), a computer must make millions of complex mathematical calculations every second. This can make games and 3D graphics applications slow and jerky as the computer gets caught up rendering 3D images in addition to running the program. 3D accelerators solve this problem. When you install a 3D accelerator, the 3D graphics previously rendered by the CPU (your computer's processor) are now rendered by the 3D accelerator. This significantly increases the performance, visual effects, and drastically improves the 3D experience. III VOODOO5 5500The Voodoo5 5500 is 3Dfx’s latest 3D accelerator. The card features dual 3dfx VSA-100 chips, Real-Time Full-Scene HW Anti-Aliasing, the exclusive T-Buffer Digital Cinematic Effects engine, Z-Buffer/Stencil, 32-bit Z-Buffer/Stencil, 64MB of graphics memory, 32-bit color. Dual 3dfx VSA-1003D objects are broken down into primitive polygons using triangles. The 3D processor(s) then use primitive polygons to perform calculations (Z-Buffering, FFSAA, etc.) The Voodoo5 5500 duel VSA-100 chips are able to process 11 million triangles a second. T-BufferingBasically, T-Buffer technology renders numerous copies of the same scene. The copies are then merged and output to the video. This process dramatically increased the quality of the images displayed. They appear smooth without spatial artifacts .Most 3D cards on the market use some form of FSAA but the 3Dfx’s T-Buffering has other important features like depth-of-field blur. When humans look at things, our eyes focus on the object that we are looking at and not its surroundings. This is why in real life, the only object we can truly see clearly is the object focussed on. In current 3D games, however, there is no “depth of field”; everything is rendered with perfect clarity regardless of how close our virtual “eyes” are supposed to be. Currently many game developers deal with this issue by using a fog effect, so objects t...
