PCI Card Accelerates Mac 3-D Graphics

Tom Thompson

Late last year Apple introduced QuickDraw 3D, its Mac OS component that provides an API for manipulating and storing 3-D objects as well as managing how they're displayed. However, 3-D manipulation and rendering are computationally expensive processes. A Power Mac running QuickDraw 3D can work in real time with simple models only. To obtain real-time rendering with complex models, hardware support is necessary.

Enter the QuickDraw 3D Accelerator Card, a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) card that comes equipped with 128 KB of cache static RAM (SRAM) and 512 KB of high-speed SRAM for storing texture maps. Two custom ASICs implement the rendering engine, which can render up to 120,000 triangles per second and up to 10 million tri linearly filtered, mip-mapped texture pixels per second. The card boosts Gouraud shading, texture-mapping, transparency, and constructive-solid-geometry operations.

It took just a matter of minutes to install the card and load the software in a Power Mac 9500. I had only a few sample applications to play with, but the results were spectacular. Sample 3-D objects created with Specular Graphics' Infini-D 3.1 had complex texture maps, and I set the objects rotating and mousing about the screen effortlessly. Another sample application, a game from Reality Bytes called Havoc, features real-time animation of a vehicle that's traveling across a convulsed and rocky landscape.

The QuickDraw 3D Accelerator Card promises to promote ever-more-realistic 3-D imagery, whether it's for next-generation games or serious workstation applications. And check out the card's unworkstation-like price: $399.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

QuickDraw 3D Accelerator Card.................$399

Apple Computer, Inc.
Cupertino, CA
Phone:    (800) 776-2333 or (408) 974-1010
Internet: 
http://www.apple.com/

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QuickDraw 3D Accelerator Card

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Faster Mac Grap hics from Apple

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