Number Nine's New Spin: Revoluti on 3D

With raging video playback and your choice of either AGP or PCI, the Revolution 3D runs circles around the competition.

David Em

According to Moore's Law, computing power doubles every 18 months. When it comes to computer graphics, however, it triples. As a result, graphics horsepower that was once available only on high-end workstations now exists at the consumer level.

One of the first of the new generation of graphics subsystems to include the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is the Revolution 3D card from Number Nine Visual Technology. The Revolution 3D comes in single-slot AGP and PCI versions. It incorporates a third-generation 128-bi t chip called Ticket to Ride.

The Revolution 3D comes in dual-ported Window RAM (WRAM) configurations ranging from 4 to 16 MB. I tested both the 8-MB PCI and AGP versions of the card, and ran both cards at 1280- by 1024-pixel resolution and 85 Hz.

The Revolution 3D's 2-D performance is spectacular . Screen refreshes are as fast as any I've seen, and at 85 Hz, the display is rock-solid. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop and MetaCreations' Painter 5 were very responsive.

Video playback was similarly impressive and included RGB MPEG decompression. I played both Audio Video Interleave (AVI) and MPEG clips scaled to full screen at 1280 by 1024 pixels in true color on Windows 95. At 30 frames per second, the motion was extremely fluid.

Serious 3-D users will want to consider the 16-MB card, which can support double-buffered color at 1280 by 1024 pixels, or up to 1920 by 1060 pixels at 65,000 colors. The Revolution 3D supports OpenGL, Heidi, and Direct3D d rivers, although Windows NT does not yet have hardware support for Direct3D.

The floating-point setup engine reduces the performance hit experienced when multiple 3-D features are enabled. The combination of the128-bit, 2-D drawing engine and the WideBus internal architecture allows the card to process graphics and video data at up to 1.56 GBps.

The PCI and AGP versions of the 4-MB Revolution 3D sell for $349. The 8-MB version costs $449. An 8-MB upgrade to 16 MB is an additional $249. The Revolution 3D can't compete with the highest-end 3-D graphics cards from such companies as Intergraph and Dynamic Pictures, but it costs only about a quarter as much. Its performance is well suited for artists, graphic designers, and desktop publishers who need good 3-D and scorching 2-D and video.

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Where to Find

Revolution 3D......................$449 (8 MB)

Number Nine Visual Technology Corp.
Lexington, MA
Phone:    800-438-6463
Phone:
    617-674-0009
Fax:      617-674-2919
Internet: 
http://www.nine.com

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You Say You Want A Revolution

photo_link (54 Kbytes)

The Revolution 3D's engine processes video scaling as a texture and greatly reduces pixelation.

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David Em (Sierra Madre, CA) is a digital artist and writer. You can reach him at davidem@earthlink.net .