3DLabs Permedia 2
The 3DLabs Permedia 2 is a rather popular
chipset found in a wide range of configurations and from many different manufacturers
(Diamond Multimedia and Creative Labs to name a few). As a 2D / 3D accelerator it's a good
performer that comes (usually) with a rather low price tag considering it is primarily
designed for 3D Graphics work under OpenGL / NT4. It support between 2 and 8Mb SDRAM or
SGRAM and AGP / PCI interface.
The Permedia 2 is a single chip which
features an internal RAMDAC at 230Mhz, a 2D processor and a 3D processor with an
integreated geometry set-up processor. VGA and SVGA (VESA 2.0) is fully supported in
addition to hardware assisted MPEG-2 playback, it has an Interface called VideoStreams on
the boards which allows simultanious video input and output (for DVD, TV / Video in / out
solutions).
The Permedia 2 has a good feature set
(especially well utilized under Direct3D), features high resolution rendering (does 1024 x
768 in Quake 2 under OpenGL on an 8Mb board) at high bit-depths (supports 32bit
rendering). The one real drawback is poor GL Quake performance and the lack of some
blending and fogging modes.
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