Super7 Video Accelerator Comparison - Part 2: Mid-Range Gaming Solutions (June 99)

In the first article the stability of some driver solutions offered wasn’t made as clear as it could have been. In life, there are always things we dread doing, whether it is cleaning the kitchen sink, washing the dog, or making your bed. Similarly, when running hundreds of tests with drivers that constantly crash after one or two resolution switches, you quickly begin to add that experience to your list of pet peeves. What names made it to AnandTech’s list over the thousands of tests AnandTech ran for this comparison?

At the top of the list was NVIDIA, although there are many unreleased driver revisions floating around the net, and many hacks that were put together to solve specific problems, NVIDIA’s officially released reference Detonator 1.88 drivers caused, by far, the most problems during the tests. One could go as far as to say that the Detonator 1.88 drivers are entirely too buggy and unstable for use in a normal Super7 system, outside of AnandTech’s test beds whose sole purpose is to take quite a beating without complaining. With the amount of unofficial driver releases that have popped up all over the net, it shouldn’t be long before NVIDIA addresses the issues AnandTech experienced with the drivers. Until then, you’re probably better off using the drivers provided by the manufacturer of your card, you won’t have the fastest performance but at least you’ll be able to use your system reliably.

For entirely too many of the tested cards, 1600 x 1200 x 32-bit color was a difficult setting to achieve reliably in 3D gaming operation. Outside of 3DLabs’ Permedia3, there were virtually no occasions upon which such a high resolution could be obtained without resulting in some sort of instability for extended periods of time.

Speaking of 3DLabs, contrary to what one would assume, the Permedia3 experienced quite a few problems related to driver issues on Super7 platforms. Incorrectly displayed textures and visual artifacts were prominent during the OpenGL tests which could be related to the Permedia3’s unique Virtual Texture management that is automatically enabled for OpenGL applications. Luckily the Permedia3 ended up being one of the most stable, if not the most stable, performer out of the 10 cards AnandTech tested in Part 2 of the Super7 Video Accelerator Comparison. Surprisingly enough, 3DLabs was aided by S3 and Matrox in the sense of upholding a level of stability during the tests.

3dfx’s MiniGL drivers worked flawlessly during all the tests, as we’ve come to expect from the drivers that have been in use for such a long period of time. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about their currently available beta OpenGL ICD (Quake3 compatible) drivers. The Voodoo2’s release candidate drivers are much more stable than what was out previously for the Voodoo2 in terms of OpenGL compliant releases, however there is still a bit of stability and definitely performance tweaking necessary before most users drop their MiniGL drivers. The Voodoo3’s OpenGL ICD drivers weren’t too pleasing either, however they weren’t as flaky as the Detonator 1.88 drivers. 

Among the newcomers, ATI and Matrox shared unusually reliable drivers for a Super7 platform.  This is unusual considering that ATI had previously not featured the best Super7 drivers, luckily things have changed since then and the Rage 128 is a definite option for Super7 users once again.