Quote:People say : V3 drivers don't work with Banshee, but with a simple hack they do work ! You must search for HEX 1A120500 in files 3dfx16v3.drv and 3dfxv3.vxd and replace it with HEX 1A120300. And it works ! Any V3 drivers work with my Banshee. The file 3dfx32v3.dll isn't patched, therefore D3D doesn't work properly (2 TMUs vs 1 TMU).
Well about multitexturing : use the 1.03.04 drivers, because the 1.04.00 Banshee drivers are broken.
A strange thing about 1.04.00 Banshee drivers : Multitexturing doesn't work in 3DMark2000 (but works with 3DMark2001 ?!). I used 1.04.00 V3 drivers, renamed 3dfx32v3dll as 3dfx32vb.dll and replaced the original file in safe mode. What happens ? Multitexturing works ! Emboss Bump mapping 3-pass and 2-pass do work !
Another strange discovery : hex edit file 3dfx16v3.drv and replace all text occurrences "3dfx16v3.drv", "3dfx32v3.dll" and "3dfxv3.vxd" with respective "3dfx16vb.drv", "3dfx32vb.dll" and "3dfxvb.vxd". Finally rename the file 3dfx16v3.drv as 3dfx16vb.drv. Now you can replace the original file with the hacked file. What's new ? Check 3dfx Tools : the video gamma control is no longer greyed out.
I think that Banshee is a Voodoo3 0.35µ. Perhaps the second TMU was disabled, I don't know. But I am sure that 3dfx could have build a unified driver for Banshee/Voodoo3. Why are Glide/OpenGL files unified ?
I have a dream like Martin Luther King : could someone compile for Banshee Win9x driver 4.12.01.0675 from released 3dfx source code ?
That is certainly a great deal of information, and very usefull! I knew that there are things in which using a magic wound (Hex edit), you discover that the thing actually runs! The hard part is all the time, where to edit, and how. Some of this things work by luck, others no.
I will check this figure, since I own a Banshee. I wonder how much might affect this some of the games and tests already done? Maybe NFSHP2 could work, maybe Unreal Tournament 2003, maybe 3dmark2003.... But all have to be tested.
Also, I don't know what impact might be, and if a game like "Blood Rayne" could work on this card. On a ProSavage DDR, it halts before it starts. Usimg 3dAnalyze, the problem seem to be Hardware TnL. Also inside the game, some of the textures fail to appear (seems that the game wants either a 3 textures/pass, which Geforce2 and 4Mx handles, or a special type of bumpmapping: dot3 or environment). However, looking more closer, the bumpmapping seem to appear, and it's emboss. So, might be 3textures/pass necessary.
Why this thing? Banshee might at it's best support 2 textures/pass (which I doubt), but I don't know how it would handle the multipass texturing, and more, the problems regarding heavy bumpmapping, multitextures and lights. Not to mention, the limit of 16Mb Video Ram, and the imposibility of using texture compression.
This might seriously hurt performance (6-10fps expected in 800x600 resolution on an AthlonXP 1700+).
I heard that the voodoo's (before 4th generation) have a YAB narrow channel texture compression. But I never saw a game or anything to activate or use this thing. More, I don't know if there is anything in the drivers itself. S3 or DXT compression, might be a nice help for the Voodoo Banshee/Voodoo3, but the real problem would be: who will handle this? CPU or Voodoo, but most important, how it will, and how fast...
I saw inside the glide3x file, sections which might reffer to testing purposes: show polygons, fps, but I don't know how to activate them.