Taiwanese manufacturing companies still have a little bit left to learn when it comes to courting the world-wide PC gaming audience, and Gainward's Voodoo2 card suffers in this regard. No software bundle is included with the Dragon 3000 (not even our punching bag duo of Incoming and Forsaken) and there's no promotion via coupon or website to obtain one.

This is no frills baby, the Dragon 3000 is for those looking primarily for a low cost V2 upgrade.

Even though we usually hesitate in recommending it, using price as the primary motivation for buying a Voodoo2 card isn't a mistake. You've heard it a hundred times already this year, and we'll say it again here: Any reference V2 card performs within 2% to 3% of any other reference V2 card.

Buyers can feel free to seek out just about any V2 card based on their own cost/bundle priorities and not have to really worry about the repercussions, since they all perform comparatively.

That aside, the Dragon 3000 sports the typical Voodoo2 specs, which we've listed here: (skip this section if you know the V2's specs like the Mossad knows 80s music lyrics)

Standard 3D Features
- Perspective correct texture mapping
- Bi-linear and tri-linear texture filtering
- Z-buffer (16bpp, integer and floating point)
- Level of detail (LOD) MIP mapping
- Sub-pixel and sub-texel correction
- Bump Mapping
- Gouraud shading and texture modulation
- Full 24-bit rendering, dithered to 16-bit RGB
- 14 texture formats including 8-bit compressed (patent pending)and 8-bit palletized formats
- Full bi-linear blending of palletized and compressed textures
- 2 to 4 MB EDO DRAM frame buffer
- 2 to 4 MB EDO DRAM texture memory

Performance
- 90 Mpixels/sec sustained fill rate for bi-linear textures, with LOD MIP-mapping, Z-buffering, alpha-blending and fogging enabled
- 180 Mpixel/sec with scan line interleaved configurations
- 3M traingle/sec for filtered, LOD MIP-mapped, Z-buffered, alpha-blended, fogged, textured triangles

Additional Features
- Full hardware triangle setup (independent strips & fans)
- Anti-aliasing
- Depth buffering (16-bit linear, 22-bit effective)
- Alpha blending
- Per-pixel special effects: fog, transparency, translucency
- Texture compositing, morphing, animation
- Linear frame buffer access
- Single-pass tri-linear filtering
- Single-pass dual textures per pixel

Compatibility
- PCI bus 2.1 compliant, 33/66MHz
- Operating systems supported: Microsoft Windows 95, MS-DOS, Windows NT 4.0, Apple Mac OS
- 3D API supported: 3Dfx Interactive Glide, Microsoft Direct3D, OpenGL, QuickDraw, 3D Rave