Manufacturer: Quantum3D Tech: AGP based Banshee board with 16Mb SDRAM Bundle: Full versions of NFL Blitz, San Francisco Rush: The Rock and Gex: Enter the Gecko Price: $119 w/ $30 mail-in rebate

It's that time of year isn't it? I mean School's no longer 'out for summer' and we're already getting ready for the Christmas rush of PC hardware. In the Sharky Extreme tank today is none other than another Voodoo Banshee. And even though there certainly will be plenty of Voodoo Banshee's to choose from this season, let's take a look at Quantum 3D's offering.

Primarily, it's no surprise that Quantum3D have opted to do a Voodoo Banshee board, what with the company being a spin-off from 3Dfx and with SST guru Ross Smith sitting at the helm. However, what may indeed seem a surprise to previous Quantum3D consumers is that at first glance, they haven't tweaked 3Dfx's reference design. Although bearing in mind that the Voodoo Banshee is being targeted towards the part-time gamer, it's not so much of a surprise that Quantum3D hasn't tweaked the board but more of a surprise that they chose to actually do one. After all this is Quantum3D we're dealing with right? The same Quantum3D 'above and beyond' that innovated and re-vamped 3Dfx's Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo2 reference designs into high-end and expensive'hot-rods' right? They were also the first to implement SLI (scan-line interleave) so you'd expect some sort of fancy Voodoo Banshee as an end result right? Well don't. Quantum3D have opted to go for a plain vanilla straight reference design. As we previously announced some 3 weeks ago, Quantum3D felt that this time around they would enter the market the same time as everyone else with a reference design. Senior Product Marketing Manager for Quantum 3D, Danny Sanchez, went on to say,

"We believe that adding value to our products for their target markets is essential. With Obsidian2 X-24, we focused on adding value in our hardware design with a single board SLI configuration for the game extremist market. For mainstream consumers where value is important, we focused on optimizing our product package with a quality product, extensive game compatibility and an awesome game bundle at an exceptional value. And that's exactly what we did. With support for Glide and Direct3D games, full versions of GEX: Enter the Gecko and arcade hits NFL Blitz and Rush the Rock and priced for only $119 after mail-in rebate, Raven is the perfect upgrade for mainstream consumers."