3Dlabs announced its upcoming Permedia 3 processor. Its processor will integrate 2D, 3D, digital video, and VGA processing into a single-chip design. Although Permedia may not have been a big name in hard-core gaming circles up to this point, its third attempt could change that.

　　Capable of processing up to 250 million texels per second in a single pass, the Permedia 3 has been built for use with Microsoft's DirectX 6.0. 3DLabs expects the chip to ship sometime during the second half of 1998.

　　Unlike its predecessor, the Permedia 2, the Permedia 3 features newer 3D effects like bump-mapping with surface textures, a 128-bit memory interface, and can accept polygon commands at a top rate of eight million per second.

　　The new chip supports AGP 2.X as well as PCI 2.2 and up to 16MB SDRAM or SGRAM. It will run alongside a 270MHz RAMDAC capable of supporting true color displays of 137Hz at 1280x1024 resolution, 96Hz at 1600x1200 resolution, and 90Hz at 1920x1080 resolution if your monitor can actually support screen resolutions of this size. It will also drive flat panel displays through a PanelLink transmitter with a 24-bit digital pixel port.

　　The chip has been designed to run DirectX 6.0, DirectX 3D, and OpenGL on Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 95/98.