.gif)
Rendition (company)
Encyclopedia
Rendition was a maker of 3D graphics chipsets in the mid- to late-90's. They were known for products such as the Vérité 1000 and Vérité 2x00 and for being one of the first 3D chipset makers to directly work with Quake developer John Carmack to make a hardware-accelerated version of the game (vQuake). Rendition's major competitor at the time was 3Dfx
. Their proprietary rendering API's were Speedy3D (for DOS) and RRedline (for Windows).
Released in 1996, Rendition's V1000 chipset
was notable for its RISC
-based architecture. The V1000 was one of the first consumer 3D accelerator cards truly capable of delivering playable performance with significantly improved graphics quality. UNIX/workstations had long used intelligent coprocessor/microprocessor boards to accelerate display processing. The V1000 was the first PC graphics controller to utilize a programmable core to render 3D-graphics. V1000 was both faster and more advanced (in terms of features) than competitors such as the Matrox
Millennium, ATI Rage/3D, and S3 Virge3D. Only 3DFX's Voodoo Graphics was faster, but unlike the 3DFX Voodoo, the V1000 included 2D/VGA capability making it the only acceptably fast single-board solution for 3D-gaming.
Vérité supported a local framebuffer of up to 4 MB EDO DRAM, on a 64-bit bus (for a theoretical 400 MB/s bandwidth). Aside from 3D-gaming, Vérité contained an IBM VGA compatible display-controller, and served as a traditional 2D/GUI accelerator for the Windows operating system.
In 1995, before it had shipped, Vérité received a marketing boon from board partner Number Nine Visual Technology
:
(Ironically, Number Nine later cancelled their Vérité products. And in the book Masters of Doom, Carmack cited bad experiences with programming the Vérité as the reason for id's shift away from proprietary APIs toward the industry-standard OpenGL
.)
The V1000 was fairly popular when it was launched. At least 3 companies sold Vérité boards: the Creative Labs
3D Blaster PCI, the Sierra
Screamin' 3D, the Canopus
Total 3D, and the Intergraph
Reactor (later renamed Intense 3D 100). A handful of software titles shipped with V1000 support. As the ATI Rage/3D, S3 Virge/3D, and Matrox Mystique delivered 3D/graphics of questionable benefit, id Software
's vQuake and Eidos's Tomb Raider
were influential in fueling consumer interest in 3D/gaming hardware. The Vérité (and Voodoo) ports added 16-bit color rendering, bilinear filtering
, per-polygon MIP mapping
, and edge anti-aliasing
to the game's 3D-visuals. Released in time for Christmas 1996, both vQuake and Tomb Raider demonstrated the V1000's 3D/hardware to be both faster and better-looking than software-rendering on even the most powerful host-CPU.
An interesting piece of V1000's technology was its use of bus master DMA
transfers for data transfer across the PCI bus. This allowed the board to transfer data much more efficiently than with the alternative FIFO
mode of the bus. Unfortunately, the immaturity of the PCI bus at the time, and the limited use of busmastering in general in systems of the day, caused DMA bugs to surface with Vérité. If a motherboard chipset wasn't capable of DMA, Vérité was forced to operate in FIFO mode and performance dropped dramatically. Additionally, on some motherboards, DMA support was incomplete or improperly implemented and speed was quite poor. Both of these issues combined to cause frequent problems for owners of the V1000. Rendition had a DMA test utility to benchmark a motherboard's support of DMA transfers. Some DOS games with Speedy3D
Vérité support, such as IndyCar Racing II
, offered a mode using DMA and a mode using FIFO, in order to bypass these issues.
The Vérité performed triangle setup in hardware. Rendition frequently touted its setup-engine as an advantage against 3Dfx's Voodoo Graphics, because hardware-setup reduced the host CPU's processing requirements for drawing complex 3D-scenes. Unfortunately, the Vérité's 3D/engine lacked the necessary fillrate to capitalize on this advantage; the V1000's pixel-fillrate was, at best, roughly 25Mpixels/second (little more than half that of the Voodoo Graphics.) Design limitation prevented V1000 from sustaining that level in many games (i.e. when the software uses (z-buffering
.) While the Voodoo did become the accelerator of choice for high-budget 3D/gamers, the V1000's triangle-setup and integrated 2D/VGA core attracted many gamers looking to upgrade on a modest budget.
