Installation of any Voodoo 2 card is very simple,
ofcourse if you've own(ed) a Voodoo1 make sure that you de-install it. Also make sure that
you remove all Voodoo(1) information from your registry. (if you don't know what i'm
talking about then please forget it & don't fool arround the the registry). After
inserting your Voodoo2 card into an empty PCI slot you can reboot your system. As soon as
windows starts it will begin its plug & pray sequence. An unknown device will be found
& you have to direct/browse windows to the drivers directory on the Cd-Rom. Very easy
installation indeed. After this proces of installing make sure that you install the latest
Direct-X drivers (can be found on the ST Driver CD-Rom thats included) & then you are
set to go ...
Bundled Games/Drivers
The Magic 3D II does not
include a gamepack. Probably the idea behind this is that ST wanted to deliver a product
that can compete with other voodoo2 based products by keeping the retail and OEM price
low. So it's all about the money. On the included Driver-CD you can find one demo of
a game, but that pretty much sums it up.
Personally i think it would
have been nicer to see some new demo's included on the driver CD since ther is plenty of
space left. on the other side, do you really care about some demo's ? You buy the Skywell
card for its performance & price. And those two are great! But more info on that one
later.
The CD includes The latest
reference drivers from 3Dfx, the latest DirectX and a demo of a game. Furthermore the cd
contains drivers from other ST products.
Differences Between the M3D 2
and Wizard 3D
The Diamond Monster 3D II,
the Wizard 3D and the Magic 3D II, are almost 100% identical when it comes to board
layout. Very few of the components are different (some small smd chips), and they are all
in the very same locations. Ofcourse the the boards have been 'copied' to the upmost
precision from 3Dfx's reference board. Thats why all voodoo2 board will look the same,
only slightly differences in components will make very little difference. So if you want
to buy a Voodoo2 card, go for the best price vs softwarepack. The hardware isn't the
problem anymore, its almost all the same.
Only one small difference
though, the Magic 3D II is a totally black card, i mean the print is black. If you see it,
you'll kno what i mean, it looks so cool! you almost beleive that you have dark power
(read evil) in your PC.
User's guide
Compared to the Diamond MII
Manual (wich is NONE for the oem version, exept a Doc on the CD) the manual for the Magic
3D II is very good. ST has put a lot of time and effort in the making the manual readable
for anyone. Its in english, its (basicly) well written and will explain the installation
in a step by step explenation.
Tv-out
Unfortionatly both cards do
not have a TV-Out option.
Overclocking & performance in general
Overclocking is a trend that
we've all known & use since the first steps of Voodoo ... Diamond's monster II even
has overclocking capabilities in its driver software. (with a slider you can choose your
clockspeed) however, overclocking really isn't a necessety anymore. Only if you own a
really HIGH-end pentium II (350 Mhz for example) overclocking will become interesting.
Why, well it a bad case of the bottleneck problem. Your processor cannot proces anymore
data upto a certain level. To put it in a simple words, your voodoo2 card is processing
geometric data faster then your processor can handle.
Look at it this way, blow 10 liter of oxygene thru a straw, now blow that same ammount
thru a gardenhose of the same length, much easier eh ? You can compare the straw with a
<233 Processor & the gardenhose with a >266 II processor.
In the case of the Voodoo2 you will require at least a Pentium II 266 to start seeing a
significant difference in frame rate between Voodoo1 & Voodoo2 , in case of two boards
in SLI configuration a Pentium II 333 isn't even fast enough showing a frame rate
difference between 640x480 and 800x600. This shows that the frame rate could be a lot
higher at 640x480 if the Voodoo2 would get enough data from the CPU. 800x600 and more is
occupying the Voodoo2 more, so the time of waiting for the CPU is less.
* tested on a Asus P2B
350MMX Pentium II BX Chipset 128Mb PC100 SDram + 9 Gig Ultra DMA HD's, Windows '98,
DirectX 6.2
The benchmarks are based upon these
systems *
As you can see the benchmark
comparisation between Voodoo2 based cards is almost nihil. The Wizard 3D came out slightly
slower then the Monster II But be aware that any little multi-tasking program that is
resident in your computers memory can cause that. Therefor i can safely say that the cards
are equal in comparisation toward speed in Frames per second. The cards were not tested in
a No-Vsync environment. I do not test cards in this way anymore simply because no-body
will ever use that option in reallife anyway. Therefor on my system a framerate could
never be higher then 75 FPS.
