Bill's Workshop -- Banshee General Troubleshooting Guide

Essential Checklist for Setting up and Getting the Most out of Your New Banshee Card

I won’t cover some of the most basic issues, many of which are covered in the installation manuals that accompany the cards, as I will assume you have installed peripheral cards in computers before.

Also, I can't cover NT4 unfortunately. If anyone wishes to contribute to an NT4 setup guide, I would be grateful. Let me know.

For using the Banshee under Linux, here is a resource site.

Lastly, this is my own approach, and I would appreciate comments and corrections from readers to make this section as accurate, clear and trouble-free as possible.

Before removing your old card:

Update your motherboard BIOS. This is particularly important with Super Socket 7 motherboards and AGP Banshee cards and with boards using AMI BIOS. Also, this will be helpful if you plan to use multi-monitor configurations under Win98. Updated BIOS will give you better control over several functions that can make life easier for your Banshee. Also, AGP cards require Win95 version b or newer (OSR2+) as a minimum, plus other setup. See this page.
Make sure “palette snooping” is disabled in BIOS unless you have a specific add-on card, such as an MPEG decoder that requires palette snooping. Palette snooping can cause color distortions of boot screen, DOS, splash screen and shutdown screens.
If you have ever had a Voodoo card of any type in the system, uninstall the drivers and remove the Voodoo card. Currently the drivers for the Banshee and other Voodoo cards are not compatible. Furthermore, there are some critical registry keys that must be removed. 3Dfx has utility files for doing so, depending on which Voodoo card was in the system. Get the utility here. After you get your Banshee running, you can install and run the Voodoo 1 or 2 card, providing you use a "Glide switcher" provided by your card vendor.
Download the latest Banshee drivers for your card from the vendor website. There may be some special situations in which the 3Dfx reference drivers Release 1.0 might be preferred over vendor drivers. I discus those in this page. Unzip the driver files into a folder unless they are in the form of a direct installation executable.
Switch to “Standard PCI VGA Adapter” before shutting down. Some video cards will do this for you if you uninstall the current drivers. Look for an uninstall routine in the Add/Remove Programs applet in Control Panel. Otherwise, to accomplish this you should:

In Win95
- Bring up the Display Properties sheets by right clicking on the desktop background and selecting Properties from the flag menu that appears. If you do not see this choice, you are not on the desktop background. Alternative, you can bring this up by opening the Windows Control Panel and starting the Display applet.
- Select the Settings tab.
- Click on the “Change display type” button, then the “Change” button for the Adapter type.
- Select Adapter tab, then the Change button.
- When the device list window appears, select “(Standard display types)” from the left side, then “Standard Display Adapter (VGA)” from the right”, then Next to finish.
- Do not reboot yet.
In Win98:
- Bring the Display Properties sheet as above.
- Select the Settings tab
- Click on the Advanced button, then select the Adapter tab Select the Change button. The Driver Update Wizard will start.
- Select the “Next” button, then “Display a list…”, then click on the “Show all hardware” button.
- When the device list window appears, select “(Standard display types)” from the left side, then “Standard Display Adapter (VGA)” from the right, then “Next” to finish.
- Do not reboot yet.

Shutdown, remove the old card.