Outside of 3D/gaming, V1000's (2D) performance was sub-par in almost every way. On the extreme, in regular MCGA/VGA resolution or "Mode X
", the V1000's performance was embarrassingly slow; older MS-DOS games (such as Doom) ran at near slideshow speeds, even on a top-of-the-line host-CPU (Pentium 166 MHz). Rendition introduced "renutil", an MS-DOS utility, to address performance in MCGA graphics mode. The utility redirected MCGA (VGA-compatible) display-mode setup to an equivalent VESA display-mode, bypassing the slow Vérité's VGA-core. The utility worked with all MCGA games, but was completely incompatible with games using "Mode X" VGA display-mode, which could not be emulated using the VESA-mode. Within Windows 95
, the V1000 was passable, scoring neither top nor bottom in ZDnet's benchmark-suite. In VESA VBE 2.0
display-mode, Vérité's speed was outstanding, comparable to other top-rated cards of the era (such as the Matrox and ARK Logic PCI VGA chipsets.)
While Rendition had tried to craft the V1000 to support many application programming interface
s (APIs), these APIs were in their infancy at the time. For example, Microsoft's Direct3D
standard was in rapid development with major changes occurring. V1000 was not optimized for this new Direct3D standard. However, this was more the fault of the API because Direct3D, at the time, lacked support for DMA
transfers. The design of V1000, with its RISC core, was one of programmability. Because the GPU
was not "hardwired" as ASICs are, the chip could potentially adapt to newer or differing standards than it was initially designed for. Performance limitations, however, inevitably dictated that the chip was not able to grow significantly. OpenGL
support, for example, was very limited on V1000.
Rendition's 2nd generation architecture consisted of the Vérité V2100 and V2200. The chips were refined versions of the V1000 technology, most notably offering a single-cycle pixel
computation (the V1000 took more than a single clock cycle to calculate each pixel). This boosted the chips' fillrate nearly two-fold, and combined with faster memory and a slightly faster core clock rate, offered performance modestly ahead of 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics (the benchmark of the time).
These two chips were identical in every way other than clock speed, with the V2100 being used as a "value"-oriented chip. V2100 was typically clocked at 40-45 MHz, while V2200 was typically seen at 55-60 MHz. The V2100 only saw implementation on one board, the Diamond Multimedia
Stealth II S220 PCI with 4 MB SGRAM, which was offered at $100 initially but quickly dropped to $50 due to limited demand. The Stealth II even received a BIOS update later in its life to up the clock speed of the V2100 to the same level as a V2200, as an attempt to boost interest in the card. The V2200 was seen on several cards, most notably the Hercules Thriller 3D offered in both AGP
and PCI formats, with 4 MB or 8 MB SGRAM. V2200 offered a 55 megapixel/second fillrate with all of the features expected of a 3D accelerator at the time. Additions to the 2D and video acceleration improved performance and allowed hardware acceleration of DVD
playback. The new chips were designed for Microsoft Windows 9x
and NT 4
.
Rendition and Hercules were at one point cooperating on a "Thriller Conspiracy" project which combined a Fujitsu
FXG-1 "Pinolite" geometry processor with a V2200 core to create a gaming graphics card with a full transform and lighting (T&L) engine years before the NVIDIA GeForce 256
. This board, designed to further reduce the load placed upon the system's CPU, never made it to market. Rumors spread that it was to be launched during Summer 1998, with a 9 MB board (1 MB for the Pinolite) costing $149 USD
. Preliminary benchmarks showed very consistent performance regardless of the system's CPU speed. Unfortunately, by the time it would have launched, there were far more powerful accelerators available, such as NVIDIA's RIVA TNT
and 3Dfx's Voodoo 2, that would have significantly overshadowed this board. photo
One of the most peculiar graphics boards ever made was part of the V2200 family. The Jazz Multimedia Outlaw 3D "Bonnie & Clyde" combined both an AGP and a PCI connector on the same board. To use one or the other the user simply flipped the card and metal edge bracket over and plugged it in. photo
process at IBM and would have replaced the V2200 as Rendition's high-end chipset in early 1999. This chipset was never released. After several delays, Rendition was purchased by Micron Technology
and the project was cancelled.
, a stunning level of complexity for the day. Although this embedded memory design was later used in Micron’s AMD Athlon
chipset codenamed "Mamba", the actual graphics chip never surfaced.
