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Just as John Major (the UK's former Prime Minister) issued a 'Back to basics' political policy, 3Dfx have also gone back to basics with their Voodoo Banshee. In some senses the Voodoo Banshee is a step-down from the Vooodoo2 what with only a single TMU, but to be honest it wasn't meant to be a Voodoo2 killer (funnily enough 3Dfx were the only ones not to issue a Voodoo2 killer press release?) anyway. Instead it's a cut-down version of the Voodoo2 but with some extras thrown in an attempt to suffice that fact. I won't go into too much detail about the technology (you can read that in my previous Banshee articles) since this is a product review. Alright, some of you might be ringing the Voodoo Rush bells (fair enough that really wasn't anywhere near up to scratch) and so I'll rip this bit from 3Dfx's Voodoo Banshee FAQ, which may or may not settle your nerves:
Voodoo Banshee is a completely different chip with 3D derived from Voodoo2 and a whole new 2D core that was developed completely by 3Dfx. Voodoo Rush was an all in one graphic card composed of a separate 2D accelerator from Alliance Semiconductor and the Voodoo Rush 3D accelerator derived from the original Voodoo Graphics. Voodoo Banshee, on the other hand, is a fully integrated device with VGA, 2D, 3D, video and integrated RAMDAC.
In simple terms what you get is a 128-bit 2D core GDI accelerator, with a 128 bit VGA and an integrated Voodoo2 pixel unit, along with a single 3Dfx powered texture unit. Guillemot's Voodoo Banshee offering is essentially an exact replica of 3Dfx's reference design (you knew I was gonna say that eh?) right up to the heat sync (just in case any of you cared?). It harbors some 16MB of SGRAM by EtronTech, which is innovatively block write enabled allowing for faster 2D performance in really high resolutions. And as with any Voodoo Banshee reference board, the Maxi Gamer Phoenix can pump out 100 Mpixels/second and 4million triangles/second, which doesn't exactly make it reach the top of the 3D tree but it's still pretty respectable.
So, it was a quite well behaved beast and even though Guillemot looks to be the first horse out of the gate (by the time you read this the board should be shipping) with a virtual reference board, it was very nice to find that they'd done it right. Yes they used 3Dfx's reference drivers with the minimal tweaking (they got the Guillemot logo in the display properties which was real nice) but they worked really well in tandem with the board. The only negative thing that can be said about Guillemot's drivers is that there's no slider included within the display properties in the Control Panel for overclocking. This absent factor may disappoint some of you that way inclined. Other than that they're stable and worked exceptionally well. I might add that Quake2 seemed a tincy wincy bit on the dark side at the default setting. Obviously with a bit of gamma tweaking I got Quake2 'lit-up' just how I like it.
There's no TV-Out resident on the Phoenix but then again the N74 does have its uses.
Driver pics
Desktop properties :
GLIDE/OpenGL Advanced :
Direct3D Advanced :
Refresh Rates
All the games I tested- Quake2, Unreal, Incoming, Barrage, Forsaken et .al worked perfectly well and ran without a hitch, or glitch if you like. Thankfully there were no errors when playing games in 1024x768 as was the case with my 3Dfx reference board. Obviously as the ensuing graphs (yes Blue just for you I'll be forever blowing those bubbles) indicate, the Phoenix is outperformed by it's 3Dfx reference design counterpart. But then that's no surprise seeing as the version of the maxi Gamer Phoenix in the Shark Tank was a PCI version. On average the AGP version of the Banshee that I tested scored some 3fps (Oh yeah baby! Groom that Napoleon complex) more than the PCI based Maxi Gamer Phoenix.
Pentium II 400Mhz
(1) Sin - (2) Incoming - (3) Quake 2 demo2 - (4) Quake 2 demo1
Pentium II 300Mhz
(1) Sin - (2) Incoming - (3) Quake 2 demo2 - (4) Quake 2 demo1
AMD K6-3D
(1) Sin - (2) Incoming - (3) Quake 2 demo2 - (4) Quake 2 demo1
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