Those of you familiar with Voodoo Graphics based cards
know exactly what's required when installing the card.
It's the same old story with the Diamond Monster 3D II.
It's a mere case of locating a PCI 2.1 compliant slot,
popping in the card, whilst hooking up the monitor cable
to the Monster 3D II and then the pass through cable
from the monitor to your existing 2D VGA card. A total
synch. One point worth mentioning is that, if you're
planning on plugging in two Monster 3D II's for SLI, then
make sure that you plug the pass through and monitor
cables into your SECOND Voodoo2 board and NOT the
first. Other than that SLI is automatically detected by
Diamond's set of drivers (both for Windows 95 and
Windows NT) and can just as easily be disabled if need
be. In fact, the drivers themselves are allow for some
tweaking and by clicking on the 'advanced' menu you'll
be able to simply overclock as stated below. So PC
gamer newcomers don't worry! It's as easy to lay a
Diamond Monster 3D II in your PC, as it is to lay Sweet
Dick's hoochie on a Friday night 'pull' outside a trailer
park. You won't even need to engage in too much
'foreplay' before getting into some real gaming action-
with the Diamond Monster 3D II that is.
It has to be said, I was totally blown away by the sheer
speed of the games I tested on both machines (my
nippy MF and the slower Cricket D.), which included
Quake 2 (surprise eh?) and Incoming (even bigger
surprise?). When I kicked in the second Monster 3D II it
got even better, the same high scores (in some cases
higher) only games like Quake2, Barrage, Incoming,
Battlezone and Redline Racer could now be pumped up
to 1024x768. That fact alone is of course incentive
enough to go and purchase a second Monster II. If you
need to see even more in terms of benchmarks then
head over to Tom's Hardware Guide for some super
sexy and much more in-depth Excel charts. Also, I
didn't screw around with 3D WinBench 98 either
because I can think of better things to do than watch
uninteresting demos for 45 minutes a throw. So on with
the scores:
Incoming on a P2-300Mhz w/ a single board
640 x 480 - 72.7 fps : 800 x 600 - 59.2 fps
Incoming on a P2-300Mhz w/ dual boards in SLI
640 x 480 - 76.6 fps : 800 x 600 - 74.5 fps : 1024 x 768 - 68.4 fps
Incoming on a P200MMX w/ a single board
640 x 480 - 30.4 fps : 800 x 600 - 29.2 fps
Incoming on a P200MMX w/ dual boards in SLI
640 x 480 - 30.8 fps : 800 x 600 - 29.6 fps : 1024 x 768 - 27.4 fps
Quake 2 timedemo 1 on a P2-300Mhz w/ a single board
640 x 480 - 69 fps : 800 x 600 - 59.2 fps
Quake 2 timedemo 1 on a P2-300Mhz w/ dual boards in SLI
640 x 480 - 70.4 fps : 800 x 600 - 69.8 fps : 1024 x 768 - 62.7 fps
Quake 2 timedemo 1 on a P200MMX w/ a single board
640 x 480 - 40.1 fps : 800 x 600 - 38.4 fps
Quake 2 timedemo 1 on a P200MMX w/ dual boards in SLI
640 x 480 - 41 fps : 800 x 600 - 40.4 fps : 1024 x 768 - 37 fps
Were those fast enough then? I think so... One thing
though, if you've got anything less than a Pentium
200MMX, I personally wouldn't opt for a Voodoo2 (wait
until you upgrade to a faster CPU first). As superb as
the Voodoo2 is, it's not a miracle worker and is CPU
dependent, really kicking in with a Pentium II processor.
Don't expect any gains in terms of the SLI mode with a
P200MMX either- as the results showed. And if you do
own a lower spec PC, a Voodoo Graphics won't do you
any harm whatsoever- especially at the low price that
they can now be snapped up for. That is unless you
fancy playing games at resolutions higher than that of
640x480, in which case you'll need a Voodoo2.
