This post on Silicon Investor (thanks VE) claims to have some info on the 3dfx Napalm/Voodoo 4 card, which will be announced at Comdex on the 15th (or at least it's features). I don't know how reliable this is, but as it sounds interesting enough, here's the deal:

Three days before the official announcement of Napalm's specs by 3dfx, we can already tell you that it will be called "Voodoo X". Our informant, at risk to his life, delivered this precious information to us yesterday night. Today, he's in the hospital where doctors are trying desperately to heal his 8th degree burns from Napalm. From the burnt documents in his possession, we were able to make out the name 'Voodoo X", as well as the terms "multi-chips" and "segmented memory". Therefore, we speculate the following: the announced 1 Gpixel fillrate is attained by using many chips (SLI) on the card. If the card has 64 megs of memory, then each chip will use 32 megs. The consequence? A price that most of us will be unable to afford.

3dfx has released new Voodoo3 drivers with updated OpenGL performance. Last time they updated OpenGL support framerate was slighly more stable but actually a tiny percentage slower. Hopefully this time around they jacked up the framerate all together. They also fixed the 'deskto corruption issues' as well as some stuff with the power management flaking out. There are also new Banshee drivers to boot.

The Pulpit also has an interview with Keith Galocy of 3dfx, who works at developer relations.

This story at the EETimes details the 3dfx delays of the Voodoo4 and how they are hoping to stir up some hype at the upcoming Comdex show by showing off the card. It wont be available however until February or so of next year. By that time NVidia will be getting ready with their next-gen chip as well. It's always nice to know people are making faster 3D cards for us though. The product 3dfx seems more excited about however is Rampage (Voodoo5) Check this out:

... And coming right behind it [Voodoo4] will be a completely new architecture, code-named Rampage. "We've spent the last 18 months having 30 engineers designing a new core from the ground up," Zacarias said. The firm expects to introduce Rampage in the first half of 2000, with production slated for the second half.

3dfx has released some new drivers for the Mac Voodoo 3. Glide has been updated and some 2D stability bugs have been fixed.

It looks like we have a release date for one of the first 'gigapixel' video cards based on 3dfx technology. Marcus spotted this press release from Quantum3D announcing that they will unveil their "Watershed Product in PC-based Full-Scene, Sub-Pixel Anti-Aliasing Delivers First Gigapixel per Second Performance" at the ITSEC99 show. The show is December 1-4th. Thanks indeego.

AAlchemy will deliver scalable texture fill rates from 140 megapixels per second to greater than one gigapixel per second, depending on system configuration. AAlchemy features enhanced triangle and texture paging throughput to deliver industry-leading peak textured triangle rates and texture paging performance, capable of supporting 1280 x 1024 resolution or greater.

As we all know by now, it is 3dfx's turn to change the world. Their website frontpage even has a countdown. Tweak3D has a speculative article which should leave you wondering a bit more. They are pondering the possibility that 3dfx is licensing Gigapixel technology? 3dfx is even inviting a few people down to California this week to show off some of their stuff before Comdex. I kind of lost a bit of faith in 3dfx latly with all of the delays on Voodoo4, but hey if they pull through with what it looks like the card will be able to do all will be forgotten :)

There's a Gigapixel/3dfx Speculation article on Tweak3d, which talks about the possibility of 3dfx having licensed an algorithm which reduces memory bandwidth from another company for their new Napalm card.

An interesting article over at 3DConcept is discussing the capabilities and possibilities of the recently announced Voodoo4 (and Jack's followup)aka Napalm by 3dfx which will be showing some technology off at Comdex in a week. With S3 recently announcing that the Savage2000 is stinky, our only hope in the near future is the Voodoo4 until NVidia changes the world again.

Assuming further a game having a depth complexity of 3.5 (like Q3A) and that we want to play this game at a resolution of 1024x768 at 60 fps. Then we would need a fillrate of about 1024 * 768 * 60 * 3.5 * 4 = 660 MPix

Since 3dfx announced about 1,000MPix fill rate, it looks like that won't be an issue.

I saw this quote from Tim Sweeney over at Reverend's Pulpit's page which I thought would interest you guys. They fired off a question to Tim Sweeney regarding the recent 3dfx Voodoo4 announcement (and followup by Jack)and Tim had this to say: (Thanks Wicked)

...1 GPix/sec means you should be able to play UT at 1920x1080 at full frame rate (assuming you have a fast CPU, say a Pentium III 500 or faster). Looking forward to it! (That is based on seeing the spec 3dfx released publically; I don't have any hardware on hand to verify its performance.)

That is like, really really fast. The big question of course is how soon will it ship? Anyone recall how long it was between the Voodoo3 initial showing and it actually hitting shelves?

A friend of mine pointed this out to me that may be of some interest. Reading the Voodoo4 press release carefully, one may notice that they're not indeed showing hardware. Bolds added by me.

At COMDEX '99, 3dfx Interactive Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX - news) will hold a press conference at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, November 15, to announce some of the features behind their next generation graphics technology, codenamed ``Napalm,'' to select members of the media.

...In addition to technology demonstrations...

The demonstrations will likely consist of the demos similar to the ones run for the press in the past. So everyone getting excited about Napalm being shown at Comdex will likely be pretty disappointed, unless someone at 3dfx can email me telling me I'm wrong. I'm not saying that 3dfx did this dubiously, just that reading stuff around the web seems to imply that the part will actually be there.

3dfx has announced that Napalm aka Voodoo4 will be unveiled at Comdex in just 2 weeks. You can also catch a glimpse of the unveiling on the 3dfxgamers.com website of course when it does go down. Have a look at the press release.

Chief among these features will be a focus on fill-rate and the ability to achieve over one billion pixels per second. With fill-rate come benefits such as higher resolution, faster speeds, greater application complexity and the ability to display high quality 32bpp rendering at 60+ frames per second (FPS) at ultra high resolutions. All of these attributes equate to better image quality and highly realistic environments.

For those of you still stuck with a Voodoo Banshee, there are new drivers. Also don't forget to pick up the Voodoo 3 2000/3000 drivers which we mentioned yesterday.

3dfx has released some new Voodoo3 drivers for their 2000 and 3000 cards. They are up to the infamous 1.03.00 driver version which is just too exciting for words. (No, really) There are a couple of different downloads for DX6 or DX7 users. So... someone tell us if they are any faster or not?

Another Voodoo3 tweak guide for you guys who are still trying to squeeze out a few more frames. This one from 3DSpotlight.

Some stuff on the hardware front this afternoon for you guys to check out. GA-Source has their look at the 3DCard industry, Maximumhardware has one of those 3dfx vs NVidia deals talking about their facing off. I think 3dfx has the reach advantage but NVidia has a stronger jab. Firehawk also has word from IgeL that the BitBoys have been awarded the 'Entrepreneur of the Year' award over in Finland. The Bitboys being famous for their as of now vaporware Glaze3D product and those 300fps Quake3 framerate claims. Lastly, chipwatchers has an update to their hardware pricing page.

For all you Macintosh owners with a Vodoo 3 card, 3dfx has released some new drivers for you.

There's an interview with 3dfx's Brian Burke about the how 3dfx is doing, their new technologies and other technology developments.

A new Leinen Software's Voodoo2 Tweaker has been released. Thanks 3DFiles for the file link.

VE has a new article about 3dfx's texture compression technology, where Ga'ash Soffer explains exactly what it does and how it is good.