|
|
|
Since the Banshee chipset doesn't support 3D color depths above 16bpp, the Vengeance maxes out at the figures above. Many have questioned the wisdom of 3Dfx for not boosting the Banshee's color capabilities to the level of nVidia's TNT, S3's Savage3D, or even Matrox's G200 chipsets. The reality is that running current and future games at color depths above 16bpp causes a tremendous performance hit to occur, in most cases in-game frame rates drop by 40%. Another reason that the Banshee is handicapped in the 32bpp arena is due to time constraints. 3Dfx knew that there was no realistic way they could re-tool the Voodoo2 chipset (the Banshee is effectively a juiced up Voodoo2) to include the 32bpp color option and still make the critical production deadlines of Q4/98.
That negative cast aside, the Banshee is a very well-rounded chip, possessing the rough performance power of a single 90MHz-clocked Voodoo2 card under Direct3D and Glide apps. It's amazing to consider that just eight months ago a single PCI-based Voodoo2 cost $300, and had no ability for 2D or AGP functions. Now users are lucky enough to have several 2D/3D AGP cards with 16MB of DRAM available, all for under $200.....Be warned though, OpenGL performance is still under question with all Banshee cards, as the benchmarks below clearly show.
In an effort to keep prices down, Metabyte has decided not to include a software bundle with the Vengeance at this time. We figure that's no loss, as most software bundles aren't worth the $10 that they add to the card's cost. Of course, if the vendor supplies Half-Life: Day One with their card then that changes matters entirely... :)
|
 |
|