He sees a clear distinction between the needs of gamers and 3-D pros. Compared with models used in movie scenes or CAD drawings, models in 3-D games use relatively few polygons and require high texture fill rates. But instead of emphasizing texture fills, the pro cards aim to boost the speed of real-time lighting effects and geometry throughput.
Designers can thus create, manipulate and preview complex scenes and models in real time.
Trevett said that 3D labs is considering a Mac version of its Oxygen line of professional 3-D accelerators. But he suggested that there may be a convergence as the gaming cards adopt more advanced features. Additionally, the games themselves are beginning to use high-end functions. For example, Unreal Tournament uses relatively complex polygons to get a desired look. Nvidia's GeForce2 GTS 3D graphics processing unit includes hardware-accelerated lighting and transform functions that are not traditionally handled by gaming graphics boards.