Bill's Workshop -- Banshee General Troubleshooting Guide

3Dfx Voodoo Banshee Tip of the Day!

Have a HOT Tip or a Question? Let Bill know!

QUESTION: Pentium II required?

January 30, 1999

I have a question that was prompted by an experience at my local (name withheld). I had recently purchased a (name withheld) 17" monitor, and had to return it due to font blurriness at the left and right edges of the screen. The computer salesperson had asked me what kind of computer and video card I used with the monitor, I guess as a quick troubleshoot. I replied a generic 200 MHz Pentium MMX, and a Fusion Banshee. His reply was "Oh, the Banshee requires a Pentium II. That's probably your problem." I told him that my other 15" monitor didn't experience the same problem, it's picture was crisp edge to edge. He still insisted that my Banshee required a P II. Can I have your humble opinion on this? Does the Banshee supposedly require a P II? I have no problems with my Fusion (or regrets buying it), and love both the 2D and 3D performance. I know from reading other Banshee owners' questions on your discussion board that I'm not the only one with a Pentium regular using a Banshee

ANSWER: No.

Well, the Banshee works very well with a variety of processors. The only real trouble was with non-MMX Cyrix chipsets, which was a driver issue. The sales person has been reading too many Banshee boxes or maybe not enough of them. They vary depending on format: PCI vs. AGP. Here's the rundown on requirements printed on the boxes.

Diamond Monster Fusion AGP	Pentium II or compatible (huh?)
Creative 3D Blaster Banshee AGP	Genuine Intel Pentium II (tell the AMD K6-2 owners this!)
Creative 3D Blaster Banshee PCI	Genuine Intel Pentium II, Pentium Pro, or Pentium II running at 90MHz or higher (that's what it says - last one should be Pentium)
Metabyte Wicked 3D Vengeance PCI	Pentium 100 MHz or compatible
Guillemot Maxi Game Phoenix PCI or AGP	Pentium and higher or 100% compatible

So much for reading boxes. 3Dfx has a broader list of supported CPUs, but each vendor is free to restrict their support as they see fit.

HOT Tip! Banshee and NT4

January 29, 1999

Today's Tip comes to us from Kevin Greiner. He writes:

"Here is a summary of info that I've personally learned and what I've gleaned from the newsgroups.

Diamond Monster Fusion Fix
--------------------------
As far as I know, 3DFX's Windows NT 1.01.03 reference drivers have problems working with all Banshee cards, both PCI and AGP. (Note that PCI 2.1 compliance appears to be important.) Specifically, I have a Diamond Monster Fusion PCI with the 1.20B4002 BIOS. The fix below works only with Diamond Monster Fusion. Do *not* try it on other Banshee cards.

The symptoms are the error message: "Your graphics card is incorrectly installed..." and each time it sets the driver back to 640x480x16. You may also experience a garbled graphical login screen.

1. Find the 3DFX 1.00 reference drivers. These are not available from 3DFX any longer. I found them at http://www.elsa.de under the Victory II driver section. (If you can't find them there, just drop me an email.)

2. Unzip these drivers to a directory.

3. Modify the banshee.inf file. On line 127, you find a section titled
"[banshee_SoftwareDeviceSettings]".
Replace this line 129 with:
HKR,, VgaCompatible, %REG_DWORD%, 1
And add the following line at the end of this section:
HKR,, memclocking, %REG_DWORD%, 125

4. Read the readme.txt file and follow their installation instructions.

Generic Banshee Fix?
--------------------
Some have reported that other Banshee cards will not work with the 3DFX 1.01.03 reference drivers but work fine with the 1.00 drivers. This is largely unconfirmed.

Misc Notes
----------
Eric Rasmussen <EricR@wirx.net> reported that he also needed to modify his BIOS to assign an IRQ to VGA, disable video shadow, and disable video cacheable options. I do not have these options in my BIOS and cannot confirm them.

This works because the Fusion card uses a different *default* clock rate than the reference 3DFX Banshee boards. Instead of 100 Mhz, Diamond overclocks their's to 125 Mhz. I do not know if the VgaCompatible line is necessary. It was recommended to me in the same email at the 125 Mhz line, so I used it.

