March 23 1999 i packed up my gear and traveled 300 km from The Netherlands towards Hannover in Germany to visit the CeBIT '99. This is the largest Consumer Electronic Exhibit / fair which has 28 Halls with companies and manufacturers of Hard- and Software. To give you a picture of how big this thing is .. 7.500 companies attended with a stand at this fair with a size of 400'000 m2. I was there one day, and really i haven't seen it all. Ofcourse we focused mainly on matters that interest you and me. Therefor we visited all known 3D Graphics relations of this site and Processor manufacturers.

First stop, 3dfx ...

3dfx - Ofcourse we went straight ahead to the 3dfx stand to check out some Voodoo3's. Bummer! The only interesting thing on the 3dfx stand where the games and demo's that were running (Duke3D and Aqua-demo). The booth was very small for a firm of that size, the booth was overcrowded and understaffed. We actually saw 2 grumpy staff members here but where almost afraid to ask them something. I've never seen anything like this before and i really don't understand 3dfx's PR anymore. Once the conversation started all info they could give me was a Voodoo3 flyers/handout that where made, but furthermore nothing really interesting here. The only interesting cards they showed where the V3-2000 and the v3-3000. When i asked where the v3-3500 was they couldn't give me a clear anwser. Thats right, they showed only 2 products. I felt up the v3000 up a bit and was working pretty impressive, but then again, i didn't have a clue on what kinda pentium monster was beneith it all.

The v-3500 will be released in May '99, info on v-4000 is coming in small bits but i'm pretty sure it will be a AGP4X board stuffed with 32mb.

Voodoo 3 2000 and Voodoo 3 3000 will be available in Europe from the first week of April.

GigaByte - Gigabyte is on a roll this year. After the release of their GA-630 (read Banshee) card they are continuing to keep up their AGP VGA card line with ofcourse the TNT-2. The followup will be Called the Ga-660. It will come in a 32Mb and16Mb version. Another card that they will make is the GA-650. It will be a S3 Savage4 based card. It seems a lot of manufacturers will be making this crd the upcoming months. It will come in a 8 and 16Mb version with 270MHz RamDAC and AGP4x Support. i hope to bring you a review on these products soon. The products will be released in April this year.

Skywell Technology - The tinyest booth that i visited was the one from Skywell. As you all know i'm very fund of them. they always seem to be able to get into the slipstream of the main competitors like Diamond and Creative. For a sharp price they will bring you high-end good quality products. the same as Gigabyte they will bring us Savage4 and TNT-2 cards approximatly in April.
It seems that nVIDIA has a very hard time to produce mass TNT-2 chips, therefor only the bigger companies will get the chips 1st.

PowerColor - This seasons biggest suprise for me is PowerColor. If you have followed our news lately then you could have read what this manufacturer is going to bring us. if you haven't read it here is a summary:

PowerColor, is releasing the worlds 1st integrated Motherboard. Which means : An Intel BX based motherboard integrated with high-end 3D chips and a Yamaha Audioboard/3D accelarator which is called Gameboard.

GameBoard configurations

• DreamCode - BX-Mobo + nVIDIA Riva TNT 16mb + Yamaha Soundboard
• Dream ??    - BX-Mobo + nVIDIA Riva TNT-2 + Yamaha Soundboard
• DreamRich  - BX-Mobo + 3dfx Voodoo Banshee 16mb + Yamaha Soundboard
• DreamSaga - BX-Mobo + 3dfx Voodoo3 16mb + Yamaha Soundboard
• DreamPop   - BX-Mobo + S3 Savage 4 32/16Mb + Yamaha Soundboard

I have seen all mobo's and believe me they are real ! Now what is the advantage of a board like this ? The Price ! Can you believe that a DreamCode (TNT based board) is going to cost about 198$ ? i have received the DreamCode Today and will publish a revew on it somewhere next week. BTW, there will also be a Voodoo3 based version of the mobo. it will be based upon the V3-2000 series with 16mb ram.

Ofcourse Powercolor will bring us other 'stand-alone' products also, they gave me the honor to take a quick peek at the their development examples of the TNT-2 and Savage4 cards which will be released in April '99

Creative - One of the best looking stands of the fair was the one from Creative labs. Biggest newies are (suprise) the TNT-2 based 3D Blaster and the  3D Blaster Savage4. Both configurations will be equiped with 32Mb ram and will be released in April. I've gotten the chance to play arround with both cards a bit and i must admit that the TNT-2 was working very well ! the same can be said of the Savage4. i hope to bring you reviews on these boards pretty soon.

Diamond - Big , loud and money didn't matter at the Diamond booth (i wish they invested more into their customer support though).

Diamond was demonstrating the S3 Savage 4, nVidia TNT and nVidia TNT2 cards. The Viper V770 was running at 175 / 180 MHz according to Diamond and was very fast. At the booth, the visitors hat the possibility to win these nice RIO MP3-Players.

The Viper V770 has been demonstrated using the Viper Racing-Game most of the time. Mass production will be in April/May.

AMD - AMD did their homework pretty well. They showed of with their flashy K7 700MHz which was actually running at 600MHz. Computers all over the place. Benchmarks all over the place. AMD wanted to give you the 'your welcome at our place' feeling. which was working pretty well.

Intel - Ofcourse Intel was showing their Pentium III based procressor. However the booth was pretty un-comminicative and didn't show much of a suprise. Okay, they were handing out free bags and that was the only reason we stopped to get one. (Hey i'm still dutch you know!)

Conclusion

The fair is so inhuman big that at the end of the day we still hadn't seen 30% of the exhibit. Trends, lets face reality here. The upcoming months TNT-2 and Savage4 will be on all manufacturers list.

S3 willbe quite successful with their new chip, the low- and mid-range market will be filled with cheap Savage4 cards. If you’re looking for a cheap all-in-one solution – go for a Savage4.

All big companies showed TNT2 cards. nVidia strategy seems to be working like a charm,

3dfx itself is will be successfull with Voodoo 3  3dfx offers fast products at a competitive price with good software and hardware compatiblility. Voodoo3 has excelent 3DNow support and simply has made the name to be succesful this year. Another strategic advantage is that their card will be on the shelves faster then all other 3D-players like nVIDIA, S3 and even Matrox.

Copyright 1999 - All rights reserved Hilbert Hagedoorn