3dfx Voodoo Banshee

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Creative 3D Blaster Banshee

The Voodoo Banshee is a 1998 imagined 3D - graphics chipset of the former 3D specialists 3dfx Interactive in California .

Unlike its direct predecessor, the Voodoo 2 , the Banshee was a 2D / 3D combo chipset. The main focus of the development work was on the 2D unit, the 3D unit was largely taken over unchanged from the Voodoo 2 . Thanks to the hardware implementation of all Windows GDI functions , 3dfx managed to catch up with the top group in terms of performance in the field of 2D graphics cards , which so far has been dominated by cards from Matrox and S3 . However, the 3D unit suffered from a missing second texture unit and therefore lagged behind the Voodoo 2 in terms of performance - these circumstances made the chipset popular with OEMs , but the main target group of gamers so far was not really enthusiastic about the Voodoo Banshee.

The chip was manufactured in 0.35 µm technology and was able to access 16 MB SDRAM via a 100 MHz fast memory interface , which enabled a theoretical fill rate of 100 MPixel / s. Furthermore, cards with the Voodoo Banshee were available for the first time not only for the PCI bus, but also for the newer AGP , whereby the AGP support was limited to mechanical compatibility, the additional functions made possible by the AGP remained unused.

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