Others that have verified and originated this info are:
Kevin Graham <kwg105@psu.edu>
Jim Frost <jimf@frostbytes.com>
Si <simon@sound.co.nz>

Did I miss anything, guys?

-Kevin"

I cannot verify any of this information myself, but it appears Kevin has. One minor point looks wrong, like the default Fusion clocking - I think it's 115 for memory. Anyway, thanks to Kevin for his HOT Tip of the Day!

HOT Tip! Colin McRae

January 25, 1999

Today's Tip comes to us via an email exchange with Martin:

"I have just installed Colin McRae Rally on a brand new PC and it
is not running correctly. I have a 400Mhz Pentium II with 128 MB RAM and an AGP 3DFX Banshee Graphics Card. The game seems to be OK until I actually try to drive a stage. Once the stage has loaded the screen is covered in white triangles or rectangles. Behind these you can see the car and track and the car can still be driven. I have downloaded and installed the latest patch and it still doesn't work. Can you please help.

Martin"

My response: "White triangles? Is this the only game that does that? Sometimes that has proven to be a >hardware defect - or at least it resolved when the board was exchanged -but
those people had widespread problems. Other people find that using 3Dfx Reference drivers Release 1.0 >resolves this. Give them a try."

Martin's reply: "I have installed the 3dfx refernce drivers, even though Windows 98 told me they were older than my current drivers, and it has cured the problem!

Was it the drivers themselves or just possibly reinstalling them? Hard to say, but it points out that you have options with the 3Dfx Release 1.0 reference drivers.

HOT Tip! How to use the Glide Switcher

January 24, 1999

Today's Tip comes to us from Todd, AKA MrRuin2U. He writes:

"Bill, With regard to the Guillemot Glide switcher, here is the way I got it to work.

1)Create a temporary directory for both sets of drivers. One for each. For instance I used C:\Windows\tempVB for the Banshee driver and C:\Windows\tempV2 for the Voodoo driver.

2) Run the exe prog for each set of drivers so as they will now reside in their respective temp directories. BTW, You can do this without uninstalling any of your cards. If your cards are installed aleady you're basically just reinstalling drivers.

3) Once you have the drivers in their respective directories, run the G-mot glide swap prog and when it asks for each set of drivers, type the paths for the directories you have created. First the Banshee and then the Voodoo2.

That's how I did it and it worked for me. Your results may vary..............:=)

IMPORTANT: Make sure you DON'T run the glide sweep utility in the voodoo2 driver set up. For more info there is a thread in the Guillemot forum site that basically tells you the same thing I did.
http://www.guillemot.com/ >forums>gamers

Cheers, Todd"

I had trouble getting the Guillemot Glide Switcher to work right the first time, and Todd came to the rescue. I could not find any instructions anywhere. Hope this helps others. Thanks to Todd for his HOT Tip of the Day! BTW, you can use this little utility with other Banshees.

HOT Tip! Reset that BIOS

January 23, 1999

Today's Tip comes to us from the Great White North, from Rob in Calgary, Albterta. He writes:

"After having repeated problems with my CL Banshee AGP card not being recognized in Win98, & then limiting resolution to 1024x768, I resorted to undoing some optimizing in BIOS. It seems that was the problem... I'm using a DFI P5BV3+ with an AMD K6-2 350 chip, & had the SDRAM set to "turbo". I went to the BIOS options & used the "Load Optimal Settings" feature. This changed SDRAM to "fast", & that appears to have resolved my boot "graphics card not recognized" headaches. Don't know if this is a "Hot Tip", but I sure have less headaches now with my Banshee!

Cheers,

Rob in Calgary"

Rob points out the importance of checking the little things when your system is unstable. The Super Socket 7 motherboards need BIOS updating and AGP mini-port files, as well. Resetting the BIOS to plain vanilla and working from there is a good first step if things are not right. Thanks to Rob for his HOT Tip of the Day!

HOT Tip! VESAFIX from Mok!

January 22, 1999

Today's Tip comes from code-master, Net buddy, and Hot Tip regular, Mok. He has sent me a utility that addresses some VESA mode issues with the Banshee. The following is the readme file that accompanies the utility.

