April 1999 Super7 3D Video Accelerator Comparison

Shogo Performance Conclusions

There's no question about it, the Voodoo3 is the fastest 3D performer on a Super7 system in Shogo, but what does that mean? Shogo is representative of the Direct3D community, in that it doesn't have an enormous amount of time invested in 3DNow! support and at the same time, it's not the greatest exhibition of a game with outstanding single-pass multi-texturing support. Although the latest patch was applied that enabled single-pass multi-texturing, the best overall winner here seems to be the 3dfx Banshee, whose higher clock speed gives it the edge over the Voodoo2 in games such as Shogo.

The Voodoo2 SLI once again proves itself to be nearly as powerful as 3dfx's latest, the Voodoo3. Once again, if you are a Super7 Voodoo2 SLI owner, you probably want to stick with your current setup unless you happen to have money just burning a hole in your pocket. You're better off spending the money on a memory upgrade, CPU upgrade (if you need one), or grabbing a few extra gigs of hard drive space now that EIDE drives are so cheap (a CD burner wouldn't hurt either). The bottom line is that the Voodoo2 SLI is just as good, performance-wise, for a Super7 user, as a Voodoo3 3000.

The standalone Voodoo2 doesn't fare too poorly here, however if you're looking for a well rounded accelerator you're better off with the Banshee.

The TNT and the Rage 128 prove that their place among Super7 graphics accelerators is not as welcome due to their heavy reliance on raw CPU power as you can tell by the CPU scaling performance charts. While the nVidia TNT might have been one of the most popular 2D/3D combo cards in the Slot-1 market, the world of Super7 seems to be dominated by 3dfx.

The Answer?

So you're a Super7 user...what do you buy?

The absolute fastest thing you can buy today happens to be the Voodoo3. Is it worth it? Absolutely not. The performance is not justified by the added cost at all, unless you crave high performance at resolutions above 800 x 600, the Voodoo3 probably isn't what you're looking for.

The best overall option, in terms of 2D image quality, 3D image quality, performance, and compatibility is the 3dfx Banshee. Since it isn't a true AGP solution, you won't have any real problems with Super7 chipset incompatibilities, and the chipset happens to be very well rounded to the point that it should be able to offer you just about everything you need. This is assuming that you don't have a previous video card, if you do, then the suggested course of action may be a Voodoo2 unless you're absolutely disgusted with the 2D performance/quality of your current video card.

Current Voodoo2 owners will want to either stick with their current setup, or simply add on another Voodoo2, an upgrade from a single Voodoo2 to anything else is not the most desirable and cost effective one in terms of how much bang you'll get for your buck.

Naturally, you'll want to stay away from the TNT and Rage 128 unless you absolutely must have 32-bit color support, but be warned, you'll be trading quite a large portion of your soul for that 32-bit rendering support if you're running a Super7 system and a TNT/Rage 128.

One thing you'll need to remember is this, if you have a CPU slower than a K6-2 300, then the performance difference between all of the chipsets/cards mentioned here will be negligible, so there's no point in teaming up a Voodoo3 with a K6-233, your CPU would end up being the limiting factor.

You know what kind of performance you want, and now that you've been armed with the performance figures, it's time to make a decision. Just remember that a major investment in a video card now will probably be regretted in a few months, so your best bet is to play it safe with a decent card now (like the Banshee) and put the extra money towards other system upgrades, then go all out when the real accelerators hit the streets. Also remember that nVidia has their TNT2 on the way in under a month, not to mention S3's Savage4 and Matrox's G400. 3dfx, nVidia, S3, and Matrox stock piling their ammunition once again, the four superpowers are ready to face off...who will come out on top? Let's see if history repeats itself this time around...