New cards from 3DLabs

CADalyst, Oct, 2004

Although 3Dlabs (www.3dlabs.com) had recently announced several new graphics cards, none was available for testing at the time I evaluated cards for this article. As they do become available from 3Dlabs, we expect to cover them in First Look reviews.

Announced in mid-June 2004, the Wildcat Realizm 100 and 200 are AGP 8X graphics cards. Both are based on the Wildcat Realizm VPU (visual processing unit) and support OpenGL Shading Language and DirectX 9 HLSL shader programs.

The Wildcat Realizm 100 ($1,249 MSRP) incorporates 256MB of 256-bit GDDR3 onboard memory for more than 32GB-per-second bandwidth. The card is equipped with two single-link DVI-I connectors, a stereo connector, and two DVI-to-VGA connectors. 3Dlabs' internal testing shows that the Wildcat Realizm 100 delivers 50 frames per second on the SPECviewperf 7.1.1 UGS-03 benchmark test.

The Wildcat Realizm 200 ($1,599 MSRP) incorporates 512MB of onboard memory. It features two dual-link DVI-I connectors and drives the new high-end 9.2-megapixel displays.

Also announced was a Wildcat Realizm Multiview Option Kit for the Wildcat Realizm 200 and 800 ($650 MSRP), which offers field-upgradable support for frame lock and Genlock for these graphics cards. The kit includes an interface card, which requires an additional slot, a jumper cable to connect to the graphics card, and a 6' frame lock cable.

The Wildcat Realizm 800 ($2,799 MSRP) is a PCI Express-based graphics card--a full 16-lane card. It features a Wildcat Realizm VSU (vertex/scalability unit) and dual Wildcat Realizm VPUs, which 3Dlabs says delivers more than 700 GFLOPS (billions of floating-point operations per second) of floating-point graphics processing. Like the Realizm 100 and 200, the Realizm 800 also offers support for OpenGL (1.5) Shading Language and DirectX 9 HLSP shader programs.

In addition to the 512MB of onboard GDDR3 graphics memory, the Wildcat Realizm 800 incorporates 128MB of onboard DirectBurst memory for boosting geometry-intensive applications. The Realizm 800 offers two dual-link DVI-I connectors and a stereo connector. Although a card was not available for testing, 3Dlabs says that the Realizm 800 scores higher than 80 frames per second on the Spec Viewperf 7.1.1 UGS-3 benchmark. We're looking forward to putting this card through its paces in Cadalyst Labs once it becomes available.