I was wondering if you guys ever heard of the ill-fated Napalm board for Dreamcast that was designed by 3DFX for the DC.
All I know is that the CEO had a temper tauntrum at a press confrenece for the DC and after that, Sega pretended that Napalm didn't exist.
Does anyone know if it was ever finished?
Thanks
-ETPC
More info: Apparently, the CEO flipped out because he wanted Napalm to be a secret and SEGA showed it publicly at a Confrenece.
After that debacle, 3DFX's fate became pretty damn obivoius.
I also heard it outperformed the PowerVR Card.
Sega usa sent a demo to SOJ. It wasn't received so well, they prefered NEC, a Japanese source.
From what I have heard, incoming was done on napalm.
I got a wafer from a pal who said it was DC 3dfx cpus, but I have no idea
if it's true or not.
'llJust solder one in a dreamcast and see if it works. :110:Originally Posted by ASSEMbler
I've seen some of those DC 3DFx chips floating around. There was a real batch floating around a few years ago, a test run of a few dozen i believe. It's certanly possible that you have the real chip, but as you well know, it won't do you any good.
well it's just wafer, it's not even mountable.
Depends how nicely you ask at the fab ;)
Stone
Well your sources are pretty much wrong...
First of all Napalm was scheduled after the dreamcast was launched.It was designed for voodoo 4/5 whereas dreamcast was on the drawing board during 1997 with a voodoo2/3 variant.
Secondly,it did not outperform the PowerVR solution.The clx2 chipset was much more advanced than any 3dfx solution of the time.It was also much cheaper and could be used with cheaper memory.Also do not forget that NEC squeezed inside the thing all the system's controllers,thus making it a very integrated and cost effective solution.So it was not only a choice made on the fact tha NEC was japanese,although that played a very important role as well.
Thirdly,it was sega that got mad at 3Dfx because they exposed most of the terms of their contract during the lawsuit,thus bringing into public information that was confidential sega property.
Cheers
I don't think that the Power VR chip was much better than the 3DFX product. Maybe on paper but take a look on benchmarks of the Videologic Neon pc-graphics card (Power VR (Dreamcast) core): it hardly can compete with a Voodoo 2 board and loses up to 50% on a Voodoo 3.
The Neon chip was similar to the CLX2 , but clx2 was better optimized and had some more features.Also the tile accelerator+some other functions on the Neon solution were 50-50 shared between the hardware and the driver.
As a result the clx2 was faster than the Neon and the voodoo cards of the same time and had some extra _quality_ features that the voodoo line lacked.
So as you can understand,your comparisons are a bit pointless.Not to mention that voodoo3 was designed one year later than the Neon (which was very late to market) and still lacked features that the powervr and nvidia solutions had.
you're completely confused. no such thing as a "Napalm board for Dreamcast".
first of all, Napalm was the codename for Voodoo4/Voodoo5, a technology that came out (in 2000 IIRC) ) well after Dreamcast development was done (late 1997 or early 1998).
Sega of America / SegaSoft had been working with 3Dfx in 1996 and 1997, up until summer 1997 on the BLACK BELT. a seperate project from Katana/Dreamcast.
The Black Belt used either a custom Voodoo2, or custom Banshee or Banshee2 (Voodoo3).
Napalm / Voodoo4 / VSA-100 had nothing to do with Black Belt, since the projects were seperated by a few years and we're talking about completely different generations of 3Dfx chips.
Dreamcast never had any 3Dfx technology to begin with, since Dreamcast/Katana was using PowerVR2 (PowerVR2DC) technology.
Dreamcast (PowerVR graphics) and Black Belt (3Dfx graphics) were completely seperate projects. the teams designing the two systems had little or no knowledge of each other.
by the time Napalm was in development (1998-1999), Sega had long since dumped 3Dfx.
this is all nonsense.
Sega NEVER, EVER showed the 3Dfx-based Black Belt console publicly.
the 3Dfx CEO was upset because Sega dumped 3Dfx in July 1997 in favor of NEC and Videologic's PowerVR. 3Dfx felt that Sega breached their contract, so 3Dfx sued Sega, NEC and Videologic. 3Dfx *was* concerned that Sega had showed the 3Dfx technology to 3Dfx's competitors, NEC and Videologic. they settled out of court in 1998 IIRC.
the 3Dfx chip in Black Belt, a custom Voodoo2 / Banshee / Banshee2 of some sort, did not outperform the PowerVR2DC / CLX2 chip. it was just the opposite. PowerVR proved superior in every way to the 3Dfx offering, and at a cheaper price, so Sega said, bye bye to 3Dfx, and the Black Belt project was terminated.
Last edited by GigaDrive; 03-16-2006 at 01:15 AM.
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