Rendition, Inc.

Rendition, Inc., was a maker of 3D computer graphics chipsets in the mid to late 1990s. They were known for products such as the Vérité 1000 and Vérité 2x00 and for being one of the first 3D chipset makers to directly work with Quake developer John Carmack to make a hardware-accelerated version of the game (vQuake). Rendition's major competitor at the time was 3Dfx. Their proprietary rendering APIs were Speedy3D (for DOS) and RRedline (for Windows). Released in 1996, Rendition's V1000 chipset was notable for its RISC-based architecture. The V1000 was the first PC graphics card to utilize a programmable core to render 3D graphics. V1000 was both faster and more advanced (in terms of features) than competitors such as the Matrox Millennium, ATI Rage, and S3 Virge. Only 3DFX's Voodoo Graphics was faster, but unlike the 3DFX Voodoo, the V1000 included 2D/VGA capability making it the only acceptably fast single-board solution for 3D games. Vérité supported a local framebuffer of up to 4 MB EDO DRAM, on a 64-bit bus (for a theoretical 400 MB/s bandwidth). Aside from 3D games, Vérité contained an IBM VGA compatible display controller, and served as a traditional 2D/GUI accelerator for the Windows operating system. Vérité's first claim to fame was being the only accelerator supported by Quake. Board partner Number Nine Visual Technology later canceled their Vérité products. In the book Masters of Doom, Carmack cited bad experiences with programming the Vérité as the reason for id's shift away from proprietary APIs toward the industry-standard OpenGL. The V1000 was fairly popular when it was launched. At least four companies sold Vérité boards: the Creative Labs 3D Blaster PCI, the Sierra Screamin' 3D, the Canopus Total 3D, and the Intergraph Reactor (later renamed Intense 3D 100). A handful of software titles shipped with V1000 support. As the ATI Rage, S3 Virge, and Matrox Mystique delivered 3D graphics of questionable benefit, id Software's vQuake and Eidos's Tomb Raider were influential in fueling consumer interest in 3D rendering hardware.