Previewed Micron "SuperChip2" motherboard chipset specifications:http://www.my-esm.com/story/OEG19990407S0013
s. Rendition originally provided developers with Speedy3D
, a DOS
-based API, as most game development in 1995-96 was still centered on DOS. Later, Rendition released their Win32
version of the API, branded RRedline
. Like 3Dfx, Rendition was one of the first 3D chipset makers to see the value of homebrew programming by releasing a free programming API to the public. In much the same manner as 3Dfx, Rendition also hosted a programming competition called "Take it to the RRedline" to allow homebrew programmers to show off their abilities (as well as Rendition's product).
Notable game titles with native Rendition API support included; Descent II
, Grand Prix Legends
, IndyCar Racing II
, the Myth
games, Sierra's NASCAR, Quake, Quake II
, EF2000 V2.0, EF2000 with Graphics+/TACTCOM patch and Tomb Raider
.
, the NVIDIA RIVA 128
, and the Matrox Mystique
, but it turned into a liability as consumers discovered its barely adequate performance and various display oddities. The V2x00 series 2D accelerator was somewhat improved but it again didn't keep pace and was far behind the best 2D accelerators of the day. In addition, Rendition could never seem to keep up with 3Dfx
and NVIDIA
in terms of 3D performance. The V2200 was late to market, and performed no better than previous-generation chips from competitors. The V2x00 was late due to an apparent sabotage of the 4 input NAND gate circuit's output resistance - the result was that the chip couldn't be fully clocked. It took nearly six months to discover this problem but by then it was too late. Despite these delays, the V2x00 shipped with fully conformant OpenGL and D3D drivers. Even with drivers better than the competition at the time, demand simply wasn't there for V2x00 because of sub par performance relative to the card's peers and the inevitable release of even faster cards during this time of rapid change within the industry.
The company was eventually purchased by Micron, who kept the development team intact as a source of embedded graphics solutions for their own line of motherboard
s. Rendition's engineers were initially excited by the prospect of utilizing Micron's embedded DRAM technology for a high-end graphics processor, but such a product never surfaced commercially.
Today the Rendition brand exists only as the value line of RAM by Micron Technology
's consumer memory division, Crucial Technology.
3dfx
3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field for several years in the late 1990s until 2000 when it underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry...
. Their proprietary rendering API's were Speedy3D (for DOS) and RRedline (for Windows).
Vérité V1000
Chipset
A chipset, PC chipset, or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product.- Computers :...
was notable for its RISC
Reduced instruction set computer
Reduced instruction set computing, or RISC , is a CPU design strategy based on the insight that simplified instructions can provide higher performance if this simplicity enables much faster execution of each instruction. A computer based on this strategy is a reduced instruction set computer...
-based architecture. The V1000 was one of the first consumer 3D accelerator cards truly capable of delivering playable performance with significantly improved graphics quality. UNIX/workstations had long used intelligent coprocessor/microprocessor boards to accelerate display processing. The V1000 was the first PC graphics controller to utilize a programmable core to render 3D-graphics. V1000 was both faster and more advanced (in terms of features) than competitors such as the Matrox
Matrox
Matrox is a producer of video card components and equipment for personal computers. Based in Dorval, Quebec, Canada it was founded by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić....
Millennium, ATI Rage/3D, and S3 Virge3D. Only 3DFX's Voodoo Graphics was faster, but unlike the 3DFX Voodoo, the V1000 included 2D/VGA capability making it the only acceptably fast single-board solution for 3D-gaming.
Vérité supported a local framebuffer of up to 4 MB EDO DRAM, on a 64-bit bus (for a theoretical 400 MB/s bandwidth). Aside from 3D-gaming, Vérité contained an IBM VGA compatible display-controller, and served as a traditional 2D/GUI accelerator for the Windows operating system.
In 1995, before it had shipped, Vérité received a marketing boon from board partner Number Nine Visual Technology
Number Nine Visual Technology
Number Nine Visual Technology Corporation was a manufacturer of video graphics chips and cards from 1982 to 1999. Number Nine developed the first 128-bit graphics processor , as well as the first 256-color and 16.8 million color cards....
:
"We at id have been fans of the Vérité architecture since we first saw the spec, several months back." stated John Carmack, technical director of id Software, creators of the popular action game Doom. "Now that we have some experience with the chip, we're even more pleased with it; in fact, it's our clear favorite among 3D accelerators." In discussing the development of their next generation software title QUAKE(tm), John goes on to say "... Vérité will be the premier platform for Quake."
