Introduction

I am very glad to introduce to you another product manufactured by Gigabyte. However, its not a motherboard this time, contrarily to what you probably were expecting but a graphic card. The GA-630 is a 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee based graphic card using 16Mb of SGRAM memory in an AGP configuration. Unlike most of the graphic card using only a heatsink to dissipate the heat generated by the graphic processor, the GA-630 is using a fan/heatsink combination for an even better result. The GA-630 is clocked at 100Mhz and the memory runs at 125Mhz for best results while the RAMDAC used on this graphic card is a 250Mhz device. Single pass multitexturing in not supported by this graphic card. The estimated fill rate of this graphic cars is 100/125 million pixels per second. Follow the guide and let's have an indepth look at the GA-630.

Installation

Installing this graphic card goes like a breeze and the users manual provided is very well written and very detailed and therefore the installation of the GA-630 shouldn't be a problem for most of the peoples.                          

The Software Bundle.

There is not much included with this graphic card and you shouldn't count on this graphic card to enlarge your game collection as there is no games included with this card. Surprisingly, there is no CD version of the users manual included on this CD and in my opinion this is a mistake that should be corrected. The utilities and applications included are: DirectX6, Win95/98/NT display drivers, Cyberlink VCD PowerPlayer version 3.48, Final Reality Benchmark version 1.01, Trend pc -eillin OEM setup version 4.02 for win95/98, High Point X Store Pro Bus master IDE driver version 120 for Win95/98 and Adobe Acrobat reader version 3.01. There are also several games pacthes included like: Need for speed3, Unreal, GLQuake, Quake II, Hexen II, Heretic 2, Half Life and Sin.

The performances

All tests were performed with the following system setup:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-6BXE
CPU: Intel Pentium II 350mhz
Memory: 128mb PC100 SDram (LGS)
IDE first channel Primary port: Quantum Fireball EIDE UDMA ST 3.2A
IDE second channel Primary port: AOpen CD-936E UDMA
AGP slot: Gigabyte GA-630 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee 16Mb SGRAM AGP 2X
ISA slot number 2: Ensoniq Soundscape soundcard
ISA slot number 1: US Robotic 56k X2 modem
OS: Win98 4.10
DirectX 6.0

All tests were performed with the VSYNC disabled unless otherwise specified.

The 2D results

Wintune97 Results

The performance observed here are just a little bit better than the Matrox Mystique G200 but a bit lower than a Riva TNT based graphic card.

Winbench98 Business Graphic Winmark

Comparison between the Matrox Mystique G200 and the GA-630 Voodoo Banshee reveals a clear advantage of the Gigabyte Banshee graphic card on this test.

Winbench98 Business Graphic Winmark

A comparison between the Diamond Viper V550 Riva TNT and the GA-630 Voodoo Banshee is showing that both graphic cards are almost on par.

The 3D results

The Forsaken FPS tests were performed 3 times each and the mean value obtained is the one indicated in the above results. While both cards are showing about the same performances at 640 X 480, the advantage goes to the GA-630 on the 800 X 600 resolution.

All the tests have been performed 3 times each and the mean value obtained is the value indicated in the above table. The rendering used was the Quake2 default OpenGL. This time we have a very clear situation here. While the GA-630 offers an unconditional support to the 3Dfx texture rendering of Quake 2 after the installation of the patch, the Riva TNT based graphic card is getting a much better performance even if it has been using Quake 2 default GL texture rendering.

Timedemo testing procedure used:

The computer has been rebooted for the next test.

---

Unreal 3Dfx rendering + Intel PII-350mhz
Graphic card	640 X 480 - 75hz 16-bit	800 X 600 - 75hz 16-bit
Gigabyte GA-630 16Mb SGRAM AGP	45.2 fps	35.96 fps

The Unreal Timedemo tests have been conducted after the latest Unreal patch available (2.20) has been installed. The rendering method used to test this card was the 3Dfx Glide texture rendering with Vsync and Antialisaing disabled.

Unfortunately, it has been impossible to compare both cards on this test. The Riva TNT graphic card couldn't operate properly when using the Open GL texture rendering while the Voodoo Banshee based graphic card was experiencing severe flicking conditions plus unusual visual abnormalities when using the Direct 3D texture rendering.

