Graphic equalizers: mergers, Direct X, and other factors are creating more similarities than differences in graphics chip technology.

People who create 3D imagery for a living used to have a wide choice of graphics accelerators for their workstations. Now, with companies such as Diamond and 3dfx either absorbed, ceasing to make graphics cards, or ceasing to do business altogether, choices are more limited. Even this smaller pool of workstation-level products is based on chips from only three major manufacturers: ATI Technologies, Nvidia, and 3Dlabs.

Now that the players have settled into their positions, for the time being anyway, each chip vendor is bent on expanding not only the power of its products--which Nvidia and other companies have taken to calling GPUs, or graphics processing units, ...