(Ironically, Number Nine later cancelled their Vérité products. And in the book Masters of Doom, Carmack cited bad experiences with programming the Vérité as the reason for id's shift away from proprietary APIs toward the industry-standard OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
.)
The V1000 was fairly popular when it was launched. At least 3 companies sold Vérité boards: the Creative Labs
Creative Technology
Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal...
3D Blaster PCI, the Sierra
Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
Screamin' 3D, the Canopus
Canopus Corporation
Canopus Co., Ltd. was a manufacturer of video editing cards and video editing software. The company's focus shifted from enthusiast video cards to other areas of video hardware and software after the release of their Spectra line of products. Some of their previous competitors included Matrox and...
Total 3D, and the Intergraph
Intergraph
Intergraph Corporation is an American software development and services company. It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the world. Intergraph operates through two divisions: Process, Power & Marine and Security,...
Reactor (later renamed Intense 3D 100). A handful of software titles shipped with V1000 support. As the ATI Rage/3D, S3 Virge/3D, and Matrox Mystique delivered 3D/graphics of questionable benefit, id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
's vQuake and Eidos's Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was originally released in 1996 for the Sega Saturn, with MS-DOS and PlayStation versions following shortly thereafter...
were influential in fueling consumer interest in 3D/gaming hardware. The Vérité (and Voodoo) ports added 16-bit color rendering, bilinear filtering
Bilinear filtering
Bilinear filtering is a texture filtering method used to smooth textures when displayed larger or smaller than they actually are.Most of the time, when drawing a textured shape on the screen, the texture is not displayed exactly as it is stored, without any distortion...
, per-polygon MIP mapping
Mipmap
In 3D computer graphics texture filtering, MIP maps are pre-calculated, optimized collections of images that accompany a main texture, intended to increase rendering speed and reduce aliasing artifacts. They are widely used in 3D computer games, flight simulators and other 3D imaging systems. The...
, and edge anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
to the game's 3D-visuals. Released in time for Christmas 1996, both vQuake and Tomb Raider demonstrated the V1000's 3D/hardware to be both faster and better-looking than software-rendering on even the most powerful host-CPU.
An interesting piece of V1000's technology was its use of bus master DMA
Direct memory access
Direct memory access is a feature of modern computers that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory independently of the central processing unit ....
transfers for data transfer across the PCI bus. This allowed the board to transfer data much more efficiently than with the alternative FIFO
FIFO
FIFO is an acronym for First In, First Out, an abstraction related to ways of organizing and manipulation of data relative to time and prioritization...
mode of the bus. Unfortunately, the immaturity of the PCI bus at the time, and the limited use of busmastering in general in systems of the day, caused DMA bugs to surface with Vérité. If a motherboard chipset wasn't capable of DMA, Vérité was forced to operate in FIFO mode and performance dropped dramatically. Additionally, on some motherboards, DMA support was incomplete or improperly implemented and speed was quite poor. Both of these issues combined to cause frequent problems for owners of the V1000. Rendition had a DMA test utility to benchmark a motherboard's support of DMA transfers. Some DOS games with Speedy3D
Redline (graphics API)
RRedline is the name of a proprietary Windows application programming interface for graphics cards made by Rendition. The original DOS version of the API was named Speedy3D. The company was bought out by Micron as the consumer market settled around NVIDIA and ATI Technologies as the dominant...
Vérité support, such as IndyCar Racing II
IndyCar Racing II
IndyCar Racing II is a racing game developed by Papyrus Design Group. It is the sequel to IndyCar Racing, and was released in 1995. A little over a year later, the game was re-released, with a few minor upgrades, under the title CART Racing...
, offered a mode using DMA and a mode using FIFO, in order to bypass these issues.
The Vérité performed triangle setup in hardware. Rendition frequently touted its setup-engine as an advantage against 3Dfx's Voodoo Graphics, because hardware-setup reduced the host CPU's processing requirements for drawing complex 3D-scenes. Unfortunately, the Vérité's 3D/engine lacked the necessary fillrate to capitalize on this advantage; the V1000's pixel-fillrate was, at best, roughly 25Mpixels/second (little more than half that of the Voodoo Graphics.) Design limitation prevented V1000 from sustaining that level in many games (i.e. when the software uses (z-buffering
Z-buffering
In computer graphics, z-buffering is the management of image depth coordinates in three-dimensional graphics, usually done in hardware, sometimes in software. It is one solution to the visibility problem, which is the problem of deciding which elements of a rendered scene are visible, and which...
