Pure 3D II Review

Minimum Requirements: Pentium 90 16 MB System Memory VGA graphics card Windows 95 or NT CD-ROM Drive Free PCI slot

Reference System: Pentium 200 MMX or better 32MB System Memory VGA graphics card Windows 95

The Wait
I received word from Canopus that they had shipped me a shiny new Canopus Pure 3D II while I was in Baltimore on a week long business trip.  In anticipation of arriving home to finally getting my hands on this little bundle of joy, I sadistically tortured myself by reading all the Pure 3D II reviews I could get my little web browser to pull up for me.  Over and over I read about the ease of install and how it "out performed this card and that card", the oohs and ahhs, and couldn't contain myself.   One thing I kept asking myself over and over, from review to review was how is this thing going to perform on a "Classic" Pentium system.  Everyone kept talking about Voodoo2 needing a P2.  Now I have a lot of computers around the house so I decided we were going to test this baby out all over the place.  After several flight delays, arriving late for my wife's graduation, and everything else life could throw at me the wait was over.

Out of the Box
Upon first inspection of the package I find a box that is heavier than my last harddrive.  Cool they sent me a new harddrive too?  Nope this cardboard box is packaged to withstand some serious damage, it was obvious to me Canopus has dealt with the postal service before.  Inside we find: The Pure 3D II card, Manual, two CD's, and an assortment of cables including a cable to hook up your sound card to your TV.   WOW  The manufacturer for my sound card didn't even include a cable for my CD-ROM.  BONUS

The first thing I noticed about the card was that there is a fan smack dab in the middle of the card.  No need to find a 3rd party fan for all you overclockers and the rest of us can rest assured that our Voodoo2 chipset will not overheat.  BONUS #2   Another thing to notice is the card itself is shorter than most of the other Voodoo2 cards by about an inch.and the SLI connector is in the middle of the board.   I guess they forgot to send the other board :)  But seriously with all the SCSI cables and other miscellaneous cabling inside my computer the last thing I want to do is re-route everything in the box to put in a new video card.  Lets get this baby installed.

The Install
The manual is straight forward and easy to follow taking you step by step throughout the installation process.  After following the instructions and installing my card I was ready for CD 1.  The Driver CD includes: Drivers for Win95 and WinNT, The Pure 3D II Tools, and DirectX 5.2.  BONUS #3  I decided to do the first install into my old faithful P-200 with 64 meg and TX chipset (translated: Antique)   After going in to device manager and removing the voodoo card already installed I simply shut down, remove the old card and replaced it with the Pure 3D II.  On boot it detected the Pure 3D II and asked for the CD.  Other than having to type the path of the new driver all was well and I was re-booting.  Canopus has even provided an LED that is visible by looking in the composite video connector that will light up if the card is working.  BONUS #4  Also if you own a Canopus Total 3D 128V there is a passthrough connector so you don't need to use the external pass-through which makes the back of your computer a little neater.  After installing drivers, tools, the new DirectX we were ready for the fateful Quake test.

The Games
Those of you that know me know that I am a Quake junkie so Quake II was obviously my first choice to test out the Pure 3D II.  I quickly edited my config and removed everyone of my tweaks to get me back to pure Quake 2 v3.14 performance.  I then fired up Quake 2 and ran timedemo on demo1 and was astonished.  31 fps on a "Classic" Pentium P-200 @ 800x600.  That's 5 fps more than I could ever tweak out of my Monster 3D without all the cool effects like colored lighting turned off.   Why then all this gibberish of having to have a p-2 to take advantage of Voodoo2?   Well in a typical P2 300 you can achieve around 58fps on the demo1 timedemo.   On the other hand though, running Quake 2 with more than acceptable frame rates with all the juicy benefits of Voodoo2, is in my opinion well worth the cash.  Not only that but you now have a card that will just get better with each upgrade of the processor and Motherboard.  What more can you ask for ?

Among other games that got new life from the Pure 3D II were: Forsaken - Which looked incredible at 800x600.  Ultimate Race Pro - which performed fabulously at 800x600 and looked great.  Triple Play 99 - You betcha.  F1 Racing Sim - Smother than ever.   The bottom line is this card outperformed my old Monster 3D while allowing me to crank the resolution up on most of my games.  Now granted not all of the games will allow you to change resolutions, but the ones that do look, oh so good!

The TV Out
Just how good does Quake 2 look on the TV?  Well I was skeptical at first.  Basically you just have to go to the Pure 3D II Properties tab in display properties and select enable TV out and you are up and running.  I found that I could quite comfortably handle playing Quake 2, and Forsaken on the TV.  There is a lot of control from the control panel for aligning the screen and colors as well which is pretty handy.  In my day job I have messed around with $200 little black boxes that didn't have as many features for adjusting the TV out so I was very Impressed.  BONUS # whoops lost count.

The Software
Canopus also provides some utilities unique to the Pure 3D II.  Quick Control, allows you to change the gamma settings easily from the keyboard while you are playing a game making setting the brightness of the screen easy as pie.  The other utility, Application Launcher, which is like the Application bar found in Office97 allows you to set up buttons to launch you games with with custom settings on the Pure 3D II so all your TV out, color depth, gamma, and refresh settings are available for the particular game at the touch of a button.

The drivers have their own install program allowing them to be uninstalled easily unlike the competitions use of an inf file which makes you hunt down all the files if you want to uninstall.  Also the Pure 3D II tab of Screen Properties allows you to easily overclock your Pure 3D II to a full 100MHZ vs. the 95MHZ for the Diamond Card.

Summary
The Pure 3D II is a great card with all the quality and features that we have come to love from Canopus.  With things like the included on board fan, TV out, and the full choice of included cables, I would say this was a gamers best bet in a Vooodoo2 card and would recommend it to anyone.  Although the Pure 3D II doesn't   come with any bundled software it does come with Boot Magazines Pure PC Power demo disk that has all the demos you could ever want to take advantage of your new Pure 3D II.   This card stands heads above the competition so the $329 price tag is well worth the extra dollars.  Also Canopus is offering a $30 rebate for previous Canopus owners until June 30th.  Don't need the TV out?  June 1st the Pure 3D II LX should be available for $279, which is basically the Pure 3D II minus the TV-Out Features.

In all this card kicks some serious ass and if you can afford it, the improvements will be well worth it.  This card will only get faster as you upgrade your processor and motherboard.  The ability to run games at 800x600 without loss of framerate is worth it alone not to mention the other features built into this card.

Visit the Canopus web site, http://www.canopuscorp.com./pure3d2.htm and get your own Pure 3D II.

Review by: William Gall
Date: May 10, 1998

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Thanks to Zanshin for unknowingly donating his Pure 3D II graphic :)