MacMagic 3Dfx Voodoo1 Card Review Review date: 2/22/1999

Village Tronic's Low-Cost Mac 3Dfx Voodoo1 8MB Graphics Card

Introduction

Note: This card is obsolete now (review posted in 1999). OWC in Dec 2000 listed this card for $29.95 at their site specials page but sold out years ago. Update: Although there are no native OpenGL drivers for Voodoo1 cards like the MacMagic, it does have enough Vram (8MB, unlike most Voodoo1 cards with only 4MB) to run Quake3 according to a reader's comments. Other OpenGL games like Quake2 require the MesaQuake library if you are not using a 3dfx Voodoo2 or Voodoo3 card which has native OpenGL drivers and needs no MesaGL files. Of course you need to have Apple's OpenGL extensions installed as well. "Hi Mike- Thanks a lot for the help. I got Quake 3 to run on my old work horse! I wasn't clear in my first email about what I'm running. I have a Performa 6400/200 upgraded w/a Sonnet Crescendo L2 G3/300 1MB cache, a MacMagic VooDoo1 card (8MB), and 136MB of RAM. I downoaded the Mesa3DfxEngine3.1b6 from mesaquake.com [ Note: that is not a valid URL - see http://www.mesa3d.org/mac/-Mike] and it worked like a charm. I do have to run in the lowest detail settings in order to get a decent (20+) framerate but it still looks georgeous. I might try a better grfx card (VooDoo2/3) and see if it's even better. Thanks again! Balin B." I've also added this info to the 3dfx section of the FAQ. When I suggested Mesa3dfxEngine I didn't know he had the 8MB Macmagic card, and I'm not sure the game will run on most 4MB Voodoo1 cards (typical voodoo1 cards have only 4MB vram, 2MB for screen buffer and 2MB for textures) since I think OpenGL games require at least 6MB of video RAM. The Pure3D had 6MB of Vram, but the Macmagic by Villagetronic was the only 8MB Voodoo1 card I know of).

Village Tronic picked up the market for low-cost Macintosh 3Dfx cards after Techworks stopped marketing their Power3D card. There are major differences in the VillageTronic offering however, as the Power3D was basically a 4MB PC 3dfx card with Mac drivers. The MacMagic was designed as Mac card, with a unique swappable Mac/VGA cable/connector scheme, 8MB of video ram (twice the standard amount on most Voodoo1 based cards) and the bonus of a standard 'tweaker' utility that allows adjusting the card's clock speed, refresh rate, framebuffer/texture ram seqments and vertical sync mode. The card comes with a CD with drivers, many demo versions of games and online documentation (Acrobat format). The inside bottom of the box itself has a printed 'quick install' guide for the hardware. VillageTronic's web site has a later driver set (v1.1) for the MacMagic than was on the original CDrom. See the related links section at the bottom of this page to visit their driver download page for the MacMagic. Driver installation is a breeze; simply run the installer and the 3Dfx Glidelib and Rave extensions are installed as well as a MacMagic folder with the Tweaker utility and docs. About the Tweaker: Although Andreas Vargas was the first to produce a Mac (freeware) 3Dfx tweaker that works universally on all Voodoo1 chipset cards, the design of the VillageTronic MacMagic tweaker has a unique setting for the 8MB MacMagic card that allows setting the memory configuration. The default is 4/4 (4MB framebuffer, 4MB texture storage). Some games like Carmageddon are will not run properly with a >4MB 3Dfx card (more than 2MB of texture ram) - so use the Tweaker to limit the ram to 2MB (a 4/2 setting). You can save specific Tweaker settings to each game folder to allow for individual game optimized settings. To adjust the settings in the Tweaker - use the cursor to move the stick-pins up or down and watch the settings change (there are humorous sound effects for each setting as well - a nice touch). The Tweaker options and settings are: Graph Clock: Clock speed of the card from 50Mhz (stock) to 60MHz (Max) in 1MHz increments. Even with the current models heatsink, 60MHz may not be reliable in your system. Unreal is the most likely game to produce lockups at higher speeds. Vsync: Settings are default, 0, 1, 2. 0 is the fastest setting, which disables the normal wait for vertical sync of the card to the screen vertical refresh rate. Although this is the fastest setting, some 'tearing' of frames may occur, especially if the framerate is faster than the current monitor vertical refresh rate. According to the manual, 1 is the same as 'default' and 2 has the highest image quality but is the slowest. Ram: Framebuffer/Texture ram settings. Options are 4/4 (4MB/4MB) and 4/2 (4MB/2MB) for games like Carmageddon that won't work with cards that have more than 2MB of texture ram. Refresh: Vertical refresh rate of the card. Default is 60Hz. Max is 120Hz (640x480). Other settings are 70,72,75,85,90,100Hz. Performance Tests: I was unable to get Quake or Unreal to run at 800x600 on the beige G3 with an attached IBM LCD (14") monitor, possibly due to the fact I had to use a Mac/VGA adapter on the G3's video out. The following are my test scores at 640x480 in 3Dfx Quake (v1.09) and Unreal (v1.0B4). Unreal was set to high quality textures and audio (our HQ.ini file). In the Apple G3, the MacMagic card locked up when tweaked to 60MHz card clock speed, so tests were run at 50MHz (card default) and 55MHz. Vsync setting was '0' (fastest) for all tests. Quake and Unreal Performance CPU Speed 640 x 480 Quake 50MHz TimeDemo 1 640 x 480 Quake 55MHz TimeDemo 1 640 x 480 Quake 50MHz TimeDemo 2 640 x 480 Quake 55MHz TimeDemo 2 640x480 Unreal 50MHz 640x480 Unreal 55MHz Apple G3 466/311/1MB 32.2fps 36.2fps 30.9fps 34.8fps 20.94fps 23.01fps Apple G3 333/167/1MB 32.1fps 36.0fps 30.9fps 34.7fps 20.76fps 22.78fps Note: Unreal v1.0b4 set to High Quality Textures and Audio Note that the faster CPU made no real difference in framerates, indicating the card itself was probably saturated even with the 333MHz G3 CPU. I ran these tests twice to ensure there was no mistake. Below are framerates in Unreal taken from our previous 3Dfx card comparisons page. The graphs show Framerates with several Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 cards in Unreal with both a 200MHz 604E and faster G3 systems. This data shows for lower speed CPUs, the 8MB MacMagic is the best value for the money (if you're not planning on getting a faster CPU later, or are don't want to commit $200 for a Voodoo2 in case the Voodoo3 for Mac arrives later this year).

