Introduction
The STB Black Magic 3D has
been around for over 6 months now, but is still
a top performer because of the voodoo2 chipset.
How does the voodoo2 perform in today's gaming
world? What are the advantages and disadvantages
of purchasing a voodoo2 card now? Hopefully this
review should answer any questions you have related
to this.
Technology information
The Black Magic 3D is a 12
MB PCI add-on card, and as mentioned above, uses
the 3Dfx voodoo2 chipset. To install a voodoo2
card you must already have a 2D graphics card,
and (preferably) a Pentium II processor or faster.
If you are a serious gamer who needs those extra
FPS when it counts, anything less than a Pentium
II 233 will hardly be adequate. The Black Magic
3D has a maximum resolution of 800x600 for a single
card, and 1024x768 with two cards (SLI). There
are other methods of using higher resolutions,
but they are not supported.
Installation
The installation was simple
as usual. I have never had any problems installing
a voodoo2 card. The user must simply place the
card into a PCI slot and start the computer up,
install drivers, reboot, and begin gaming.
Features
The software bundle was fair,
but not exactly excellent. If you don't have either
of the included full version games it may seem
a little extra special... but I think I speak
for quite a few of us when I say "Who needs
another copy of G-Police and BattleZone?".