or Quake II (GL) unless you’ve got a day for the first demo. ATI told me that they are working on an OpenGL engine, but it’ll take a while ... can you feel the power of GLQuake ... ?