.) While the Voodoo did become the accelerator of choice for high-budget 3D/gamers, the V1000's triangle-setup and integrated 2D/VGA core attracted many gamers looking to upgrade on a modest budget.
Outside of 3D/gaming, V1000's (2D) performance was sub-par in almost every way. On the extreme, in regular MCGA/VGA resolution or "Mode X
Mode X
Mode X is an alternative video graphics display mode of the IBM VGA graphics hardware that was popularized by Michael Abrash, first published in July 1991 in Dr...
", the V1000's performance was embarrassingly slow; older MS-DOS games (such as Doom) ran at near slideshow speeds, even on a top-of-the-line host-CPU (Pentium 166 MHz). Rendition introduced "renutil", an MS-DOS utility, to address performance in MCGA graphics mode. The utility redirected MCGA (VGA-compatible) display-mode setup to an equivalent VESA display-mode, bypassing the slow Vérité's VGA-core. The utility worked with all MCGA games, but was completely incompatible with games using "Mode X" VGA display-mode, which could not be emulated using the VESA-mode. Within Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
, the V1000 was passable, scoring neither top nor bottom in ZDnet's benchmark-suite. In VESA VBE 2.0
VESA BIOS Extensions
VESA BIOS Extensions is a VESA standard, currently at version 3, that defines the interface that can be used by software to access compliant video boards at high resolutions and bit depths...
display-mode, Vérité's speed was outstanding, comparable to other top-rated cards of the era (such as the Matrox and ARK Logic PCI VGA chipsets.)
While Rendition had tried to craft the V1000 to support many application programming interface
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
s (APIs), these APIs were in their infancy at the time. For example, Microsoft's Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
standard was in rapid development with major changes occurring. V1000 was not optimized for this new Direct3D standard. However, this was more the fault of the API because Direct3D, at the time, lacked support for DMA
Direct memory access
Direct memory access is a feature of modern computers that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system memory independently of the central processing unit ....
transfers. The design of V1000, with its RISC core, was one of programmability. Because the GPU
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
was not "hardwired" as ASICs are, the chip could potentially adapt to newer or differing standards than it was initially designed for. Performance limitations, however, inevitably dictated that the chip was not able to grow significantly. OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
support, for example, was very limited on V1000.
Vérité V2x00
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
computation (the V1000 took more than a single clock cycle to calculate each pixel). This boosted the chips' fillrate nearly two-fold, and combined with faster memory and a slightly faster core clock rate, offered performance modestly ahead of 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics (the benchmark of the time).
These two chips were identical in every way other than clock speed, with the V2100 being used as a "value"-oriented chip. V2100 was typically clocked at 40-45 MHz, while V2200 was typically seen at 55-60 MHz. The V2100 only saw implementation on one board, the Diamond Multimedia
Diamond Multimedia
Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players, however the company began with the production of the TrackStar, a PC add-on card which emulated Apple II computers...
Stealth II S220 PCI with 4 MB SGRAM, which was offered at $100 initially but quickly dropped to $50 due to limited demand. The Stealth II even received a BIOS update later in its life to up the clock speed of the V2100 to the same level as a V2200, as an attempt to boost interest in the card. The V2200 was seen on several cards, most notably the Hercules Thriller 3D offered in both AGP
Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
and PCI formats, with 4 MB or 8 MB SGRAM. V2200 offered a 55 megapixel/second fillrate with all of the features expected of a 3D accelerator at the time. Additions to the 2D and video acceleration improved performance and allowed hardware acceleration of DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
playback. The new chips were designed for Microsoft Windows 9x
Windows 9x
Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computer operating systems produced since 1995, which were based on the original and later modified Windows 95 kernel...
and NT 4
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...
.
Rendition and Hercules were at one point cooperating on a "Thriller Conspiracy" project which combined a Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
FXG-1 "Pinolite" geometry processor with a V2200 core to create a gaming graphics card with a full transform and lighting (T&L) engine years before the NVIDIA GeForce 256
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Released on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, and adding...
