Introduction

The Elsa Victory II board is based on 3Dfx's first true 2D/3D single chip solution, the Voodoo Banshee. The Banshee is, in essence, a bastardization of the Voodoo2 chipset, boasting a higher (100Mhz vs 90Mhz) clock speed, unified memory architecture, Glide support, no single pass multitexturing, and of course, blazing fast 2D (as if we need faster 2D). The Elsa board adds high-performance 16MB SGRAM to the picture.

The Board, Installation, Manual, Drivers, and Game Bundle

After emptying the oversized Elsa Victory II box (how come video card boxes have to be so big?), I took a look at the Elsa Victory II board. As with 12MB Voodoo2 boards, the Elsa Victory II had memory chips on the back side of the board (4 out of the 8 2MB SGRAM pieces, manufactured by SEC, Korea). Unlike the Voodoo2 board, it is a normal sized board, with only 1 rendering processor equipped with a fairly large heatsink.

The installation of the Elsa Victory II went well. There were no quirks which I encountered, and the documentation described in painful detail the installation methods. One strange thing which I noticed was that Elsa prints the same installation guide for both the Victory II and the Erazor II, meaning you get the same book, regardless of what product you buy. Whether or not this makes a difference is debatable, but what I would have liked is that the English version of both the manual and the installation guide is buried somewhere in the middle (actually, at the end). However, it is expected that the German version (Elsa is a German card manufacturer) of the manual will be first up. Other than that, the manual is excellent. I particularly liked the fact that Elsa took the time to include a pretty informative section in their manual titled "All About Graphics" This portion of the manual talks about, in order:

The 3D Pipeline
-Object Data, Tessellation, Geometrical Transformation, Rendering, Display

3D interfaces
-Direct3D, Immediate mode and Retained mode
-OpenGL

Color Palettes
-VGA
-Direct Color

Drivers

The drivers are relatively plain, offering a few options such as force trilinear filtering, Vsync-off, limit Glide programs to 2 MB texture memory, etc. (Once you click on the Options... button) While I would prefer more tweaking options, such as an overclocking utility, the Elsa Victory II drivers offer enough settings for most users, without confusing them by adding a million settings which end up never being used. All in all, the Victory II drivers aren't amazingly feature packed, but they get the job done. There were no performance quirks with these drivers, as long as Vsync was disabled.

The deal with the actual Banshee's drivers is a different story. First of all, the ICD is still beta from 3Dfx, and not released with this product. (If you want to play Quake2 games, I recommend downloading the MiniGL 1.46 drivers from 3Dfx's web site) With the Voodoo2, the need for an OpenGL ICD was not as great because the Voodoo2 could not render in a window. Since most apps which require an OpenGL ICD are professional design applications (such as 3D Studio MAX, even though that particular example supports D3D rendering as well) use window rendering, the Voodoo2 could not be of much use anyway. Also, the Voodoo2 and the Banshee are both gaming cards. Nowadays, with games such as Quake 3 Arena (which requires an OpenGL ICD) in the future, an OpenGL ICD for both the Voodoo2, and the Banshee is inevitable.

Game Bundle

The Victory II comes with Accolade's Test Drive 5 (full) and a bunch of trial versions of popular (yet crappy) games such as Incoming, Forsaken, MotoRacer, Terracide (this one is absolutely horrible), Tomb Raider II (ditto) and Monster Truck Madness 2. Test Drive 5 is the plus of the Victory II's game bundle, but all the other trial versions aren't worth the paper CD-holders they're in (ok, they aren't that bad (w/the exception of...well you get the point :). I personally don't look at the game bundle *at all* when purchasing hardware, but if you want a few extra games to test out your card, or the full version of Test Drive 5 (which I heard was a good game), then take the game bundle of the Victory II into consideration when making your purchasing choice.

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Performance

Testing Procedure

Quake2 version 3.19 running on a

Creative Lab's RIVA TNT reference drivers

AOpen Savage 3D, reference drivers (miniGL)

Elsa Victory II, 3Dfx Banshee, MiniGL 1.46, Vsync OFF

Each test was run 3 times and an average was taken (rounded to nearest 0.1fps)

System used was a PII/400, 64MB RAM, 5.1GIG WD Caviar

Results

The Victory II performs in between the Savage3D and RIVA TNT @ 640x480. Keep in mind that these scores are with VSYNC OFF. While quake2 is certainly playable with VSYNC off, VSYNC on is more aesthetic, and much slower (40fps).