Final Reality

The above values are the mean values obtained from 5 tests ran in a row by selecting the Advanced Benchmark option of Final Reality. The values obtained with the GA-630 were compared to those of the Matrox Mystique G200 AGP stored in the Final Reality benchmark data base. The Green lines are showing the performance of the Matrox Mystique G200 AGP graphic card. As we can see, the Gigabyte GA-630 Voodoo Banshee is offering a better performances. The differences may look small in term of numbers but this is the way this Benchmark works as I've never observed a very important difference in the results displayed by this benchmark even between graphic cards with very a big performance differences.

Conclusions

All in all, the Gigabyte GA-630 is a very good graphic card. All expectancies of a Voodoo Banshee based graphic card are met. As observed in our test results, sometimes the Voodoo Banshee is a little behind and sometimes it is a little in front in term of performance, but, it never is very far from the pack. As a fact, the best advantage of the Gigabyte GA-630 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee is its total compatibility with the 3Dfx Glide texture rendering. Therefore, for those of you wishing to get the best 3Dfx Glide compatibility with your games then the GA-630 is a very good choice.

Furthermore, the excellent 2D capabilities of this graphic card will satisfy even the more demanding. In resume, there are no reason why I would discourage anybody from buying this graphic card. The only weird thing I observed with this graphic card has been when the Direct 3D texture rendering of Unreal has been used. So, if you wish to play your games with D3D on, then, my best advice would be to try it before to buy it...

Click here for more information about the Gigabyte GA-630 16Mb SGRAM AGP 2X graphic card

GA-630 3D/2D Graphics and Video Accelerator         3Dfx Voodoo Banshee AGP Card HIGHLIGHT •New 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee Graphics Accelerator -     Voodoo2 Core for Ultimate Gaming Entertainment •Full Direct3D, OpenGL, and Glide Games Supports -     for All Game Titles Available in the Market Now •Unprecedented Combination of 3D Visual Quality and     High Frame Rate •Screaming Fast 2D Windows Applications Acceleration •Gigabyte's Friendly Auto-Installation Utility •16MB or 8MB SGRAM Onboard for Your Different     Application Need •Free Software VCD Player SPECIFICATIONS Chip Bus Memory RAMDAC Output Monitor Support Video Port 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee 128-bit Graphics Accelerator AGP 1.0 with Side-band Addressing 16MB or 8MB 125MHz SGRAM 250MHz Pixel Rate 15-pin D-Sub Connector Standard and Multi-Frequency Analog Monitors with DDC2 Compatible Full VMI Interface 3D FEATURES •With Voodoo2 core structure - integrated Voodoo2 Pixel Unit and Texture Unit •Up to 100M Pixel/sec Fill Rate Rendering Engine •Hardware Triangles Setup Engine Capable of 4M Triangles/sec Triangle Setup •High Precision 16-bit Floating Point Z-Buffer •On-chip High Speed Texture Cache Unit •Transparency and Chroma-key with Color Mask •Alpha Blending on Source and Destination Pixel •Dynamic Environment Mapping •Per-pixel table based Fog/Haze Effects •Per-pixel MIP-Mapping, Tri-linear Filtering •Full Scene, Edge Anti-Aliasing •Bump Mapping •Optimized Local Memory Texturing •Sub-pixel and Sub-texel Correction to 0.4x0.4 Resolution •Perspective Corrected 3D Texture Mapping •Palletized and Compressed Textures 2D FEATURES •True 128-bit, 100MHz Single-cycle Windows Graphics User     Interface(GUI) Acceleration •Hardware Accelerated 2D Drawing Primitives •Full featured 128-bit BitBLT Engine •Full Hardware 256 ROP(Raster OPeration) VIDEO ACCELERATION •VMI Host and Video Input Port •Double or Triple Buffering for Video Stream •Multiple Video Windows Support •Hardware Color Space Conversion •Triple 512x8 Color Look-up Tables with Separate Gamma     Correction for Video and Graphics DRIVER SUPPORT •Windows 95/98: Including DirectX6, MiniGL, and Glide •Windows NT 4.0: Including Glide and MiniGL MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENT •Intel Pentium, Pentium II, or Compatible CPUs •Available AGP Slot •Windows95 OSR 2.0 with USB support or Windoews98 or     Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 •16MB System Memory •CD-ROM Drive