Installing the Banshee

Insert the Banshee. Reboot.
Install the Banshee drivers. When Windows gets to the desktop, it should display a New Hardware Found window and ask for drivers. If the drivers use an installation executable, such as the Creative Labs drivers, cancel the driver installation and run the executable. Otherwise, point the installation routine to the driver folder by selecting “have disk” then browsing to the folder.
Try various video modes. If you have difficulty with your monitor not switching modes or going into sleep mode when you try to switch modes, confirm that the monitor selection is correct. The easiest way is to right click on “My computer”, select Properties from the flag menu. This brings up System Properties. Select the Device Manager tab and double click on the Monitor listing and look at the type. You can change it from here if it is incorrect. If you still have problems, you may try applying specific refresh rates to each resolution with HzTool available here.
Set the desktop for 16 or 24-bit color depth. The Banshee has blazingly fast 2D performance and huge amounts of video RAM compared to cards of just a few years ago. There is no need to avoid these color depths. In fact, to get 3D acceleration you must have at least 16-bit color depth. I find 16-bit the most convenient setting, especially if you are running Win95. Win95 does not allow dynamic switching of color depth and you may get error messages in games that require 16-bit depth. Win98 does not have this limitation. In Win98 I would use 24-bit, as I have found it to be the fastest color depth for the Banshee.
Install DirectX6 if you have not done so already. Many games have the redistributable form of DirectX6 on the game CD. Do NOT allow it to overwrite video or sound card drivers. You can also get DirectX6 from Microsoft's Dx6 site. The core version is all that you need. NOTE: DirectX6 will fail to work with Win95 retail or Win95a with early Banshee drivers. There are several fixes available.
- Installing the latest drivers will fix this except with the Diamond version 2.11 drivers. In that case, consider the 3Dfx Release 1.0 drivers or the next fix.
- Insert the following lines into your Win.ini file and reboot
     [3dfx]
     SSTH3_RGAMMA=1.5
     SSTH3_BGAMMA=1.5
     SSTH3_GGAMMA=1.5
Install the updated mini-GL from 3Dfx. For games that use OpenGL, such as Quake, Quake II, Half-Life, Hexen II, Sin, and Heretic II, you need to install an updated 3Dfx mini-GL (although the one that ships with Half-Life is O.K.). An installer that will find these games and properly install the latest mini-GL file is available here.
Adjust the Banshee for better game performance. You will get better performance if you make a few minor changes to the setup for the Banshee. Some vendor driver utilities will allow you to do this directly or there are add-ons that will.
Disable Vsync: Vsync synchronizes the transfer of the video image frame from the frame buffer memory to the screen with the vertical retrace of the monitor. This avoids image tearing that can occur if two different frames are sent to the monitor in the same retrace cycle. However, with the Banshee and other Voodoo cards, disabling vsync and boosting frame rates does not cause significant tearing in almost all cases, so I routinely run with vsync disabled.
If disabling vsync causes image tearing: Re-enable vsync and enable triple buffering. Triple buffering will allow frame rate to get as high as the monitor refresh rate, but not quite as high as disabling vsync; however, it avoids image tearing.
Set Graphics and Memory Clock to 110MHz each: The default clocking for most Banshee cards is 100MHz for both the graphics chip and memory timing. The Diamond cards are set considerably higher, and they seem not significantly less stable than other cards, apparently as a result of the fan attached to the heat sink. Other cards seem to be stable at settings around 110 MHz for the graphics and memory clock. I have run higher settings, but fairly soon found that crashes and lockups were more frequent. You can try higher settings, as some driver utilities allow settings as high as 125MHz. However, this is largely wishful thinking. Certainly, a fan will be needed at settings over 110-115 MHz to avoid frequent crashes.
For driver sets that do not have utilities for adjusting these parameters, there are several utilities:
- Entech Powerstrip
- Kool Smoky’s Banshee Control Panel
There are a number of current and older games that will require patching to work properly with the Banshee, as described here, although a much greater number work just fine with no or minor adjustments, some of which I have documented here. Many games can be tweaked for better performance and there are a variety of sites on the Net for that information. One of my favorites is Voodoo Extreme and their affiliates. Check VE regularly for game news of all kinds.

If you wish to use a Voodoo 3D-only add-on card with the Banshee. You will need to use a "Glide switcher", as the drivers for these cards are not compatible at this time. Creative Labs has a Glide switcher integrated into the latest driver set. Guillemot has a Glide switcher available here. This will allow you to switch between the Banshee and other Voodoo card via a reboot. The Glide switcher will appear as a new tab in your display panel ONLY after you install a Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 card. Nearly all newer drivers have the Glide switcher installed as part of the driver, but it does not appear until needed.
To update Banshee drivers you should follow the routine described in the first section above, starting with the switch to standard PCI VGA device drivers, unless the vendor recommends otherwise. Trying to shortcut this risks ending up with black screens.