On 10 Mar 99, at 15:13, Saeed A. Al-Saeed wrote:

> I want to know what is the deference between  3D processor and 3DFX
> processor.. if I have one of them, is it enough for the highest
> performance in playing games or should I have both of them?..

  3Dfx is one of several companies (perhaps the best known) that make
"accelerator" video card chipsets which are able to offload from the
main CPU many of the low-level operations needed to render 3D images
fairly realistically.

  AMD's K6-2 CPU was originally referred to as K6-3D, because it adds
registers and instructions to the main CPU that are useful for many of
these rendering operations.  Intel has introduced competing
instructions in the Pentium III.

  A video accelerator (and this includes 3D ones) is useful when it is
relatively easy for the main CPU to "describe" the image, and let the
video card fill in the details while the main CPU does something else.
"3D" instructions on the CPU will pay off when it is as fast for the
CPU to do something itself as to describe it.
  So the best results, overall, will be obtained when both are
available.  Use of either requires that software support that feature,
or use a driver (OpenGL or Direct3D) that includes such support.

David G

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