. This board, designed to further reduce the load placed upon the system's CPU, never made it to market. Rumors spread that it was to be launched during Summer 1998, with a 9 MB board (1 MB for the Pinolite) costing $149 USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
. Preliminary benchmarks showed very consistent performance regardless of the system's CPU speed. Unfortunately, by the time it would have launched, there were far more powerful accelerators available, such as NVIDIA's RIVA TNT
RIVA TNT
The RIVA TNT, codenamed NV4, is a 2D, video, and 3D graphics accelerator chip for PCs that was manufactured by Nvidia. It was released in mid 1998 and cemented Nvidia's reputation as a worthy rival within the developing consumer 3D graphics adapter industry. The first RIVA TNT based card released...
and 3Dfx's Voodoo 2, that would have significantly overshadowed this board. photo
One of the most peculiar graphics boards ever made was part of the V2200 family. The Jazz Multimedia Outlaw 3D "Bonnie & Clyde" combined both an AGP and a PCI connector on the same board. To use one or the other the user simply flipped the card and metal edge bracket over and plugged it in. photo
Vérité V3300 RRedline (unreleased)
The V3300 is Rendition's third generation 3D graphics chipset. It would have been manufactured on a 0.35 μmMicrometre
A micrometer , is by definition 1×10-6 of a meter .In plain English, it means one-millionth of a meter . Its unit symbol in the International System of Units is μm...
process at IBM and would have replaced the V2200 as Rendition's high-end chipset in early 1999. This chipset was never released. After several delays, Rendition was purchased by Micron Technology
Micron Technology
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Boise, Idaho, USA, best known for producing many forms of semiconductor devices. This includes DRAM, SDRAM, flash memory, SSD and CMOS image sensing chips. Consumers may be more familiar with its consumer brand Crucial...
and the project was cancelled.
- Dual Pixel Engine
- dual-texturing for bilinear and trilinear filteringTexture filteringIn computer graphics, texture filtering or texture smoothing is the method used to determine the texture color for a texture mapped pixel, using the colors of nearby texels . Mathematically, texture filtering is a type of anti-aliasing, but it filters out high frequencies from the texture fill...
- specular highlightingSpecularitySpecularity is the visual appearance of specular reflections. In computer graphics, it meansthe quantity used in 3D rendering which represents the amount of specular reflectivity a surface has...
(per vertex), Anti-aliasingAnti-aliasingIn digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution... - 3 million triangles/second triangle setup engine, 200 million pixels/s trilinear fillrate
- dual-texturing for bilinear and trilinear filtering
- Dual independent 250 MHz RAMDACRAMDACRandom Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter is a combination of three fast DACs with a small SRAM used in computer graphics display adapters to store the color palette and to generate the analog signals to drive a color monitor...
CRTCathode ray tubeThe cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
controllers - iDCTDiscrete cosine transformA discrete cosine transform expresses a sequence of finitely many data points in terms of a sum of cosine functions oscillating at different frequencies. DCTs are important to numerous applications in science and engineering, from lossy compression of audio and images A discrete cosine transform...
transformations & motion compensationMotion compensationMotion compensation is an algorithmic technique employed in the encoding of video data for video compression, for example in the generation of MPEG-2 files. Motion compensation describes a picture in terms of the transformation of a reference picture to the current picture. The reference picture...
support (DVD playback acceleration) - Compatible with 166 MHz SDRAMSDRAMSynchronous dynamic random access memory is dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the system bus. Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs...
/SGRAM - 128-bit bus architecture
- AGPAccelerated Graphics PortThe Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
2X execute mode support
Vérité V4400E (unreleased)
With their acquisition by Micron back in 1998, Rendition had hoped to take advantage of Micron's embedded DRAM technology. After the setbacks to the V3300 project, and its eventual cancellation due to delays, Rendition came back with promises for a V4400 chip in 2000. This new chip was purported to have 125 million transistors mostly used by 12 MB of embedded memoryEDRAM
eDRAM stands for "embedded DRAM", a capacitor-based dynamic random access memory integrated on the same die as an ASIC or processor. The cost-per-bit is higher than for stand-alone DRAM chips but in many applications the performance advantages of placing the eDRAM on the same chip as the processor...
, a stunning level of complexity for the day. Although this embedded memory design was later used in Micron’s AMD Athlon
Athlon
Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by Advanced Micro Devices . The original Athlon was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and, in a first, retained the initial performance lead it had over Intel's competing processors...
chipset codenamed "Mamba", the actual graphics chip never surfaced.
