1. Lockheed Martin's Real3D (Lockheed Martin Real3D 100, Intel i740)  
2. 3Dfx Interactive's Voodoo (Banshee)  
3. NEC/VideoLogic's PowerVR (PVR2DC)

 
The British video game magazine Edge, October 1995 edition, reported that SEGA hired Lockheed Martin to design the graphics chip for the Dreamcast. This chip was suppose to be a derivative of the R3D/100. Two former employees of Lockheed Martin reported to Next Generation Online on April 29, 1997 that SEGA was not going to use a chip from Lockheed Martin, because they said that Lockheed Martin does not produce chips for the consumer market and that SEGA has decided to go with with a chip from 3Dfx. The two former employees indicated that 3Dfx would produce a better chip for them, since they produce their chips for the consumer market. You can read that as producing a graphics chip with the most bang for the buck. Strange, I personally find it hard to believe that Lockheed Martin could not produce a chip to meet SEGA expectations. Now a Voodoo architecture chip would be a good choice based on the fact that it has wide industry support and it has been reported that writing games for the Voodoo is quite easy.  

Black Belt Versus Dural 
 
On June 12, 1997 Next Generation Online reports that SEGA is working on two Dreamcast systems. SEGA of America is working on a 3Dfx Voodoo system called Black Belt and SEGA of Japan is working on a NEC/VideoLogic PowerVR system using the 'Highlander' chip. One of these two systems is going to be the console to succeed the Saturn. In the end, as we all know, SEGA of Japan's 'Dural' system won out, and it comes as not too much of a surprise. If we assume that both the PowerVR and Voodoo technologies are comparable you then have to look at the other factors that would result in SEGA choosing the PowerVR technology. 3Dfx the American company who has its Voodoo chips produced by a Taiwanese company versus NEC the Japanese company which produces it's PowerVR chips in Japan. SEGA obviously decided to stay with a homegrown product.  
  

1. Performance  
All three graphics chips have comparable performance. Even though all 3 chips have comparable performance, we must ask ourselves, is the performance equal or greater then what the Playstation 2 will contain or what the VM Labs Project X console might contain? If not, then SEGA's viability in the next generation home console market will be in question. Give us Model 3 performance and quality and we will be happy.  

2. Rendering Quality  
Picture quality is highest with Trilinear Texture Filtering and Pixel Edge Anti-Aliasing, which is what SEGA's arcade Model 3 board does with ease. Most people agree that there is no graphics architecture currently available that can equal the visual quality of SEGA's Model 3 board, which is based on Lockheed Martin's Real3D. The only hardware that can even come close to comparing to Model 3 is Konami's Cobra arcade hardware and even that is not as good as SEGA's Model 3. Both 3Dfx's Voodoo technology and Videologic's PowerVR technology have lagged behind the visual quality of Lockheed Martin's Real3D technology. Both PowerVR and Voodoo graphic architectures, provide comparable visual quality with each chip providing a slight advantage in different areas. Both PowerVR and Voodoo show there best visual qualities when games are taking advantage of their native Application Programming Interfaces (API).  

3. Cost  
To be successful with a console system; the components that make up the system have to be of low cost, if the system is to be sold at a $300 to $200 US price. All three graphics chips listed have comparable cost. In the table below we have listed the Real3D 100 chip from Lockheed Martin at roughly $30 US in cost but in reality this graphics chip is quite expensive. The Intel i740 'Auburn' graphics chip is based on Lockheed Martin's Real3D architecture and it will have a price of roughly $30 US, so that this shows that the Real3D technology can be cost effective for a home console.  

4. Production Source  
Real3D 100 is manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Intel's i740 'Auburn' chip will be manufactured by Intel. The Voodoo chipsets have been in the past manufactured by TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.), so we would expect the Banshee to be manufactured by the same company. The PVRSG chip will be manufactured by the Japanese corporate giant NEC.  

5. Company Relations  
Japanese companies are very political and tend to do business with one another before doing business with a foreign company. But they are also very realistic, if a foreign company is offering a better product at a better price, they would of course do business with the foreign company if the difference in cost/quality is great enough.  
  

SEGA'S Choice 

SEGA's choice of going with the PowerVR architecture was probably the best choice after a extensive evaluation of this technology. NEC/VideoLogic have done some great things with this architecture by eliminating the Z-buffer, and also by performing deferred rendering. By eliminating the Z-buffer there is a saving in memory space, and also bandwidth. Deferred rendering also provides a huge bandwidth advantage by not having to do as many read/modify/writes that filtering algorithms need to do between memory and the GPU. The PowerVR Second Generation has made great strides in visual quality over the previous generation by providing trilinear filtering, and full scene anti-aliasing. It is known at this time that the visual quality of PVRSG can equal the amazing quality of SEGA's Model 3 arcade hardware.   

SEGA Versus 3Dfx 
 
SEGA had a contract with 3Dfx Interactive to design a graphics chip for the Dreamcast. 3Dfx had completed the design of this chip one week before the contract's stated deadline and also provided a chip with performance numbers to what SEGA wanted. SEGA then made a deal with NEC, and canceled their contract with 3Dfx. 3Dfx is now suing SEGA, NEC and VideoLogic. It will be interesting to see what is the result of the lawsuit. We would guess that SEGA will end up owing the rest of the money not paid in accordance with the contract broken and maybe even have to pay some punitive damages. How NEC or VideoLogic could be affected by this lawsuit is highly questionable. SEGA has not said anything concerning this incident except to say that they will meet 3Dfx in court. The broken contract has not been shown outside of the two respective companies, so it is hard to say what will be the end result of all this. SEGA may not have had any contractual agreement to use this graphics chip in the Dreamcast, but there is almost no question that SEGA has to pay 3Dfx for the full cost of designing the chip.  

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