| 3d Blaster Banshee Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson |
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| Test System:
What's faster than a Voodoo2? Less expensive than yesterdays S3 Virge? Does 2d and 3d in a snap? And.. sports 16 meg of on board memory? You guessed it... Banshee! Banshee is perhaps the first true entry level high end 3d accelerator to come along, and better still, is not as CPU dependent as the TNT or Voodoo2 boards. Not only do you have to fork out big bucks for a Voodoo2 board, but Banshee will benefit an older system like a P200 more than a CPU dependent chip like V2. In fact, there are a great many benefits over V2 based boards. Banshee will exceed the old 3dfx limitation of 1024x768 resolution; it's a 2d/3d single board solution with a 128 bit 2d engine; it's faster than a single Voodoo2 board by an average of 20%, and nearly as fast as TNT; pricing with rebate is generally UNDER $100 US! 3d Blaster Banshee Installation of Voodoo 2 boards in general is a snap. However, that isn't always the case when installing one Voodoo2 board over another, and the 3d Blaster Banshee is a variety of V2. I followed instructions by de-installing my Metabyte board first, and then shut down WIN98 and tore out both my STB Velocity 4400 as well as the Metabyte Wicked 2. On reboot I simply selected Display Properties and chose the Advanced Mode and Change Display. I was off and installing new drivers a second later, then chose Restart and rebooted back into WIN98. The board itself is very compact and follows the reference board design. You would never guess this was a high powered 2d/3d board. Like the TNT based boards it's much shorter than the 12 meg V2 incarnations, yet sports a full 16 meg of SDRam. A gold heat sink graces the single accelerator chip. The 3d Blaster Banshee performs on par with the other Banshee boards, a bit faster than the Quantum3d Raven. If you also choose to overclock slightly, you'll get a performance gain on top of that. Go to Control Panel->Display->Banshee Control to boost the speed a bit.
I ran it in European Air War, WW2 Fighters, Total Air War and Falcon 4.0. Whether you choose Glide or D3d the board is fast and image quality is excellent. I even tried WW2 Fighters at 1280x1024. For a decent frame rate you must uncheck sync to refresh in the advanced properties tab. The speed increase and smoothness in Total Air War were quite noticeable, especially in thick clouds. Amazing. I would estimate a 30% increase in speed at 800x600 under Glide over Voodoo2, but it could be higher. |
Janes F15 likewise likes the 3d Blaster Banshee. I left my default settings unchanged, with max detail and expert flight model. The numbers on V2 were 22 on the runway with AB full on and brake set, 29 at 200 knots before pulling the nose up, and 29 when airborne just after bringing up the gear. The numbers on 3d Blaster Banshee were 23 sitting on the runway with full AB, 40 at 200 knots before pulling the nose up, and 42 when airborne just after bringing up the gear. That's an excellent increase in frame rate. Falcon 4 also improved under the 3d Blaster Banshee, and the image quality was noticeably better than Voodoo2. Now, everyone knows that more memory is better, and that faster memory can make a slight difference in frame rate, but obviously a lot more is happening here. The Banshee chips add a full 24-bit floating point color pipeline, offering substantial image improvement over Voodoo2. I can't tell any difference between the D3d Falcon 4 image on the Raven vs. the TNT based boards. The heat generated is almost as impressive as its performance. This thing runs hot, about 71 degrees Celsius. SUMMARY
The 3d Blaster Banshee and others are redefining entry level graphics performance. And with the 3DEEP and COLORIFIC utilities, artists and engineers would love this board also. Colorific provides an easy way for users to do color matching between the monitor and printer. 3Deep provides gamma correction according to settings provided in the game by the manufacturer. There is no TV out on the 3d Blaster Banshee. If you are a Total Air War nut running on a P200 then Banshee is your destiny. You WILL buy one! If you've been flying F15 on 1st generation 3dfx hardware on a PII system, this board will be your answer. If you've been spending sleepless nights awaiting Falcon 4 and need 3dfx power, here it is, and it will take you to resolutions far past Voodoo 2. The 3d Blaster Banshee is a solid entry into the 3d hardware scene. Although it lacks a software bundle, the pricing after rebate is hard to beat. With 2d/3d integration, and complete D3d and Glide support on one board, the 3d Blaster Banshee is an excellent single board gaming solution. Creative Labs is offering a $30 rebate on this board until December 31st. For reviews of most of the major 3d accelerator boards, see the links on our Video Hardware page.
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