MacPicasso MP540/3D Overdrive Review
Game Performance
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Game Performance
Game performance in general was outstanding. In standard 2D games like Duke Nukem 3D (which actually is only 2D) the speed was as fast or faster than any card I've tested. These games typically run in 256 colors, and the framerate in Duke Nukem was excellent. Performance in 3Dfx games like Quake and Korea (the latest version of F/A-18 Hornet) was very good as well with excellent image quality to boot. I'm not sure if it was due to my running their latest Rave and 3Dfx Glidelib versions, but I had some problems in certain games as noted below: Rave Quake: The walls and floors had a rainbow/kaleidoscope effect. Attempting to start a game exited back to the desktop. Throwing away the config.cfg file (forcing another one to be created with the defaults) did not help. I assume this will be fixed in a later 3Dfx Rave extension from Village Tronic. I was running the latest version of Rave Quake 1.08.5 with 50 MB of RAM allocated to it. Mechwarrior Rave: I could not get Mechwarrior to run properly, as the game seemed to always stall after the "dropzone" screen (the screen would go black and I was forced to restart). The usual trick of hitting the escape key did not help. I had used the "minimum install" option but since I was late with this review I didn't have time to retest the game with a larger install. Shadow Warrior 3Dfx: Although I could play the game even at 800x600 mode, the save game keys did not work (it's as if there was problem shifting into the 2D screen mode where you save the game). Exiting back from any 2D screen to the game screen (3Dfx display) resulted in a frozen image (although I could hear sounds as if the game was still playing). I could move the mouse but I could not select anything or exit the game normally. This was a repeatable problem and I had to use the reset switch to restart the machine. Feedback from two other owners indicate this is not a common problem, although I was running the latest v1.2.2 GlideLib extension from Village Tronic. The standard version of Shadow Warrior ran perfectly and was very smooth even at 800x600. In fact the game looked about as good at this resolution as the 3Dfx version in my opinion. 3Dfx Quake: Version 1.08.5 ran very well and looked great. 800x600 mode was stunning but at only 14.4 fps (timedemo demo1 test) it would be too slow to survive in a hot room or in deathmatch. At 800x600 you need 1.6 times the fill rate of 640x480 mode and even a PowerForce G3 CPU card at 292mhz didn't help. If Tweaker had worked with the card it may have been possible to bump the framerate up by 10fps or so. 640x480 mode untweaked delivered 27.7 fps, about 3 fps higher than I'd seen with my Power3D card. Korea (F/A-18): Performance was good in this flight sim, even at 800x600. I didn't spend a lot of time playing Korea but I think the framerate at 800x600 was satisfactory, and there are detail option settings that can be adjusted to boost framerate if necessary. If you're a fan of combat flight sims and own a 3D Overdrive I highly recommend this game to show off it's capabilities. I judged overall game performance as excellent, and I think the problems I saw were the result of new versions of the games or something in my configuration (since most users didn't report these problems) or will be addressed in a update to the 3D Overdrive extensions. If I have time before I return the card, I'll try to retest these games again with the older version of the Village Tronic extensions to see if that resolves the problems I saw. Overall I was impressed with the game performance and would consider this my first choice of a game card for the Mac. Since I think the problems I saw will be solved and overall performace was excellent, I rated Game performance a 9. The next tests I ran dealt with movie playback.
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