Today 3Dlabs unveil the first line of Workstation boards based upon their P10 Visual Processing architecture: Wildcat VP. Last week 3Dlabs invited a few members of the press to take a closer look at the products and Beyond3D were in amongst the chosen few...

The first thing to note about Wildcat VP is the name. The product unveiling has been pushed back a couple of weeks due to some quick re-branding on the part of 3Dlabs. 3Dlabs have always stated that the Wildcat brand always stood for 'Extreme Graphics', i.e. very high end workstation graphics, and P10 is aimed in for the midfield market, such as the NV25GL region; as such P10 based boards were initially scheduled to be branded 'Oxygen 2'. Its at this point the sharp business perspective that 3Dlabs new owners, Creative, brings comes to the fore. Creative, no doubt quietly but firmly, pointed out that the 4% of the PC graphics market that Workstation boards account for isn't sufficient to warrant dual branding and marketing campaigns, especially since Creative will, at some point, be marketing their own brand of 3Dlabs parts. Given that Wildcat has the stronger brand name, and is synonymous with high end workstation graphics, the Oxygen line appears to have finally been laid to rest and Wildcat VP (Visual Processor) has been born.

With the entry of the Wildcat VP products 3Dlabs have to reposition the branding of the entire Wildcat series of boards so that the Wildcat III still speaks of the very high end Workstation boards.

As you can see from this there are three Wildcat VP board configurations, each aiming for a slightly different space in the mid range Workstation sector. Interestingly the it looks as though 3Dlabs are set to introduce a low end, entry level part at some time in the future.