Manufacturer: Power Color Tech: AGP based 3Dfx Banshee with 16MB SGRAM Bundle: Pod and Tomb Raider II Price: $99

One could call the Voodoo Banshee a consequence of segmentation, somewhat similar to Intel and their CPU strategy if you like. After all, 3Dfx Interactive is now a public company, thus money makes the world go around and all that. With a single Texture Memory Unit (TMU) the Voodoo Banshee product is certainly no Voodoo2 killer (funnily enough 3Dfx were the only ones not to issue a Voodoo2 killer press release?) and therefor not exactly the 'extreme' gaming board. On the other hand, it does the job intended, which is to give access to 3D gaming to the mid-range user along with an extremely solid 2D part. One could call it a cut-down version of the Voodoo2, minus some of the 'speed' but at a competitive price to suffice that fact. What entry-level and mid-range users get is a really cheap 2D/3D solution that performs really well in D3D with Glide thrown in for good measure. The fill rate of the Voodoo Banshee isn't exactly lighting quick by today's high-end standards. But for the everyday gamer, the setup of 4 million textured triangles/second means that it's no slouch. The Voodoo Banshee's chipset die is pretty full and what you get is a 128-bit 2D core GDI accelerator, with a 128 bit VGA and an integrated Voodoo2 pixel unit, along with the aforementioned single 3Dfx powered texture unit.

Enter the Taiwanese, who are no longer just known within the PC industry for their motherboards. In fact, if you've bought a new PC over the past few months, the probability of your Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo2 and/or TNT being a remarked OEM board from Taiwan is VERY high indeed. Play Sherlock Holmes and peel back the sticker and see for yourselves that this is quite often the case. After having been to Computex '98 in Taipei it was evident that the Taiwanese were indeed intent on getting in on the 3D graphics groovy train in1998. Established Taiwanese graphics board manufacturers such as A-Trend, ASUS and Gainward have already had their offerings reviewed here at Sharky Extreme. So what of Power Color? Power Color is a relatively small and indeed new Taiwanese company, founded in 1997, they not only make graphics cards but they also do motherboards, sound cards and now DV kits. Well being a somewhat smaller operation has meant that they haven't set their sights on the OEM side as much as the aforementioned companies. Instead they've tried to make a 'retail friendly' Taiwanese version of the Voodoo Banshee. Enter the C3DFX3 'EvilQueen'...