Review - Magic
TwinPower (Banshee) from Skywell Technology
Thursday - 12 december 1998 - Hilbert Hagedoorn
Another fine product from
Skywell's hit factory has been released. Following 3Dfx's Voodoo line-up
Skywell-Technology has released a 16 Mb Banshee based 2d/3d card. Its called Magic
Twinpower.
This will probably one of the best
selling 3D products since the release of the 1st generation voodoo 1 cards. It has been no
more then about 2 years that 3D accelerated cards entered the mighty PC market. In those
two years competition was/is high, therefor in the ongoing struggle to beat the best 3Dfx
came with a project called Banshee about a year ago. Everybody was very curious what this
card could do and yes ... would it not be an adon card ?
The dream of a lot of users became
reality in November 1998. The 1st real Banshee card had arrived, a very strong 2D card
combined with the mighty power of Voodoo2 and Voodoo graphics/Glide compatibility.
Today we will be reviewing and
testing this mighty product.
This review will include some
benchmarks based upon a Asus P2B, Intel P-II 350 MHz and 128 MB system. We will be using
Diamonds Monster 3D, California Graphics Wizard 3D and Magic 3D II for comparisation.
I've decided to skip most
'all-round' benchmark in this review, yes Winbench '98 will not be used anymore. Lately
there is a new trend hitting the streets, manufacturers are 'optimizing' there drivers
especially for programs like WinBench ect. The best method of determining weather a card
is fast 'to my humble opinion' is by examining frame rates in games and bootmarks.
You may have wondered why I
never used 3D Winbench 98 for my 3D accelerator reviews. I found out pretty soon after 3D
Winbench 98 was released, that the results scored in this benchmark did not show any
conformity with frame rates scored in any real world 3D game. It also seemed pretty
strange to me that some graphics card manufacturers were keen on equipping me with
new drivers right after 3D Winbench 98 was available, sometimes even with the words 'these
drivers will perform better in 3D Winbench 98'. Comments like that don't really
enforce your believe in that benchmark, it rather sounds pretty much as if these
new drivers were simply improved for this particular benchmark. Now whilst suspecting
something like that I couldn't really be bothered doing any research about this
unpleasant issue. Instead of this I started concentrating on finding new and good
3D games that included some decent frame counters. 'Turok' was one of the first, now the
awesome game 'Incoming' and the latest playable demo version of the impressively
looking 'Forsaken' as well as 'Quake II' complete my 3D benchmark suite for the
time being. It was actually pretty annoying that I often had to explain to graphics card
manufacturers why I wouldn't use 3D Winbench, because some were particularly keen on me
using this benchmark. Others suggested Final Reality and although I really liked
that benchmark when it was new, I really went off it latest since I saw the amusing
posting of Mercury, where a Voodoo Rush card scored higher than a Voodoo2 card in Final
Reality. I'd rather call that 'Final Irreality'.
Installation
It seems that installation is getting easier and easier all the time. If you are running
Win98 (like i do) then the card will install itself. Its fully plug and pray compatible
and has drivers on the Win98 install cd. However, when installed its always important to
get the latest drivers of your product. in this case you can download the latest drivers
at Magic-3d.com or here at the Guru 3D
Once you have obtained the
latest drivers (which ofcourse are also on the included driver cd) goto you System
properties and from there towards your Display Properties, driver and hit update driver.
Follow the procedure and kaboom ! you are really to roll the dice. Hey, make sure that you
have installed the latest DirectX drivers ofcourse.
If you have previously owned a
voodoo based card then its possible that you encounter some registry problems. goto
www.3dfx.com and look at the banshee Faq. It has downloadable registry fixes.
Bundled Games/Drivers
As always the key formula for
Skywell is to release a competitive product for a serious low price. This can only be done
by excluding game packs ect. Therefor you will only find a driver-cd compiled with the
latest drivers, some demos, benchmarks and ofcourse the latest DirectX drivers from
Microsoft.
Personally i think it would have
been nicer to see some more new demo's included on the driver CD since there 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.
Differences
Between the M3D 2 and Magic Twinpower
In terms of 3D the Magic Twinpower is as fast as a Voodoo2
card, really, the difference isn't that big, we are talking about percents here. So i can
start a long and boring story here but i won't. Hey the card is as fast as a Voodoo2 card
(Okay, polygonal fill rate is slightly slower but hey, that was the few percents i was
talking about.