"VESAFIX for 3DFX Banshee
v1.8 99/01
Written by Mok

This little tool fixes some (not all!) bugs in the VESA VBE implementation of 3DFX Banshee based gfx cards. If you have problems with some old dos VESA games/utilities try it, maybe it will solve your problem.

When installed, the program eats about 2kb of dos memory, so either run it before the game/tool you want to fix or put it into your autoexec.bat. I've written/tested it on Creative Labs 3D Blaster Banshee.

3dfx received bug list so maybe some future bios upgrade will make this program unnecessary but for now, it might help. I found several programs that will work properly after installing VESAFIX, for example: Flight Unlimited, ZSNES, Terranova, Midplay, Vbetest, etc.

Usage: VESAFIX.EXE [-r] [-6] [-m#]

-r: removes VESAFIX from memory (if possible).
-6: disables support for 8-bit palette. Some programs don't like 8-bit palette due to buggy support for this option (ie. flight unlimited).
-m: select video ram size in megs: 1-16 (default:8)

What's fixed:

- some older programs do not like ram size of 16mb. 16-bit program can get divide overflow exception when it tries to divide ram size by Y resolution to get max scan line size (in fact even the banshee bios suffers from this bug). You may now select how much memory is available to VESA programs with the default of 8 megs (it's really enough).

- VBE function 4F01 (Return VBE Mode Information) will now accept video mode numbers with additional flags set (linear frame buffer etc.)

- VBE function 4F01 will now return max. 127 pages for any display mode. This is not really a bug but some lame software reads this byte as signed value.

- VBE function 4F05 will now return error when called in linear frame buffer video mode.

- VBE function 4F06 - no more divide overflow exceptions due to 16-bit divide, maximum scan line size is limited to 32767 bytes due to hardware limitations. Works properly now if called with too small value. Max scan line length limited even more, due to another 16-bit divide.

- VBE function 4F07 - no longer returns error when called with X Position not on 4 bytes boundary. Subroutine getting current screen position is fixed (the original code is not working due to missing line of code).

- VBE function 4F0A - new, more compatible protected mode routines.

Known problems / bugs

- Most of the fixes won't work in 800x600x4 or extended text modes.

- VBE function 4F04 probably doesn't store/restore banshee hardware registers correctly. I haven't tested it yet, but I doubt it works. I won't do anything about the problem due to lack of banshee hardware registers information.

- There seems to be bug in the function that changes refresh rate - in low resolution modes. I have no info about VBE 3.0 so I cannot do anything about it (probably some simple math problem).

- BALLS OF STEEL doesn't work due to banshee windows driver, *not* VESA VBE."

Mok has identified a number of VESA mode-related issues with the Banshee, and we know that 3Dfx is aware of them and hot on the trail. We look forward to the next driver release, which should address these issues. In the meantime, for all you VESA fans, give thanks to Mok for another real HOT Tip of the Day! Get Mok's VESAFIX here.

HOT Tip! 1152x864

January 21, 1999

Today's Tip comes from Richard Bannister and the Creative Banshee newsgroup concerns the 1152x864 resolution, which is absent from current Banshee drivers. He writes:

"The actions described below are ONLY for the Guillemot drivers. I own a Guillemot Banshee, and so I only recommend the below workaround if you own the same card. When i bought the Banshee, Guillemot was the only one available (in the UK anyway). When upgrading drivers from RC4 to v1.03, the ability to user 1152,864 resolution disappears.

The three files below are from the RC4 drivers (30/10/98). When the v1.03 drivers (27/11/98) are installed, I lose the 1152,864 resolution, & the Phoenix tabs in display properties disappears. Also, the resolution can't be chosen by Quickres anymore.

3DFX16VB.PCI 290,764 10-26-98 12:20p 3dfx16vb.pci
3DFX32VB.PCI 203,264 10-26-98 12:19p 3dfx32vb.pci
3DFXVB.PCI 134,923 10-26-98 12:18p 3dfxvb.pci

Copy the above mentioned 3 files into the same directory where you are installing the v1.03 drivers from.