Previewed Micron "SuperChip2" motherboard chipset specifications:http://www.my-esm.com/story/OEG19990407S0013
- 180 nm process
- DDR SDRAMDDR SDRAMDouble data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
memory interface - Rendition V4400 graphics core with 4 MB embedded DRAMEDRAMeDRAM stands for "embedded DRAM", a capacitor-based dynamic random access memory integrated on the same die as an ASIC or processor. The cost-per-bit is higher than for stand-alone DRAM chips but in many applications the performance advantages of placing the eDRAM on the same chip as the processor...
. Can use system RAM as well. - PCIPeripheral Component InterconnectConventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
interface, USBUniversal Serial BusUSB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
interface, Ultra ATA 66, AC'98 audio controller, IEEE 1394 interface
Games with Rendition support
Rendition built a thorough list of supported games by encouraging developers large and small to make use of their free APIApplication programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
s. Rendition originally provided developers with Speedy3D
Redline (graphics API)
RRedline is the name of a proprietary Windows application programming interface for graphics cards made by Rendition. The original DOS version of the API was named Speedy3D. The company was bought out by Micron as the consumer market settled around NVIDIA and ATI Technologies as the dominant...
, a DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
-based API, as most game development in 1995-96 was still centered on DOS. Later, Rendition released their Win32
Windows API
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was formerly called the Win32 API; however, the name "Windows API" more accurately reflects its roots in 16-bit Windows and its support on...
version of the API, branded RRedline
Redline (graphics API)
RRedline is the name of a proprietary Windows application programming interface for graphics cards made by Rendition. The original DOS version of the API was named Speedy3D. The company was bought out by Micron as the consumer market settled around NVIDIA and ATI Technologies as the dominant...
. Like 3Dfx, Rendition was one of the first 3D chipset makers to see the value of homebrew programming by releasing a free programming API to the public. In much the same manner as 3Dfx, Rendition also hosted a programming competition called "Take it to the RRedline" to allow homebrew programmers to show off their abilities (as well as Rendition's product).
Notable game titles with native Rendition API support included; Descent II
Descent II
Descent II is a 3D first-person shooter video game noted for popularizing the use of true 3D rendering technology and providing the player with six full degrees of freedom to move and to look around....
, Grand Prix Legends
Grand Prix Legends
Grand Prix Legends is a computer racing simulator developed by Papyrus Design Group and published in 1998 by Sierra Entertainment...
, IndyCar Racing II
IndyCar Racing II
IndyCar Racing II is a racing game developed by Papyrus Design Group. It is the sequel to IndyCar Racing, and was released in 1995. A little over a year later, the game was re-released, with a few minor upgrades, under the title CART Racing...
, the Myth
Myth (computer game)
Myth is a series of real-time tactics computer games. The games are:*Myth: The Fallen Lords*Myth II: Soulblighter*Myth III: The Wolf Age...
games, Sierra's NASCAR, Quake, Quake II
Quake II
Quake II, released on December 9, 1997, is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Id Software and distributed by Activision. It is not a sequel to Quake; it merely uses the name of the former game due to Id's difficulties in coming up with alternative names.The soundtrack for Quake II...
, EF2000 V2.0, EF2000 with Graphics+/TACTCOM patch and Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was originally released in 1996 for the Sega Saturn, with MS-DOS and PlayStation versions following shortly thereafter...
.
Downfall
Unfortunately, Rendition was always one step behind other competitors. The 2D engine added to the V1000 was more of an afterthought to offer features competitive with the S3 ViRGES3 ViRGE
The S3 Virtual Reality Graphics Engine graphics chipset was one of the first 2D/3D accelerators designed for the mass market.-Introduction:...
, the NVIDIA RIVA 128
RIVA 128
Released in late 1997 by Nvidia, the RIVA 128, or "NV3", was one of the first consumer graphics processing units to integrate 3D acceleration in addition to traditional 2D and video acceleration...
, and the Matrox Mystique
Matrox
Matrox is a producer of video card components and equipment for personal computers. Based in Dorval, Quebec, Canada it was founded by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić....
, but it turned into a liability as consumers discovered its barely adequate performance and various display oddities. The V2x00 series 2D accelerator was somewhat improved but it again didn't keep pace and was far behind the best 2D accelerators of the day. In addition, Rendition could never seem to keep up with 3Dfx
3dfx
3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field for several years in the late 1990s until 2000 when it underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry...
and NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
in terms of 3D performance. The V2200 was late to market, and performed no better than previous-generation chips from competitors. The V2x00 was late due to an apparent sabotage of the 4 input NAND gate circuit's output resistance - the result was that the chip couldn't be fully clocked. It took nearly six months to discover this problem but by then it was too late. Despite these delays, the V2x00 shipped with fully conformant OpenGL and D3D drivers. Even with drivers better than the competition at the time, demand simply wasn't there for V2x00 because of sub par performance relative to the card's peers and the inevitable release of even faster cards during this time of rapid change within the industry.
