Jetboat Superchamps - 3D Accelerator

|  | What is a 3D Accelerator? |  |

In a nutshell a 3D accelerator is a piece of hardware which speeds up the rendering of 3D images. Since most modern games are very 3D intensive many need a 3D accelerator in order to give you the quality and speed of graphics required to be playable.

The actual form a 3D accelerator comes in can vary. The three typical ones are:

- Single 3D/2D add-in board
- An extra board specifically for 3D
- Single 3D/2D chip on the motherboard

Note that the performance of 3D accelerators has increased tremendously over the past few years. Old 3D accelerators may in fact be too slow and have too little memory to be of use with current games.
If you have an old card which is low on memory and performance, you may need to buy a new one. See below for suggested 3D cards.

|  | How do I know if I have one? |  |

If you have bought a new multimedia PC in the last 12 months, then it will almost certainly have some sort of 3D accelerator.

If you have bought a 3D add-in card like a '3Dfx' card - this is a 3D accelerator. Our games work fine with most 3D cards.

If you just can't figure out if you have one or not, you can always just try running the demo of the product you are interested in! There's certainly nothing to lose.

|  | Where do I get a 3D accelerator from? |  |

There are a variety of companies producing such cards, you may want to check out the companies and products below...

- 3Dfx Voodoo 1,2,3, Voodoo Rush, Voodoo Banshee www.3Dfx.com
- S3 Savage 3D, Savage S4 www.s3.com
- ATi Rage Pro Turbo AGP, Rage Pro PCI, Rage LT Pro, Rage 128 www.atitech.com
- Matrox G200, G400 www.matrox.com
- nVidia Riva 128, Riva TNT, Riva TNT2, Riva Vanta www.nvidia.com
- 3D Labs Permedia 2, Permedia 3 www.3Dlabs.com
- Intel i740 www.intel.com
- Videologic PowerVR Neon 250 www.videologic.com
- Rendition Verite V2100 www.rendition.com

The above list is for informational purposes only and is by no means exhaustive.

|  | What are DirectX and Direct3D? |  |

DirectX is the name for a series of software technologies developed by Microsoft. Their purpose is to enable developers to create compelling game experiences on the PC. They allow games to utilise your machine's hardware to it's full. The actual range of these technologies is far reaching but the core ones are:

- Direct3D - Allows fast access to 3D accelerators
- DirectSound - Allows playing and mixing of sounds
- DirectPlay - Allows fast networking
- DirectInput - Allows connection and use of a wide variety of devices (like steering wheels, force feedback joysticks)

For more information about DirectX and Direct3D please go to the DirectX information pages.

|  | What about 3Dfx and Glide? |  |

3Dfx (www.3Dfx.com) were one of the pioneers of high performance 3D on the PC. Their Voodoo card was so popular that the 3Dfx brand become synonymous with 3D accelerators. Right now there are many 3D accelerators as good as or better than the original Voodoo card, including ones made by 3Dfx themselves. The Voodoo card remains a great card for playing 3D games on the PC, though.

Glide is the name of the software technology which allows programmers to access the 3Dfx card's facilities. Because this software was specifically designed for the 3Dfx card it's very fast. This means games which provide a Glide specific version will often perform significantly faster under 3Dfx cards than the Direct3D version. Also, Glide versions often special features not found in other versions of the game.

|  | What about OpenGL? |  |

OpenGL is another software technology (API) which is particularly useful for 3D games programming. In this case the technology was developed by Silicon Graphics.
On the PC, it's use has mainly come about due to Id Software's use of the API on the highly successful Quake series.