Open Phoenix.inf with Notepad, then edit the 3 lines under [Driver.System] line, under ;---Copy Sections---. Add the filenames for the below 3 lines, ON THE RELEVANT lines. ie -

3dfx16vb.drv,3dfx16vb.pci,,%IN_USE%
dfxvb.vxd,3dfxvb.pci,,%IN_USE%
3dfx32vb.dll,3dfx32vb.pci,,%IN_USE%

Now if you install the v1.03 drivers, it will somehow pull in the 3 files, & the resolution 1152,864 is back !. Also, the Phoenix TAB is back under display properties, Quickres now shows correct resolutions etc. etc. I have been running the v1.03 drivers altered as stated above, without any problems whatsoever, since 10 Nov 98.

Why Guillemot or 3Dfx removed the ability to use this resolution is odd. There may well be other resolutions that disappeared also, it's just that my monitor (a fairly sexy Sony 200ES) can only manage 1152,864 as it's usable top resolution, so I didn't look for any others. Also, prior to my Guillemot Banshee, i had a Voodoo1 (Righteous 3D). Using 1152,864 on the Voodoo1 was a pain after hours of use, due to the degradation caused by the pass thru cable. But with the Banshee, it's perfect"

I normally do not approve of hacked and mix-and-match drivers, but this seems to be a simple substitution of driver files. The 1152x864 resolution is ideal for 17" monitors, in my opinion. I am not sure why it was present with earlier Banshee drivers but was removed from later ones. However, it will return with the next release of drivers. In the meantime, thanks, Richard, for this real HOT Tip of the Day!

QUESTION: Oh my Glide!

January 20, 1999

Bill, please help me . I've installed my new Banshee card in placed of my Diamond 330 & 3D Monster 11. Trouble is I did not change the glide switcher over and I have now sold my Diamond cards so the glide switcher is not available . When ever I try to run certain games, Quake2 for example I get the error 'GlidelnitEnvironment:glide2x.dllexpectedVoodoo^2.nondetected. How do I get around this?

ANSWER: Go Glide hunting.

I think I understand that you have a Banshee now, and the Monster II is gone. You still have the old Monster II Voodoo2 Glide files in the Windows and Windows\System folder - see that in the error message? It says it expected to see a Voodoo2, which you no longer have.

You should:
Go into C:\Windows\ folder and delete Glide2.ovl
Go into C:\Windows\System folder and delete Glide2x.dll and Glide 3x.dll (if there)

You can reinstall your current Banshee drivers, which will put the correct Glide files in there OR you can just look in the Banshee driver folder and copy the Glide files manually to the correct folders.

Now, make sure you get the delv.inf file from 3dfx and install it too to get rid of a conflicting registry entry from the old Voodoo. A link to it is in my Essential Checklist.

QUESTION: Maximum resolution again?

January 19, 1999

I am writing in response to this question:

"QUESTION: Can't I get over 1024x768? January 09, 1999

I just installed my Banshee and I can't get over 1024x768. I used to be able to get 1600x1200 with my old card. What gives?

ANSWER: Monitor selection

It's an error that is fixable. Check the monitor selection to make sure it is correct."

My monitor also used to go to 1600x1200 resolution. I set it up as a 1600x1200 Super VGA monitor, but the maximum resolution I can get is 1280x1024. Here is a really strange quirk.. when I had the Heretic 2 demo, I was able to switch to 1600x1200 mode, but could only see the lower left quarter of the screen. I bought the full version a little while back, and now it is maxed at 1280x1024, just like my desktop. I am using a Pentium II 400 with a Diamond Monster Fusion (AGP) and have all the latest drivers from the Diamond web site. I use Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 (both of which have the same problem with resolution).

ANSWER: More details.

My answer in that tip was too facile. In fact, there are other things to try. If your monitor is capable of 1600x1200 then the Banshee SHOULD support it. Why are you using the SVGA monitor selection? Is there not a choice for your brand and model? That would be preferable. That was what I meant in the original answer.

There is another alternative. Since your monitor supports 1600x1200, it must be relatively new and PnP compatible. Try the Plug and Play monitor selection IF there is none specifically for your monitor. The other thing you may need to do is use HzTool, also in my Checklist and Links, to set up each resolution with a specific refresh rate. Sometimes mode switching fails due to Optimal or Default settings, which the Banshee seems to have trouble handling. Lastly, reinstalling the drivers, making SURE that you switch to plain VGA PCI first can fix this kind of problem.

