The 3Dlabs company is a popular producer of high performance video cards. Its products are known all over the world for their high quality and good performance characteristics. With the same pricing policy, 3Dlabs is softer than the other competitors.
3Dlabs video cards are compatible with Microsoft operation systems and video drivers. Thus, it works efficiently with different professional design software. Usually, these video cards demonstrate good results in tests with popular games, such as Counter Strike.
Recently, the 3Dlabs company has produced the graphical accelerator Oxygen VX1-16. This modern video card is developed for the usage in workstations of the initial level.
The most interesting feature of the 3Dlabs Oxygen adapter is the implementation of the Virtual Texturing technology, which allows storing up to 256 MB of the system memory for graphical handling. The video system on this platform has 16 MB for a storing frame buffer as well.
The 3Dlabs Oxygen is built on the scalable architecture Jetstream. It uses the graphical processor GLINT R3 that has high efficiency and a performance for the video images processing. The speed is ninety million pixels per second with thirty two digit colors and Z-buffering. The performance of the graphical conveyor is up to eight million polygons per second. The system is provided with the 300 MHz RAMDAC and supports the resolution 1900 x 1200. There is a new driver for the 3Dlabs Oxygen VX1 - PowerThreads SSE OpenGL with Pentium 3 Streaming SIMD extensions. The 3Dlabs Oxygen products of this line also support Microsoft Direct3D for the operation systems Windows 95, 98 and 2000. The video card shows excellent results for the applications of 3D Studio MAX, AutoCAD, Maya, Pro/ENGINEER and SolidWorks.
The expected price of the Oxygen VX1 for AGP 2X is two hundred and ninety nine dollars. The PCI version of the video card with the Alpha processors support will be available later and the price is not announced yet.
3Dlabs proposes the alternative for the Oxygen VK1. This is the Oxygen ACX, which is not an expensive model for work in the Windows NT, Open GL an AutoCAD environment. 3Dlabs performs some optimization for the AutoCAD R13 and R14 users' work. They are going to combine the Oxygen ACX with the SoftEngine 4 from the Vibrant Graphics. Preliminary tests with the Oxygen ACX and SoftEngine 4 approved increasing of the AutoCAD R14 work for almost four hundred percent!
These video cards use the 3Dlabs Permedia graphical processor. Its main characteristics are the following"
- 8 MB SGRAM;
- Resolution 1600 x 1200;
- Compatibility with the 3Dlabs PowerThreads OpenGL 1.1 ICD. This quality permits the support of such CAD applications as SolidWorks and MicroStation under Windows NT.
- Support of Windows 95/98 and Direct 3D.
The expected price of the Oxygen ACX is one hundred and thirty nine dollars. It will be produced in two versions for AGP and PCI slots.
You can see that products of 3Dlabs can find a worth place in the market of video cards. The modern world of the computer hardware appreciates newcomers like this one and they apply to the further development of the video cards industry. There are more advanced products, expected from 3Dlabs in the low-end segment.