Click for iPod Batteries and Accessories!
A Click on this Banner shows your site support to my Sponsors
 Your Source for Performance News and Reviews! |
|
- who is the winner ? - Updated for MacMagic w/G3: 11/17/98 |
|
The Voodoo dilemma.. You may wonder which 3D FX card would better boost those lousy software rendering frame rates in Unreal. The graphic below will try to clarify this for you. It shows the comparison between various Voodoo accelerator cards and what benefit in terms of frame rate they provide for Unreal. For better comparison, all the tests were done using the HQ and LQ settings found in our Xlr8yourMac FPS Toolkit 1.04. The graph below show how the new MacMagic Voodoo1 from VillageTronic compare with other voodoo1 chipsets. New 3D card products are also soon to be release like the banshee series (MacMagic Pro and MP 850) from Villagetronics which sport a voodoo 2 and 2D accelerator on the same card. It will be interesting to see how well they perform . If you have one of those, send us your Unreal frame rate results and I will update the graphics.Hopefully, As soon as these hot products come out, we will be able to show you how they perform with Unreal. 
 Clearly here, as I was expecting [with a 200MHz 604E CPU-Mike], the voodoo 2 provided no significant added performance over the new Villagetronic MacMagic Voodoo1 8 MB in a middle range system. As I mentionned in our other 3Dcard comparison pages,the reason you don't see significant improvement of running a voodoo2 card in a non-G3 Mac (except with the faster Mach 5 series) over a Voodoo 1 (see our Global comparison graphics) is because the CPU is the bottleneck in the lower and middle range machines.Those machine are simply not able to push enough information to the Voodoo 2 card, resulting in frame rates similar to voodoo1 performance. Overall, the $99 MacMagic voodoo1 is really worth considering. The addition of an extra 4 MB of VRAM over the original Voodoo 1 seems to boost the performance at 640x480, bringing it almost on PAR with the Voodoo2 cards (HQ settings). Interestingly, in the case of the LQ settings tests, the performance seems to be a bit higher that the 3 other voodoo cards but it is probably not significant [LQ mode is so ugly nobody would want to run it-Mike]. The additionnal 4 MB of VRAM will also allow you to play at 800x600, something which is not possible with the originals voodoo1 cards. At 800x600 , the performance with the HQ settings was 30% less than a Voodoo2 card. But don't forget it is 3 times cheaper than a Microconversions Game Wizzard Voodoo2 (350$). Priced at 99$, You'd flame me for giving the card any less than a 10 on value-performance. Frank Update: Tests with higher performance G3 CPUs. 
 Notes on the G3 Tests: Since I've generally seen better 3Dfx card performance in the Apple G3 (possibly due to faster memory bus and/or improved PCI controller), I'd have preferred that all cards be run in the same system, and although tweaking Voodoo 1 cards does not seem to be a big boost in Unreal, since the Voodoo 1 cards have that capability I'd liked to have seen a 60MHz/Swapbuffer 0 score for the Mac Magic as well. However the main point is clear - Voodoo II cards require a fast CPU to really show their full potential, and the $99 Mac Magic is probably the best bargain on the market in Mac 3Dfx cards. - Mike
[Click to see a 640x480 version of the screenshots]
  For much better (closer/more detail) screenshots of how well the 3Dfx cards look in Games - see my Game Wizard Unreal Screenshots and Obsidian (Dual Voodoo II on one card) Unreal screenshot pages. |
No part of this site's content is to be reproduced in any form without permission. All brand or product names mentioned here are properties of their respective companies. Disclaimer: Users must read and are bound by the Site Terms & Conditions of Use. |