SLI-Mode - I have been
granted to test the Magic 3D II in Scan Line Interleave mode. To be honest, the
above benchmarks are not the best for determining the speed in SLI mode, perhaps in the
future there will be better benchmarks for it. However, insert two cards in your system,
connect them adn you will really feel and see the difference. I was always very sceptic
about the SLI feature, but if you can spend the money then do it. it will get your
gameplay upto a resulution of 1024*768 with Z-Buffer enabled and thing are still silky
smooth. i've been playing Shogo letely and man, it rocks in SLI mode. The polygon FillRate
is much faster! Well, the game rocks on a single based voodoo card also, but seeing is
beleiving. And ofcourse, the faster you computer is, the better it will get.
Technical
features
Voodoo2 Graphics 3D
engineMulti-chip, 3D-only solutionOne Pixelfx with 4Mb frame buffer memoryTwo Texelfx each
one with 2 or 4Mb texture buffer memory8 or 12 Mb total EDO memory amountScan Line
Interleaving – allows to simoultaneously connect 2 boardsTV-out allowing direct
connection to NTSC or PAL TV screen (optional)800x600 with z/buffer1024x768 with z/buffer
(SLI mode)90 Mpixels/sec sustained fill rate (up to 180 Mpixels/sec SLI mode) with LOD
MIP-mapping, Z-buffering, alpha-blending and fogging enabled3M triangle/sec for filtered,
LOD MIP-mapped, Z-buffered, alpha-blended, fogged, textured trianglesMultiple textures per
pixel in a single pass and special effects including fog, transparency, translucency,
lighting maps, detail textures, morphingFull triangle setup in hardwareSupport for 2.1 PCI
compliant busUp to 100FPS major games speed !Windows 95 and Windows NT4 Glide supportAPIs
supported: Glide, Direct 3D, Renderware, Brender, GlQuake driverCompatible with all Voodoo
family titles5-years Warranty
Standard 3D Features
Perspective correct texture mapping
Bi-linear and tri-linear texture filtering
Z-buffer (16bpp, integer and floating point)
Level of detail (LOD) MIP mapping
Sub-pixel and sub-texel correction
Bump Mapping
Gouraud shading and texture modulation
Full 24-bit rendering, dithered to 16-bit RGB
14 texture formats including 8-bit compressed (patent
pending)and 8-bit palletized formats
Full bi-linear blending of palletized and compressed textures
2 to 4 MB EDO DRAM frame buffer
2 to 4 MB EDO DRAM texture memory
Performance
90 Mpixels/sec sustained fill rate for bi-linear textures, with
LOD MIP-mapping, Z-buffering, alpha-blending and fogging
enabled
180 Mpixel/sec with scan line interleaved configurations
3M traingle/sec for filtered, LOD MIP-mapped, Z-buffered,
alpha-blended, fogged, textured triangles
Additional Features
Full hardware triangle setup (independent strips & fans)
Anti-aliasing
Depth buffering (16-bit linear, 22-bit effective)
Alpha blending
Per-pixel special effects: fog, transparency, translucency
Texture compositing, morphing, animation
Linear frame buffer access
Single-pass tri-linear filtering
Single-pass dual textures per pixel
Compatibility
PCI bus 2.1 compliant, 33/66MHz
Operating systems supported: Microsoft Windows 95,
MS-DOS, Windows NT 4.0
3D API supported: 3Dfx Interactive Glide, Microsoft
Direct3D, OpenGL, QuickDraw, 3D Rave
Full software compatibility with Voodoo Graphics, Voodoo
Rush
Recommendations &
conclusion
The magic 3D II series are
good, solid and very affordable. 
Its pricing is very well and the card works very reliable. The
websupport is good. Always the latest drivers online. The performance is almost exactly
the same as Diamonds Monster 3D II or for that matter any V2 card. But that was to be
expected. All Voodoo 2 based products are based upon the guidelines & reference cards
from 3Dfx itself.
Thumbs up Skywell Technology
for giving us such a good product.
Pricing
At this time of year (October '98) the Magic 3D II is one of the cheapest cards arround.
You can find 12Mb version for about 145-160$ if you look in the proper places. The price
is that low because there are no games included. You simple get the basics (all you need)
However, don't get me wrong here, for the buck you pay you'll get the most bang! Its a
very good and stable card. A card wich you should seriously consider if you don't wan't a
card with a full gamepack.
For a final conclusion in
wether you should or shouldn't buy a Voodoo2 card i can say only this,
1) if you own a p233mmx or
below with an 'old' Voodoo1 card then do not upgrade. Really your system will not benefit
from it greatly.
2) if you own a Pentium II based system & you have Voodoo1 then is would be
interesting for you to get a Voodoo2 based card.
3) if you have a system without a Voodoo card and you'd like to buy one ... then invest in
the Voodoo2 card it'll be worth it !
Rating : an 8 (out of 10
points). Good customer support, no gamepack, no tv-out, but a great product.
Contact
You can visit and contact the
lads of Skywell here:
Chinese: www.skywell.com.tw
English : www.magic-3d.com
E-mail : magic3d@mail.skywell.com.tw