The huge advantage over a Voodoo2
card is that is simply isn't an adon card anymore. Just simply plain 2d/3d The MTP is
extremely fast in its 2D section. it has certain functions that accelerated the 2D
environment. (100mhz single cycle 128bits Windows GUI acceleration). The 16 Mb SGRAM -
Supports 3D resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 w/ Z buffer. The TwinPowers 2D core delivers
near *Null Driver Windows performance and top DOS performance with an advanced 128bit
engine and a 250 MHz RAMDAC.
Hey and you kwon what's so cool also ?
the MTP is a totally black card, i mean the print is black. If you see it, you'll know
what i mean, it looks so cool! you almost believe that you have dark power (read evil
.... evil ? ghost ? HEY BANSHEE!) in your PC.
User's guide
Compared to the Diamond MII Manual (which is NONE for the oem version, except a Doc on the
CD) the manual for the MTP is very good. ST has put a lot of time and effort in the making
the manual readable for anyone. Its in english, its (basically) well written and will
explain the installation in a step by step explanation. Only some minor spelling were
obvious.
Tv-out
Unfortunately the card does not have a TV-Out option.
However, a MTP with TV-Ouy has been announced for 1999 (Jan.)
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 clock
speed) however, overclocking really isn't a necessity 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 process 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 oxygen through a
straw, now blow that same amount through a garden hose of the same length, much easier eh
? You can compare the straw with a <233 Processor & the garden hose with a >266
II processor.
In the case of the Voodoo2 and
Banshee 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 Chip set 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 real life anyway. Therefor on my system a framerate
could never be higher then 75 FPS.
* the Final Reality benchmark
could not be performed since this benchmark did not accept the Banshee card as valid.
SLI Mode - Wouldn't it be
something ?? Well, gotta disappoint you here, Banshee cards can not be connected trough
Scan Line Interleave.
Cool the that card !
The Banshee runs incredibly hot. Just
try putting you finger on the heat sink for more than a fraction of a second.
Yikes! If you have room you could screw a small 486 CPU cooling fan into the heat
sink fans. That will work. Or you could replace the heat sink with a 3Dfx Cool cooling fan. The original heat sink is
glued pretty tight, but I think it will pop off with a little leverage if you heat up the
card first. Do you need to do this? Ehh. I haven't seen any heat related
anomalies, but the trend with video chips lately, like the TNT, has been to put out
phenomenal amounts of heat. Some manufacturers are shipping with fans already.
Anything to get the air moving around the card would help.
3Dfx Compatibility
Although
banshee has some minor software compatibility problems then a Voodoo2 we cannot blame
Skywell for that. All Banshee based cards have some minor problems regarding
compatibility.
The Banshee uses a different Glide
version than the Voodoo or Voodoo2. There can be Glide version errors if you have
other Voodoo cards loaded previously. Creative Labs has provided a Glide switcher to
allow people who want to run their Voodoo 1 and 2 cards with the Banshee.
Reports of success or failure
running a specific game are somewhat inconsistent. One variable seems to be the
brand of card. This is a bit of a surprise since most cards follow the reference
design and use only slightly altered reference drivers.
Recommendations & conclusion
The
Magic series are good products, solid and very affordable.  Its pricing is very well
and the card works very reliable. The web support 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. The Magic Twinpower is an excellent
product which will bring you die hard gamers out there some excellent joy !
Once again, thumbs up Skywell Technology for giving us such
a good product.
Pricing
At this time of year (December
'98) the Magic TwinPower isn't available yet on the market. The price will be 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. If 3Dfx can do a little more in terms of software compatibility then this card will
be a big hit.
* Just received the word that The
card is in the shops as we speak. At this time of year (Dec 1998) its about 130$
For a final conclusion in weather
you should or shouldn't buy a Voodoo2/banshee 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 or banshee card it'll be worth it !
4) if you plan on buying a new system + new graphics card,
then skip voodoo 2 and get this all in one solution.
Rating : an 8 (out of 10 points). Good customer support, no game pack, no tv-out (yet),
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
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