The company was eventually purchased by Micron, who kept the development team intact as a source of embedded graphics solutions for their own line of motherboard
Motherboard
In personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
s. Rendition's engineers were initially excited by the prospect of utilizing Micron's embedded DRAM technology for a high-end graphics processor, but such a product never surfaced commercially.
Today the Rendition brand exists only as the value line of RAM by Micron Technology
Micron Technology
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Boise, Idaho, USA, best known for producing many forms of semiconductor devices. This includes DRAM, SDRAM, flash memory, SSD and CMOS image sensing chips. Consumers may be more familiar with its consumer brand Crucial...
's consumer memory division, Crucial Technology.
V1000 era
- 3D Labs Permedia
- 3Dfx3dfx3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field for several years in the late 1990s until 2000 when it underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry...
Voodoo Graphics - ATIATI TechnologiesATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...
3D Rage and Rage IIATI RageThe ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators.-3D RAGE :... - MatroxMatroxMatrox is a producer of video card components and equipment for personal computers. Based in Dorval, Quebec, Canada it was founded by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić....
MystiqueMatrox MystiqueThe Mystique and Mystique 220 are 2D, 3D, and video accelerator cards for personal computers designed by Matrox, using the VGA connector. The original Mystique was released in 1996, with the slightly upgraded Mystique 220 coming in 1997.-History:... - Number NineNumber Nine Visual TechnologyNumber Nine Visual Technology Corporation was a manufacturer of video graphics chips and cards from 1982 to 1999. Number Nine developed the first 128-bit graphics processor , as well as the first 256-color and 16.8 million color cards....
Imagine 128 Series 2 - NVIDIANVIDIANvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
NV1NV1Nvidia NV1, manufactured by SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics under the model name STG2000, was a multimedia PCI card released in 1995 and sold to retail as the Diamond Edge 3D. It featured a complete 2D/3D graphics core based upon quadratic texture mapping, VRAM or FPM DRAM memory, an integrated... - PowerVRPowerVRPowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and Direct X, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL acceleration....
Series 1 (PCX1) - S3S3 GraphicsS3 Graphics, Ltd is an American company specializing in graphics chipsets. Although they do not have the large market share that they once had, they still produce graphics accelerators for home computers under the "S3 Chrome" brand name.-History:...
ViRGES3 ViRGEThe S3 Virtual Reality Graphics Engine graphics chipset was one of the first 2D/3D accelerators designed for the mass market.-Introduction:...
V2x00 era
- 3D Labs Permedia 2
- 3Dfx Voodoo2Voodoo2The Voodoo2 was a set of three graphics processing units on a single chipset, made by 3dfx. It was released in February 1998 as a replacement for the original Voodoo Graphics chipset. The card ran at a chipset clock rate of 90 MHz and used 100 MHz EDO DRAM, and was available for the PCI interface...
and Voodoo Rush - ATI 3D Rage Pro
- Matrox Mystique 220; Matrox Millennium II and Matrox m3D
- Number Nine Ticket 2 Ride
- NVIDIA RIVA 128RIVA 128Released in late 1997 by Nvidia, the RIVA 128, or "NV3", was one of the first consumer graphics processing units to integrate 3D acceleration in addition to traditional 2D and video acceleration...
- PowerVR Series 2 (PCX2)
- S3 ViRGE DX/GX/GX2 and Trio3DS3 TrioThe S3 Trio range were popular graphics chipsets for personal computers and were S3's first fully integrated graphics accelerators. As the name implies, three previously separate components were now included in the same ASIC: the graphics core, RAMDAC and clock generator...
- SiS 6326SiS 6326The SiS 6326 was a graphics processing unit manufactured by Silicon Integrated Systems. It was introduced in June 1997 and became available to the consumer market in the end of that year...
External links
- Full system specs of Rendition Vérité v2200
- 7 Years of Graphics at Accelenation. Com, February 8, 2006.
- Rendition engineer Stefan Podell discusses Vérité vQuake development