Super7 3D Chipset Comparison

The K6-2 rules the Super7 world under Quake 2 when armed with a Voodoo2, however how well does it perform when you remove the Voodoo²'s shoulder.  Let's find out as we take a look at how well the K6-2 performs without the support of a Voodoo²

At 640 x 480, nVidia's Riva 128 chipset has a clear advantage over the competition.  While its image quality isn't that great in comparison to the second place Intel 740 its performance is unmatched, providing gamers with nearly a fluid 30 fps of gaming performance.  The old Voodoo 1 is still performing solid, as it cranks out frame rates just about on par with that of the i740.   The ATI 3D Rage Pro comes in last place, not even giving 3Dfx any trouble as far as competition goes, an unfortunate sight since the visual quality of the 3D Rage Pro isn't bad at all.

Take away the beauty of the 100MHz Front Side Bus, and the scene slowly begins to change.  The performance of the i740 drops to third place, bumped ever so slightly by the former champ, the 3Dfx Voodoo 1.  Once again, the Riva 128 comes out on top, a lead which could be partially explained by the hardware support for AMD's 3DNow! instructions provided for by the newest nVidia Drivers.    

Crank up the resolution to 800 x 600, a setting unsupported by the 4MB Voodoo 1 cards, and the rankings remain pretty much the same.  The Riva 128 and i740 chipsets both make the transition to 800 x 600 without much of a performance hit (at most around 5%).  However the ATI 3D Rage Pro takes a much bigger punch enforced by the sharper resolution, resulting in around a 20% drop in frame rate.