3Dfx Interactive has officially jumped onto the DirectX 6.0 bandwagon with the beta release of its new DirectX drivers. The company claims 40 percent faster speed than its toughest competitor when running two Voodoo2 cards in an SLI configuration. If you currently have two Voodoo2 cards in your PC, you already know what kind of graphics power you have in games with a max resolution and the added texture memory. 3Dfx says that the drivers speed upwards to more than 50 percent faster performance for playing multi-texturing DirectX games.

　　To make the deal sweeter, the company has announced that it expects gamers to pick up two boards for less than US$300 with single boards sinking down to under $100 because memory costs have come down for the components. Guillemot is the first company to make two 12 MB Voodoo2 cards for only $229.

　　"Voodoo2 delivers performance designed to satisfy the world's most speed-thirsty game fans at a price that's attractive to every PC game consumer," said Greg Ballard, president and chief executive officer for 3Dfx Interactive. "Voodoo2 SLI breaks all the rules by pushing our award-winning Voodoo2 technology to the power of two, while keeping consumer costs firmly on the ground."

　　So what do the drivers have to offer? For DirectX 6.0 (currently there are no DirectX 6.0 titles in the market but they'll be on shelves around Christmas), the drivers support single-cycle, single-pass multi-texturing and new flexible vertex formats. AMD's K6-3DNow! and H3D Stereo glasses support is also included with the drivers.

　　If you plan on running the unsupported drivers, here's the original read me file from 3Dfx:

　　Voodoo2 Drivers for Windows 95/98 These are not final release drivers. Please visit this page regularly for updated drivers.

　　Release: Software Kit v3.01 (Release Candidate 1)Date Posted: 10/12/98

　　NOTE: There are some known isssues with DirectX 6.0. For more information, please view the readme included with the drivers below.

　　System Requirements: Windows 95/98 Voodoo2 Accelerator NOTE: These drivers will NOT work on Voodoo Graphics, Voodoo Rush or Voodoo Banshee based cards.

　　Download and installation instructions:

　　There are two files available for download from this site. Click on a link to begin downloading. Voodoo2 Software Kit v3.01 (Release Candidate 1)Run-time drivers for Voodoo2 on Win95/98. They include: Glide 2.5x, Glide 3.x, Direct3D, DirectX (Complete DirectX 6.0 support) and the Voodoo2 Control Panel. This is the minimum set of drivers that you'll need to run your Voodoo2 board.

　　Voodoo2 Control PanelThis file will allow you to use the enable/disable the VSync feature, but it will overwrite the Control Panel (included in #1 above) in the process (it does not include any of the components included in File #1 above).

　　When you are done downloading the files you'd like to install, locate and run the file by choosing the Run option in the Start menu. (You need to point to the location your Web browser saved the file in.) Extract the files to a floppy or directory on your hard drive. See the README.TXT file for information on installing the driver.