Screenshots:   Summary: At $99, about the same cost as two of the better Mac games on the market, the MacMagic is a good value, especially for owners of non-G3 Macs that don't have the horsepower to keep the faster/more expensive Game Wizard (Voodoo2) card 'fed' with data. A 3dfx card is one of the best ways to make a dramatic improvement in your gaming experience, with better visuals and higher framerates than most any other 3D card currently available. Pros: Low Cost (at $99 List, often less than a PC card + cable/adapter kit) One of the most cost effective ways to boost Game performance on any PCI slot Mac. 8MB of video ram (up to twice the amount of most low cost 3dfx Voodoo1 cards) allows higher resolution (up to 960x720 pixels) in some games and more texture buffer space. Nice Tweaker Utility included Heatsinked graphics chips (larger fins may have helped at higher clock speeds however) Unique swappable cable/connectors can eliminate need for adapters in many cases. Optional add-on module adds TV output capability. Cons: Faster CPUs benefit more from a Voodoo2 card (which costs twice as much however) Heatsink alone did not help prevent lockups in Unreal at 60MHz card clock speed. Larger fins (more surface area) may have helped, or a fan cooled heatsink (however this would add more cost). Some monitor cable adapters/connectors may not fit due to connector spacing (closer spacing may be due to the extra output connection for the optional TV out module). It was a tight fit on my (beige) G3. Although 8MB Ram allows higher resolutions in some games, performance at more than 640x480 may not be satisfactory due to chipset fill-rate performance limits. Test System: The base system used for these tests was an Apple (beige) G3, running OS 8.1 with the standard array of extensions (no libmoto or Speed Doubler) and with CPU speeds noted in the benchmarks (G3/300/150/1MB overclocked to 333/167 and a PF G3/466/311/1MB ZIF upgrade). Disk cache was set to 4MB, Virtual Memory was off. Installed Ram was 160MB, and all other PCI slots were empty. 2D Screen mode (RagePro) was set to 1024x768, thousands colors. This is not really a factor in the tests as the 3Dfx card has its own frame buffer and is not affected by the Monitors and Sound resolution.

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