Is this due to Diamond's masterful software engineering corps? Nope. Is it because of a complete re-design of the 3Dfx reference card to provide "faster than the speed of light" trace routes? Nope.

The Fusion is the fastest Banshee card on the market because of that nifty fan and 125MHz SGRAM we mentioned a few seconds ago (A few minutes ago if you read as fast as the Mossad does....)

With the addition of the fan, and the high-spec SGRAM, Diamond has done something that each of does in the privacy of our own bedrooms (and is illegal in 22 states still)....they simply "overclocked" the Fusion.

See, most Banshee cards clock in at a paltry 100MHz core speed and a 110MHz memory bus speed. A couple models available boost those numbers to a 110MHz core speed and a 115MHz memory bus speed. Diamond has surpassed all of those figures for the Fusion, and when our PowerStrip diagnostic program spit out the numbers, open comments of disbelief were heard from the staff:

115MHz core speed, 125MHz memory bus speed.

Whooooeeee, those are some serious numbers, particularly when compared against the bone-stock speeds of the 3Dfx reference card. As you'd expect, those higher speeds directly increase the maximum fill-rate that the Fusion is capable of, and hence it turned in the fastest benchmark results we've seen yet from a Banshee card. In fact, the Fusion is such a speedster that it even rises to beat the average Riva TNT-based card in a few tests, something that hadn't happened in out testing of Banshee and TNT cards so far this year. (Remember of course that most TNT cards run at a core speed of just 90MHz and a memory bus speed of 110MHz, so let's keep it all in perspective ok folks?)

3D Benchmarks

800 x 600 - 1024 x 768

2D Benchmarks

1024 x 768 @ 16bit - 1024 x 768 @ 32bit

For all test results, we used the following SharkyExtreme rig:

• Intel Pentium 2-450 CPU
  
• Abit BH6 440BX Mainboard
  
• Goldstar 128MB PC-100 SDRAM (Chip Part# GM72V66841CT-7J)
  
• Adaptec 2490UW Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller
  
• IBM Ultrastar 9 8.4GB UWSCSI HD
  
• Diamond Monster Sound MX200 3D PCI Sound Card
  
• Plextor SCSI 32X CD-ROM
  
• Win95 OSR 2.1

Test Conditions and Specifications: All tests were run a total of three times with the results averaged to determine final score. VSYNCH was OFF for all video tests, allowing maximum frame rate performance. Both cards were tested at their stock core speeds.

In any case, the Fusion is a strong performer under any circumstance and API except one: A multi-texturing capable application.

We've well documented the fact over the past few months that all Banshee cards are castrated, er, I mean "limited" to just a single TMU processor, versus a Voodoo2's dual TMUs. This means that in apps where multiple passes per pixel are supported the Banshee is left in the cold, and frame rates drop like Ken Starr's Grand Jury case. So far, just Quake 2, Unreal and SHOGO (when the friggin patch finally comes out anyway) are the only three games where multi-texturing support is enabled. With all three games, the Banshee's performance takes a 20 to 40% hit when compared again with a stock Voodoo2.

Aside from that shortcoming, the Banshee does offer equal to or even better than Voodoo2 performance under OpenGL, Glide, and D3D applications. The Fusion is a great card for the "here and now" and as we've said before there are an absolute TON of games being prepared for debut over the next three months which don't support multi-texturing, and don't plan to.