At 800x600 the Victory II falls behind the rest of the competition. Still, 41.7fps is very playable, in most cases much more playable than the Savage3D, which is very inconsistent and jerky at times.

At high resolutions the Victory II is at a loss compared to the competition. The theoretical % of FPS @ 640x480 should be 39%. If the TNT and Savage 3D can beat the theoretical ratio by significant amounts as shown, they must be limited by something other than pure fill-rate. Since they are obviously not CPU limited (if they were, they would perform around 90+% of the FPS @ 640x480), the only other limitations possible are bandwidth (also latencies), and/or drivers. Since the Victory II barely surpasses the theoretical ratio, it is most likely not driver/bandwidth limited, but purely fill-rate limited. On the other hand, the card could be extremely bandwidth/driver limited. Since game developers have praised 3Dfx's *miniGL* drivers (NOT 3DFX's beta OpenGL ICD), the bandwidth/driver limitations are most likely at a minimum. This issue is double sided. The good part is that the Banshee chipset has a very efficient design, the bad side of the deal is that there is very little room for driver improvement, thus meaning the card has less potential than competition such as the Savage3D and RIVA TNT.

Overall Performance Impression

The Victory II is a decent performer. I would recommend it over the Savage3D even though it is somewhat slower at higher resolutions. Those looking for the ultimate 2D/3D solution are still going to have to settle for the TNT; the Victory II doesn't come close to the TNT.

The Importance of Glide

Glide should not be neglected when considering the Victory II. For some older 3D games which only run Glide accelerated (such as NBA Live 98), the Victory II can be very valuable. Currently, EPIC's Unreal is only playable in glide mode (or software), until 2.21 comes out. Glide + the upcoming OpenGL ICD will allow the Victory II to run virtually every game on the market. The importance of Glide in future games; however, is somewhat shaky. Many developers are developer Glide versions of their games, but largely for development purposes. (since it is very easy to program in Glide (relative to D3D), many game developers "test out stuff" in Glide, and later port over to D3D/OpenGL) I highly doubt many 3D accelerated game coming out in the future will support only Glide. (Diablo II doesn't count, it's a 2D game)

Conclusion

The Victory II combines a capable Banshee core equipped with SGRAM instead of cheaper, slower SDRAM, unparalleled game support, and an ok game bundle. While the Victory II is far from the top of the pack in terms of raw performance, the ELSA Victory II holds it's own with Glide support. The SGRAM should help the ELSA board fare well against other 3Dfx Banshee based competition.

Performance 80% The Victory II is a capable board, but not nearly as fast as RIVA TNT based solutions. Voodoo2 prices are also dropping, and the Banshee does not fare well against those boards either.

Drivers 70% They aren't loaded with a bunch of features, but they get the job done, and the graphs indicated that the miniGL is excellent. Unfortunately, the lack of a good OpenGL ICD really hurts the Victory II.

Installation/Manual 95% Nothing went wrong, and the manual documented everything very well, plus it provided quality explanation of 3D jargon.

Quality 95% The Quality of the ELSA board is outstanding. The heatsink is very adequate, the addition of SGRAM is a big plus, and as mentioned above, the manual is very well done.

Game Bundle 75% One good game, and a bunch of crappy demos. It's average.

Price 65% The cheapest I found was $159. That's more expensive that most (if not all) Banshee solutions and even more expensive than the significantly faster Creative Labs TNT.

Value w/Glide 75% The ELSA board is a little on the expensive side for a Banshee. Even when compared to the TNT, the ELSA board is expensive. On the other hand, the ELSA board is quality, plus you get Glide support.

Value w/o Glide 60% Glide is one of the only reasons to get the ELSA board of a RIVA TNT solution, since they are the same price.

My Overall Impression 83% The ELSA board is a very high quality Banshee board; but the price doesn't exactly justify the performance of this board. This score is taking Glide into substantial consideration since I am an avid Unreal fan. If I did not need Glide, the score would be 60%

How I Score

Performance - How fast the board is.

Drivers - How stable and optimized the drivers are.

Installation/Manual - Where there any quirks during installation? How well is the manual documented?

Quality - How well does the board seem to be made? Did the manufacturer take any cost cutting short cuts? This score also reflects my impression of the card compared to others of the same chipset.

Game Bundle - Is the game bundle any good?

Price - How much does the board cost? Is it too expensive?

Value - How good is the price/performance ratio, taking into consideration other aspects such as quality, drivers, game bundle, APIs, etc.

My Overall Impression - How I personally feel about the board. Would I buy it? What if I didn't care about this or that.. etc.

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