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The Canopus Pure 3D II
by Jack Ambrose
The Canopus Pure 3D II is the first of several 3DFX Voodoo2 cards that we will be reviewing. This card came with 12MB installed, and the optional TV outs. I was excited to get the card in my hands since I’d heard a lot of good things about this and Voodoo2 based cards in general.
First Impressions
The Pure 3D II is touted on the box as “Designed for the Serious Gamer!”. If the Voodoo2 based cards are anything like their predecessors, 3D games that support them will fly. The card came shipped from Canopus in a retail box, with all the necessary cables and software. I was pleasantly surprised to see a composite, S-Video, and a audio cable included with the card in addition to the VGA pass through and the SLI cable.
Installation
Installation went smoothly. I inserted the card into a available PCI slot and connected the pass through cable to my VGA card. One note here: The VGA pass through cable isn’t your standard cable. Canopus had to redesign the back of the card to accommodate the S-Video and composite outs. This means a special connector for the VGA pass through cable as it plugs into the card. Not a big deal. One other item that I thought was neat was that Canopus has put a cooling fan on one of the main chips. It has got to be fast if it has a fan on it, right?
Driver installation went pretty easy, but I should note that if you got an early card from Canopus you should get the updated set of drivers. I had problems with the first driver set they shipped, but Canopus had an update within two days of my getting the card so this wasn’t too inconvenient. Canopus has written a nice set of drivers. They allow you quite a bit of control over various functions of the card. You can set the gamma and color saturations of the card’s output, as well as various settings for the video out. Like screen position, brightness, and so on. This is nice if you attach the Pure 3D II to a TV. Canopus also installs a “button bar” of sorts. This is designed to allow you to put shortcuts to your games with custom settings for each game. I’m not a fan of “application bars” and prefer to have a minimum of software running when I game. However this is a nice addition for people who do like application bars, and is easily removed.
Performance
The Canopus was the fist card to be subjected to my new suite of benchmarks. These new tests are an effort to better represent a card’s “real world” performance, and to de-emphasize WinBench a bit. In addition to Quake II and WinBench 3D, I use the Torak Demo that runs for quite awhile and gives a good accurate score. I have also added the Forsaken benchmark that also runs for quite a bit and appears to test out the card as well. Finally I’ve added 3DFX’s own WizBench, a routine designed by 3DFX to test their cards.
I was very impressed with the quality of the card’s output as well and its speed. All the game benchmarks achieved high scores. Torak achieved 47.5fps with its custom driver, a bit lower with the Direct3D driver. Quake II I ran in 640x480 and 800x600, and it achieved 36.1fps and 34.9fps respectively. Not shabby, especially since it maintained its performance in 800x600. Under Forsaken the card tested out at 54.2fps.
This card cooks! With the ability to over clock the card from 90 to 95mhz in the driver (Not done for the sake of these tests) you should be able to squeeze a little more performance out of this unit. I’m very impressed with Canopus’s and 3DFX’s offering. It outperforms anything I’ve tested to date, and if it is any indication of things to come, we’ve got some screaming 3D game play to come.
The Verdict
The Canopus Pure 3D II is an excellent 12MB Voodoo2 card. Canopus is also offering a version of this card without the TV outs for a reduced prices. As we get more Voodoo2 cards in we’ll see how this card holds up although I have no doubt that this card will hold its own very nicely. [footer1.htm]