Performance with New Voodoo5/Voodoo4 v1.1.2 Drivers

and v1.35 firmware update is not improved according to our tests. Here is our comparison on a Power Mac G4/400 (AGP) running Mac OS 9.0.4 and a DRT 19" monitor:

3dfx Voodoo4/Voodoo5* Driver Performance Tests

Test	v.1.1.2	v1.1.0
Color	Color	Color
Quake III Arena 1.17	30.6	31.2
Unreal Tournament 436	35.6	38.1
Walker v1.2	27.1	28.0
G4 TimeDemo 0.32	27.8	28.3
MacBench 5.0 Graphics Score	3387	3469

*2-sample FSAA

While the performance differences between the latest and previous drivers are slight, they are all in the slower direction. (See our Voodoo5/Radeon Comparo for test configuration details.) More disconcerting was that the G4 froze every time upon quitting the Walker and G4 TimeDemo applications. This never happened with any previous version.

The improvements in the new drivers according to 3dfx are:

1. 4-bit color lookup tables supported
2. Exponential fog and exp2 fog now working
3. More resolutions supported, including >85Hz
4. Multiple video streams can now be scaled
5. Numerous bug fixes