3Dlabs Permedia 3 Create!

He was a newspaper reporter by day, but as soon as the job was over like lightning he was in and out of a phone booth to assume the role of Superman. While we can't all relate in the same way to comic hero, Clark Kent's lifestyle, it may seem like that we switch roles every day. The professional by day, gamer by night community is an increasingly prominent force in the computer hardware industry and the fact of the matter is that very few products are geared toward this very niche market.

During the announcement phase of this last 3D accelerator competition, 3DLabs had very little to say about their next generation product, the Permedia 3. Supposedly a very solid and promising solution, the Permedia 3 was designed to bring workstation power down to the desktop PC, a goal the hardware industry has always set and often times met in the course of technological development. Unfortunately, the months went on and the Permedia 3 never made it to market. The tiring 3dfx vs NVIDIA battles raged on in newsgroups and Matrox released the first press releases on the G400, however nothing was heard from the once popular 3DLabs. Just recently 3Dlabs changed the target market for the Permedia 3, instead of attempting to compete with the likes of 3dfx and NVIDIA in an already saturated gaming card market, 3Dlabs' intentions were to release a card designed for the professionals, more specifically, web developers. Thus the Permedia 3 Create! was born.

To many, the sudden change of the target market for the card is a cheap way of avoiding comparison to superior 3dfx/NVIDIA products, to others however, the Permedia 3 is the first card to truly bring professional power and gaming flexibility to the desktop PC in an affordable card. Which is it? There's only one way to find out…