HOT Tip!

January 13, 1999

Today's Tip comes from the Creative Banshee newsgroup from contributor Bill J. He writes:

"This was posted to alt.comp.hardware.overclocking by James MA:

I just install a workstation with Celeron 300a on BH6 (overclock to 450 with turbo frequency enabled). At first, it would not recognize any AGP display card, but it worked fine with a PCI display card. And I have solved the problem with a Windows 98 setting.

Due to a new "feature" of Windows 98, it will skip some devices in window start, and it will not prompt for any error when it skips the device (just disable the device). I found that the "Intel 82443BX Pentium(r) II Processor to AGP controller" may be skipped without any notice. So if you find that you AGP display card is not recognized by Windows, see if the AGP controller is being skipped by Windows. Here is the step to check if Windows has stopped the AGP port, (it may not be the right step by using Help, but I can only find this method)

1) Launch the Windows Help
2) Search the keyword "ASD"
3) Select the item "Using Automatic Skip Driver"
4) Click the option to Start Automatic Skip Driver
5) If the AGP port is disabled, it will show in the list, and you can check
the check box to force Windows to start the AGP port.

So, if you encounter any hardware problem in Windows 98, try to see if it has been skipped by Windows..

Good Luck!
James MA"

One comment: ASD can be run from the Start menu, Run window by just entering ASD there. This supplements the current Troubleshooting Guide tip on dealing with boards that will not boot. So, if your board is AGP, give this a try. Thanks, Bill J, for this real HOT Tip of the Day!

QUESTION: Max clock settings?

January 12, 1999

I'm currently using a Monster Fusion with its latest Bios downloaded from the Diamond website. Anyone knows its maximum settings?...

ANSWER: Try these.

I do not use the Diamond control because they conflict with IE5, but Powerstrip allows a max of 133MHz memory and 125MHz graphics clock, and those values are real. I tested various settings and reported the results, including with the Fusion, in a review of the Gigabyte Banshee card here. I went through a series of tests and came up with a recommended setting of 133 memory and 116 graphics clock. This is for AGP cards only. Some AGP cards (e.g., Metabyte Vengeance) use slower SDRAM and all PCI cards I know of use SDRAM, which cannot be overclocked much at all. Also, my results are from just one board in my system, and I did not run it for days to really find out if this was rock stable. You may do better or worse. Also, from my perspective, the gains from clocking to the limit are minimal.

Addendum: Two alert readers reminded me that Guillemot's PCI Banshee card sports 8ns SGRAM instead of the more common slower SDRAM.

QUESTION: Banshee and Voodoo2?

January 11, 1999

I just received my Banshee card, removed my Matrox and Diamond V2 12mb. Banshee installed just fine (after reading thru your survival guide). First game I fired up, ESPN ProBoarder, AWESOME! Clarity, speed, you name it. No probs here. Haven't even done any tweaking yet, just using the 3dfx reference drivers out of the install. Do you recommend connecting my V2 to the Banshee ? I have a GlideSwitcher. I'd like to hear your opinion on this.

ANSWER: Banshee.

The only good reason to stick the V2 back in is for games that are V2 compatible but not Banshee. There are a few. If you find that one of your old favorites fails to run, check my Game Guide. If no fix is apparent, then the V2 is the temporary answer. I have my V2-SLI sitting on the shelf now. I'm pretty happy with the Banshee now. The Banshee will keep up with a single V2 except in Quake II due to multi-texturing which the V2 can do in a single pass. The Banshee runs quite a few games at 1024x768 or even 1280x1024 with very respectable speed. Rogue Squadron looks super with the resolution pumped up. If you replaced a single V2, you are going to be very pleased with high resolution games. All the newer games (Thief, Half-Life, Grand Prix Legends, EA Sports games) look great and run well pumped up!

QUESTION: Can't I get over 1024x768?

January 09, 1999

I just installed my Banshee and I can't get over 1024x768. I used to be able to get 1600x1200 with my old card. What gives?

ANSWER: Monitor selection

It's an error that is fixable. Check the monitor selection to make sure it is correct.

Related Topics

Banshee Game Guide

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