Has any tried running a Voodoo Banshee AGP as their "2d" card, and use voodoo2 sli for everything else?
I have a couple of AGP cards I can use like the S3 Trio3d or SiS 6326 but curious as my Banshee cards don't get much love, they might be useful for something at least!
Whatever order you'll install the video driver, that'll replace the Glide DLLs and take the preference for that API (and the MiniGLs that link them). Other than that it should be fine (still individual devices to Direct3D). I'd prefer to install the Banshee drivers twice and toss in V2 specific Glide DLLs into game's folders if I want to use that card.
(You'll probably notice the Banshee can blow away the V2SLI in texture management and buffer operations at some point, so I wouldn't count out its 3D use 😀 )
leileilol wrote on 2023-10-30, 01:24:Whatever order you'll install the video driver, that'll replace the Glide DLLs and take the preference for that API (and the MiniGLs that link them). Other than that it should be fine (still individual devices to Direct3D). I'd prefer to install the Banshee drivers twice and toss in V2 specific Glide DLLs into game's folders if I want to use that card.
(You'll probably notice the Banshee can blow away the V2SLI in texture management and buffer operations at some point, so I wouldn't count out its 3D use 😀 )
Good point, thanks for confirming! I might just try and both and see what I prefer. (Likely going to want SLI for the street-cred.. haha)
Does the Banshee really out-perform V2SLI in real-world gaming performance at any point? That would be interesting to see.
arizonapalms wrote on 2023-10-30, 11:08:Does the Banshee really out-perform V2SLI in real-world gaming performance at any point? That would be interesting to see.
Yes, especially when no multi-texturing is being used considering that Voodoo Banshee has higher clocks than the Voodoo2 and uses a 128-bit memory controller that is unified.
VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce3 Ti 200 64 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS
Direct3D games doing pixel buffer operations will get more thrash with a V2SLI as that's two physical cards to read from and write to. Metal Gear Solid may be the most well known example of this, but there's a few others from earlier (Omikron: The Nomad Soul, Urban Chaos)
Quake3 (and games based on the tech) often have enough texture density that makes a V2 panic (and having two of them makes it worse) in places where a Banshee still maintains a framerate.
Banshee's lack of multitexturing also means they're allowed to overbright in UnrealEngine1 and Half-Life games, so there's visual tastes at hand too. 😀
