Single 12mb M3d-2 vs SLI 8mb M3d-2

[Lawton]

Hey forum!

I have made what seems to me to be a rather odd discovery. I have 2 8mb Monster3d II cards (SLI) on a machine with an ABIT BH6 m'board and a Celeron 400 (running at 450--6.5x75). My Quake2 timdemo1 score (800x600, sound on) is around 84fps. I have another machine, a Soyo 6bb m'board running a Celeron 300A (at 337-4.5x75) with a single 12mb Monster3d II. Timedemo1 score at the same resolution: 74fps. Hello? The 12mb Monster3d II is a rev/ver E card, with the Silicon Magic 100mhz RAM. The 8mb jobbers are both rev B models with inferior RAM. Is the newer 12mb really THAT much better? Responses will be appreciated.

[RobRich]

The newer Voodoo2 cards can be better, mainly because of the on board ram configuration. Older cards used slower ram, the newer ones use Sd or Sg based dimms operating at a higher clock rate. Also, some of the new cards are coming with overclocked drivers (Diamond particulary does this with a lot of their chipsets).

[Ice]

Well....The higher clockspeed doesn't improve much on Quake2 scores - so your can't compare the cards like you do. Put them both in the same machine (well, not together) and try again. In my Celeron 300A@337MHz w/128MB memory, my two Diamond Monster 3DII Voodoo2 cards are about 5% QUICKER than my friends two Creative Labs Voodoo2 cards at 1024x768 in ANY game.

It may not answer your question, but in this case the 8MB cards beat the 12MB ones.
It's a well known fact that the Diamond parts are running at 93MHz opposed to the 90MHz of the Creative ones, but even when both are running at 90MHz, the 12MB cards just don't cut it (then they run on par - maybe with a slight edge in favor of the Diamond cards).

I have tried the combinations on diferent machines, and my conclusion is: The Celeron w/128kb L2 cache beats the PII at gaming (at same clock of course), the Diamond 8MB (and 12MB) Voodoo2 card is quicker than MOST other Voodoo2 card (8 or 12MB), maybe with the Canopus cards as an exception, the extra 4MB of texture memory on the 12MB parts only serves as a potential extra features area (as of now), like the optional dashboard in Need For Speed 3, but no performance gain per se.
It might change though.

This is only my experiences, and should only be taken as such. The truth is out there.

See ya.