What is a 3D accelerator?

In a nut shell a 3D accelerator is a piece of hardware which speeds up the rendering of 3D images. Since most modern games are very 3D intensive many need a 3D accelerator in order to give you the quality and speed of graphics required to be playable.

The actual form a 3D accelerator comes in varies. The three typical ones are

  • Single 3D/2D add-in board
  • An extra board specifically for 3D
  • Single 3D/2D chip on the motherboard

Note that the performance of 3D accelerators has increased tremendously over the past few years. Old 3D accelerators may in fact be so slow and too little memory to be of any use. If this is the case you may need to buy a new 3D accelerator.

How do I know if I have one?

Well this is more tricky to determine than it might first seem. If you bought a new multimedia PC in the last 12 months, then it will almost certainly some sort of 3D accelerator.

If you bought in a 3D add-in card like a '3Dfx' card - then this is a 3D accelerator and the games will work fine with this.

Failing all else you can always just try and run the demo of the product you are interested in! There's certainly nothing to lose this way.

Where do I get a 3D accelerator from?

There are a variety of companies producing such cards, you may want to check out the companies and products below...
CompanyProductsWebsite
3DfxVoodoo 1,2,3www.3Dfx.com
S3Savage 4www.s3.com
ATiRage Pro, Rage 128www.atitech.com
MatroxG200,G300,G400www.matrox.com
nVidiaRiva, Riva ZX, TNT, TNT2www.nvidia.com
STBVelocity TNTwww.stb.com
DiamondViper,Stealthwww.diamondmm.com
ASUSV3800www.asus.com
The above list is for informational purposes only and is by no means exhaustive.

What is DirectX and Direct3D?

DirectX is a series of software technologies developed by Microsoft. Their purpose was to enable compelling games experiences on the PC. The actual range of technologies is far reaching but the core ones are

  • Direct3D - Allows fast access to 3D accelerators
  • DirectSound - Allows playing and mixing of sounds
  • DirectPlay - Allows fast networking
  • DirectInput - Allows connection and use of a wide variety of devices (like steering wheels, force feedback joysticks)
Without this technology the games cannot access the facilities which may well mean that they are unable to run.

For more information about DirectX and Direct3D please go to the DirectX information pages.

How about 3Dfx and Glide?

3Dfx was one of the pioneers of high performance 3D on the PC. Their Voodoo card was so popular that the 3Dfx brand become synonymous with 3D on the PC. Right now there are many companies producing 3D accelerators as good as or better than the original Voodoo card including 3Dfx themselves. Never the less the Voodoo card remains a great card for playing 3D games on the PC.

Glide is the name of the software technology which allows access to the 3Dfx card's facilities. Because this software was specifically designed for the 3Dfx card it is very fast. This means that in games which glide versions as well as Direct3D versions, that the Glide version is significantly faster. It may also mean the Glide version has special features not found in other versions.

What about OpenGL?

OpenGL is another software technology (API) which is particularly useful for talking to 3D accelerators. In this case the technology was developed by SGI. On the PC its use has mainly come about due to Id Software's use of the API on the highly successful Quake series of games.