I'm asking for all owners who try these to send me feedback on performance and comments on image quality. Here's the first reader results with them (taken from the main site news page):

Ryan Grimes sent results of tests with the new drivers (see below). Interesting that even though the card has 16MB of RAM there is no 1024x768 option (I think this may be a glide limitation - at least in the original Glide 960x720 was the limit I think)

" Mike, I ran the Unreal timedemo test on my G3 433 with 150 mb of ram dedicated to Unreal. Here are my results with the hq settings [from our Unreal FPS Toolkit - see the 3D Gaming News page for download links-Mike].

Unreal Castle Flyby TimeDemo:

• 640x480-32 fps
• 800x600-24 fps
• 960x720-18 fps
  (No 1024x768 option)

MYTH II set on 640x480 timedemo results were 30 fps on the bridge. Much improved over software rendering.

Pretty impressive, but the sound in the game kept cracking and popping. Wasn't the speakers because MYTH II ran beautifully at 640x480, but wouldn't load on 800x600 with 3dfx enabled. Also, the mactweaker program is entirely in German!!!!
Ryan Grimes
Rugby-[CMG] Clan Mac Gaming"

1.10 Update: A reader just noted that Villagetronic has a v1.01 update (2.8MB) to their MP850 (3Dfx Banshee) graphics card:

" hi
i remember there were some articles on your server how to run quake, unreal etc. without the graphical errors and stuff - well, village tronic apparently recentla (4/9) released a new version of their banshee/nextgen drivers, but nobody noticed it. if you download the new village tronic driver package you get version 1.0.1 of the banshee drivers, unreal seems to run without sound problems now and i guess the found some other bugs, too. just try it... ftp://ftp.villagetronic.com/pub/mac/VillageTronicInstall%28e%29.hqx

-yt "

I've added this info to our MP850 Game Tips/Performace page as well

Official 1.0 MP850/Glide Drivers Released: Villagetronic sent a note that the 1.0 release is available at the MP850 Drivers page. [3/21/99]

Ryan Grimes sent an update:

" Mike,
Here are my informal first impressions, and some contributions from other people, especially Daniel Culbertson AKA Miro7-[CMG]. He and I have been in constant contact today and on many occasions concerning this card. Anyways, I did get Myth to work at 800x600, Dan told me to turn off 'Switch Resolutions' on the startup screen (hold down control while starting game). That way it worked. There was only a slight hit on FPS on 800x600 vs 640x480. It played beautifully with only slight pauses every now and then when a lot of action was happening on the screen, but it's a HUGE improvement over the software rendering I was using before.

Unreal looks sort of hazy, like it's not quite focused properly. It's hard to explain, but trust me, it needs improvement with sharpness. The sound on Unreal is atrocious! Click, popping, scratchy sound in general, and quite a few people have taken notice also. Your forums have many such testimonials that say the same thing. I can tolerate the grainy video with a little annoyance, but when I cannot hear anything going on in the game I don't even want to play it! If you can tell me how to capture a screenshot in 3dfx I will send you a pic of Unreal so you can see for yourself. Anyways, it's time to go back and play Myth! Great site and I'll let you know anything more I find out!
Ryan Grimes
Rugby-[CMG] Moof!"

Frank Bernier sent initial test results and disappointing news on 3dfx Quake. The audio dropouts are a common thread (I'm suggesting owners try 22KHz audio rates in Monitors and Sound to see if that will help):

" Hi Mike,
I did a quick test of the Mp850 running Unreal and Quake with the new glide drivers before going to work. Here is what I found:

Machine: 7600 with a Powerlogix 220/110 running at 330/132 , 512k cache, 224 mb ram, 150 MB real RAM allocated to Unreal 1.02b4. I had the voodooII hooked in the MP 850 with the pass-through cable. I don`t know at this point if this can cause the problems I note below.

I used our HQ setting for the test in Unreal with refresh rate of 90 Hz :

Voodoo II : 25.13 fps at 640x480
Voodoo II : 23.45 fps at 800x600

MP 850 : 23.33 at 640x480
MP 850 : 20.51 at 800x600

Not bad at all in my opinion for beta drivers and only one TMU.

I noticed some audio problems like a reader reported.This is likely to be fixed in the next driver revision I think. I also saw some video artifacts in the characters of the menus. The appearance seems brighter than with the voodoo II with the HQ setting.

I couldn`t run Unreal at 920xsomething , it would simply not accept it and revert to 534x384. At 534x384 , I noticed that the image quality was not as good as the voodoo II at that resolution but at 800x600 or 640x480, it looked the same to me. The water and the fog was perfect so as the sky textures.

