Rendition Officially Launch V2100 and V2200 Chips

As recently leaked by Hercules when they announced their $179 card outfitted with 4MB of 125-MHz SGRAM, Rendition’s V2200 Chip is here. But it’s not a completely positive day… Multiple manufacturers of earlier Rendition cards have abandoned the tech in favor of 3DFX.

There aren’t many details on the V2100 yet, but the V2200 looks solid. But with so few games supporting Rendition, I can see why tech partners might stick with 3DFX…

You can read more at GameCenter (quoted below):

Flush with $22 million in additional venture capital–but smarting from last week’s public relations fiasco with Hercules–Rendition officially launched the V2200 3D graphics accelerator and announced its lower-cost sibling, the V2100.

The V2200’s specs look great on paper (Gamecenter will publish a hands-on review of a Rendition reference card in the next couple of days). The V2200 will be priced at $30 in quantities of 10,000. With Hercules announcing a , it’s apparent that Rendition met its goal of producing a 3D accelerator for the mass market. (Rendition vice president and cofounder Jay Eisenlohr has always maintained that the company is focused on the mainstream market that S3 now owns, not the high-end niche segment currently dominated by 3Dfx.)

Rendition’s press release makes only oblique references to the V2100, which won’t be available until the first quarter of 1998. The chip is described as a “lower-cost version of the V2000 family architecture targeted at the motherboard market.” Rendition remains extremely tight-lipped about the V2100, but judging by this description, it looks as though the company is positioning the chip as a ViRGE killer. This product bears watching.

Hercules and Leadtek have committed to building V2200 boards for the retail market, and ASUStek has announced plans to build the V2200 into a “high-end integrated AGP 3D graphics solution” for the OEM market. Some other manufacturers (including two that used Rendition’s V1000 to launch their first consumer products) issued statements lavishing praise on the new part, but weren’t ready to release detailed product plans.

Canopus, for example, designed and manufactured two of the best Vérité cards on the market: its own Total 3D and Sierra On-Line’s Screamin’ 3D. In Rendition’s press release, Canopus president Hiro Yamada says, “We will be working with Rendition to bring the V2200 into the volume marketplace.” When contacted for clarification, however, Canopus product marketing manager Ken Feinstein was more vague: “We’re not announcing a V2200 board today. We’re definitely working on one, but the decision hasn’t been made whether it will be an OEM product or a retail product.” Canopus, as Gamecenter reported earlier, is preparing to ship a Voodoo Graphics card in September.

In pursuit of mainstream market share, no company can ignore Diamond Multimedia. Rendition’s press release has the following quote from David Watkins, general manager and vice president of Diamond’s Visual Systems division: “Diamond Multimedia is very impressed with the advanced graphics capabilities delivered through Rendition’s V2200…” When we contacted Diamond last week, we were told that Diamond wasn’t making any product announcements on Monday. Diamond’s executives were not available for further comment.

And what of Intergraph? The V1000-based Intense 3D 100 was their first consumer product, but Rob Esterling, executive director of Intergraph’s consumer products division, told us “We have no immediate plans to do a product based on the V2200, but are leaving that option open for future consideration.” Intergraph, as Gamecenter has reported, is preparing to ship a Voodoo Rush-based product.

When grilled on these issues, Rendition’s Eisenlohr adopts an Alfred E. Neumann smile and says, “We’ve already announced some very powerful partnerships, and we’ll be announcing a number of additional retail OEMs in the next few weeks.”

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on Rendition. After all, nVidia announced their RIVA 128 chip last April, and to date, STB is the only manufacturer to announce a product based on the chip. Let’s look at those specs now.