I've actually found several interesting articles/news releases from thefreelibrary, but for brevity, here's just a few:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/3Dlabs+Extends+ … D...-a018549416
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Dynamic+Picture … w...-a018822418 (402 would be $4,995...)
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/3Dlabs+Boosts+G … s...-a019155919
www.thefreelibrary.com/Dynamic+Pictures ... a019210653 (...EDIT:oops, now $3,695)
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/3Dlabs+further+ … d...-a019282199
The quad-chipped 402 isn't mentioned though.

I think I've also read somewhere else that it was 3DLabs who designed/made the Oxygen chips for Dynamic Pictures--so was DP like, a short-lived (supposedly high-end) spinoff of 3DLabs?

Anyway, it's getting almost offtopic (sorry vetz!). 😀 Probably should be another thread, but it's so interesting as we could see how the graphics workstation market were 'migrating' to x86+Windows. PPro (with 3DLabs et al of course) kinda initiated it, then PII/PIII (esp. Xeon) pretty much secured it (AMD would later have a sizable chunk with Opteron).

Back to the 90s. As for gaming, the Permedia2 will prove more useful both in Direct3D and OpenGL (yeah, with you I should've said CAD/CAM/3D-DCC for completeness! :p), so what about that?

archsan wrote:

Anyway, it's getting almost offtopic (sorry vetz!). 😀 Probably should be another thread, but it's so interesting as we could see how the graphics workstation market were 'migrating' to x86+Windows. PPro (with 3DLabs et al of course) kinda initiated it, then PII/PIII (esp. Xeon) pretty much secured it (AMD would later have a sizable chunk with Opteron).

Indeed - sorry for the OT. But yes it's interesting. I think you're bang-on with P2 being the real "rise" for PC workstations - MMX, SMP, lots of cache (esp Xeon) and much cheaper than what you could get from SGI/HP/Sun/etc.

I think I've also read somewhere else that it was 3DLabs who designed/made the Oxygen chips for Dynamic Pictures--so was DP like, a short-lived (supposedly high-end) spinoff of 3DLabs?

I've never found anything conclusive about that - my understanding is Dynamic Pictures was a stand-alone company like E&S, Intergraph, etc making relatively independent designs/hardware until they were purchased by 3DLabs. Once they came under the same umbrella the x02 series continued to be sold (and were branded as 3DLabs products) until the GVX/GMX series were released (which afaik replaced everything - Permedia, Oxygen, Glint, etc) and were their "standard" up until the purchase/integration of Intergraph and the Wildcat/Realizm hardware.

Back to the 90s. As for gaming, the Permedia2 will prove more useful both in Direct3D and OpenGL (yeah, with you I should've said CAD/CAM/3D-DCC for completeness! :p), so what about that?

AFAIK the Voodoo3 (even the Voodoo2 honestly) will step on the Permedia for performance, and will have Glide support for games that use it. Also, despite how interesting 3DLabs is historically, I really have never liked their driver packages (although I can't speak directly to the Permedia2). A Permedia as a 2D adapter with Voodoo2 (or SLI) would probably be fine, but a Voodoo3 is an all-in-one solution that will do 2D, 3D, Glide, etc in a single card.

Here's Anand's review of the Permedia3:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/340/11