3DLABS Oxygen 402 - Manual (Page 52)

46 Dynamic Pictures Oxygen 3D Family
Technology Overview Technology Overview
NOTE: You need not read this chapter to install and use your Oxygen
card and its software.
This chapter describes the award-winning technology upon which the
Oxygen 3D graphics architecture is based. Your Oxygen card utilizes
the all new Oxygen chip, transforming your computer system into a
blazingly fast 3D graphics powerhouse.
Hardware Technical Overview
Oxygen graphics accelerators are PCI cards designed for professional
graphics users in application areas such as mechanical CAD, scientific
visualization, and animation. The Oxygen card delivers high-end 3D
workstation graphics performance and features to PC users running
the Windows NT operating system.
The Oxygen 3D Family delivers accelerated 3D graphics, stereoscopic
viewing, windowing operations, and video display through the tight
integration of high-performance proprietary hardware. Dynamic
Pictures Oxygen chip powers this scalable graphics architecture while
providing smooth shading, depth-buffering, dithering, anti-aliasing,
transparency, alpha blending, stenciling, stippling, accumulation
buffering, and texture mapping, coupled with a VGA interface.
Most simply, your Oxygen card works as follows: graphics data comes
from the processor and main computer memory, over the PCI bus, to
the Oxygen card. These graphics primitives are read, interpreted, and
rendered by the Dynamic Pictures Oxygen chip. The geometry, now
translated into discrete pixels, is stored in the card’s memory until it is
passed through a video Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) for display
on your monitor.