Quake:
Quake3dFx 1.09 did not work at all. I saw a black screen and heard the music which was still showing some anomalies like in Unreal. The black screen could be due to refresh rates issues, easily fixable.

Regarding the Tweaker : At first look, there is no options to modify the clock rate of the card. A reader reported that the tweaker was in German only. It is actually bilingual . You can select the english mode in the menu.

I will do a deeper analysis tonight when I get home (Unreal, Quake (if I can find the reason why it did not work), Carmageddon, ,Myth II, TRII etc.). Interestingly, it seems that the Banshee will be able to run Carmageddon 3DFX , something I think it not possible so far with the MC VoodooII.
More to come in 12 hours with graphics and all that.
Frank Bernier "

MP850 Glide Tweaker - English Setting: Daniel Culbertson sent a tip to select the English text and comments on the new drivers:

" Mike,
To get the Mactweaker program in English, go to 'Sprache' and select 'Englisch'. The whole app switches languages. First thing that I did when I saw the readme was to head over to Babblefish (Altavista's Translator, quaint, huh.) and process it through after pasting the text. The Translator isn't perfect, but it gets the message across. Honestly, it isn't that hard to understand the German in order to make the proper settings for the games that you play in the tweak files.

A few Observations from the card (since I just played three games for about a hour).

* MythII runs very well in 640x480 on my PCP with 210mhz/604e. I can actually hit 30fps when I zoom in a little, which is playable, but I like to see a little more ground so I go out and average about 20fps (not scientific). In pretty intense situations I go down to about 15fps, but I have no complaints because the software's highest rating was around 15fps with little on the screen (although I've never complained). To get 800x600, which first switched back to my desktop, I switched to 800x600 at the desktop, then went into Myth II. For some reason, the switch res dialog box that is presented still only shows me 640x480 resolution choices (time to trash the prefs), so I told it not to switch resolutions). Voila, 800x600, although I guess the current drivers don't allow for higher than that because I should be able to go up much higher than that (1600x1200, although my monitor only supports 1280x1024). The frame rates at 800x600 were acceptable, and perhaps 1-2fps off of the 640x480 settings, although I preferred the 640x480 (strange, huh?). moving in the game engine was somewhat jerky, although this is directly related to the FPS, as I didn't see it when I zoomed slightly or the FPS went above about 18fps. One glitch to note is that my dual monitor setup (which I was curious how it would be handled) made some interesting cursor problems evident. The 2nd screen has an ATI Rage II powering it, and cannot keep up with the MP850. Thus you have some cursor lag which makes it look like you have two cursors (aggitated when running mirrored setup vs. nonmirrored monitor, although evident in both settings).

* TombRaider II now shows in all Lara's glory! The one catch is the settings for the game. You have to go into the MacPicasso CDEV and lock your video at whatever resolution that you have or the game will display a green screen that is unplayable(screen output will be in whatever res that you have set in the TRII setup). This game is limited by a 30fps engine, which at 640x480 (didn't test it at any other) it did not drop below except when accessing the CD-ROM (for maybe one sec at 27fps). Game is beautiful (I have been waiting to play it in 3Dfx mode and as such am only at the Opera House ;-)

* Future Cop ran flawlessly. The documentation (for the 3Dfx MP850 drivers, in German) states that a tweak file must be made that has 2D texture output selected for running the game at 1600x1200. Why anyone would want to lose the textures to run at that high is beyond me, but...the game runs at 640x480 extremely smoothly. Anyone who knows how to display the FPS in Futurecop, let me know. Given the game engine's usually smooth operation, I would say that this game never drops below 30fps now, if it even did in software. Future Cop, as we all know requires that you switch res to desired before to enter the game, so switching to 3Dfx mode is a breeze.

As soon as I get more games, I will test those, too! I don't have any 1st person shooters (given the fact that without 3D acceleration they would make my 604e/210 play like an Atari 2600), but I might pick up some in the near future. For this impromptu testing, no special settings were used (default, which seems to be most compatible), so I might be able to squeak out a few more FPS by turning off Vsync and customizing tweak files. I can imagine that the driver can also be tweaked more, so I will probably see more performance (as I will when I get that G3 upgrade card ;-) I'll entertain any questions that you may have, just e-mail me.

I also want to point out that I was the person that was having trouble with VM crashing with a hard lockup a while back when I first got my MP850. Although no resolution to MacOS8.5.1's VM has been found (by techsupport or myself), on a hunch I tried a copy of Ram Doubler 8 that my Father had, which resolved the issue completely. Feel free to post this, or request any other tests (as the above were not entirely scientific).
regards,
Daniel Culbertson
Now 3Dfx Enhanced ;-) "