December '97 3D Video Accelerator Comparison

A card actually faster than a 3Dfx Voodoo card?  Well, would you settle for just as fast?  The Rendition V2200 based Hercules Thriller 3D offers you the same performance as the Diamond Monster 3D, while giving you 2D acceleration as well.  The Hercules Thriller 3D is an excellent overall card, especially when you consider the $129 pricetag of the 4MB package gets you the most of the performance of a Monster 3D...and 2D acceleration as well.   I wouldn't recommend the Thriller 3D for users with large monitors as the 2D visual quality of the card is a bit degraded at higher resolutions.  The ultimate 2D/3D solution seems to be an AGP Millennium II with a PCI Voodoo 2, however if you're running on a 15" monitor at 800 x 600 and can't spare 2 PCI slots drop a Thriller 3D in there and watch the frames fly. 

ATI's Xpert@Work card comes in last place, lagging behind in all of the tests by a noticeable frame rate.  When ATI releases their final OpenGL drivers you can expect a bit of a increase in performance, however the beta OpenGL drivers seem to be too little too late on ATI's part, maybe if they had unveiled them upon the public release of the 3D Rage Pro chipset cards they might have been more of a hit.  Right now, if you have a 3D Rage Pro based accelerator, great-you can run GL Quake 2 now, otherwise, the drivers still don't provide users with a reason to drop their 3Dfx cards in favor of an Xpert@Whatever card.

Of course, as can be expected, the Voodoo 2 does rule all in the Quake 2 world.  However the performance jump above the Diamond Monster 3D, an original Voodoo card, isn't all that much.  The 12MB Creative Labs 3D Blaster Voodoo 2 is priced about twice as high as the Monster 3D, while only giving you a 6 fps increase in performance.   You should note that the card remained un-tweaked in these tests, as did the Monster 3D.  Breaking 30 fps with a Voodoo 2 card on a K6 system shouldn't be all that difficult with a little tweaking, however don't expect to be reaching Pentium II performance under Quake 2 just because you have a Voodoo 2 in your system.  The real benefit of a Voodoo 2 on a K6 system can be seen below in the 800 x 600 tests.

The ATI Xpert@Work was one of the few cards that actually made it to 800 x 600, the rest were either limited by their texture memory size or were too slow to cope with, not that 7.6 frames per second is anything to be proud of.  By the time ATI finalizes their OpenGL ICD drivers you can probably expect frame rates in the 10 - 15 fps range which isn't bad at all, although its nothing compared to the 24+ fps the Creative Labs Voodoo 2 cooked up.

As mentioned earlier, higher resolutions is where the Voodoo 2 really shines.  Experiencing a mere 0.2 fps loss when making the jump to 800 x 600, the Creative Labs Voodoo 2 makes it clear that there is no longer a reason to play games at 640 x 480.  For years the market had been attempting to keep the ideal level of play at a 640 x 480 resolution.  Once again, 3Dfx came along, and with one stroke of their Voodoo magic, managed to raise the standards to 800 x 600...if your card can't handle 800 x 600, you're out of luck, get a Voodoo 2.