Best Super Socket 7 GPU? Part 3: 3dfx
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ย. 2024
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This video confirms that my approach at the time was correct. I clung onto my 486 way longer than I should have, skipped socket 7 completely because that’s when it was changing from AT to ATX and jumped straight onto the super socket 7 platform (running an Intel 233MMX with a Voodoo 1) which was then upgraded to a K6-2 500MHz and an AGP Voodoo Banshee later on. I held onto that Banshee for years before finally going socket A (Athlon 1Ghz) and grabbing a GeForce 256 DDR.
My only regret is that I sold those old components back then to help pay for the new ones. I’m slowly building my retro collection and I’m picking up the parts from my youth but it can be a little expensive 😆
Yea the prices have increased heaps! I believe I got most of my parts around 2007 or so, everyone was building high end PCI 486 machines, nobody cared for Socket 7 LOL
"banshee" is the only clue i have to the computer of my childhood lol and man are they expensive now
I didn't go with either of these in my SS7 system. I've got a Matrox Millennium G400 MAX in mine. But then again, I'm a Matrox fangirl, so there was no question about it really ;)
I do want to test the 400 MAX soon :)
I realize that Matrox always targeted special applications with their products, and that this is the very reason they still exist as a company. But I kinda wish they'd decided to do a dedicated consumer chip back in the days. The crossover nature of their products caused every card after the G400 to be highly mediocre at best, from a consumer point of view. I would've loved to be able to have a Matrox card in my current generation gaming PC ;)
I'm a matrox fanboy my self and I do own several Matrox cards :)
The Voodoo 3 2000 was a great card. It was the first 3D accelerated graphics card that I owned. I can specifically remember playing Half-Life, Dark Forces 2, and Everquest with it.
I like the recommendations so far. Following the series, I understand how hitting a specific era, with the right hardware, can be tricky! This is why the benchmarks are so helpful. Sure the TNT2 might be more powerful, but most of the games you want to play with a SS7 system are going to be 16-bit color. Ramping up to 32-bit color, I'd want something more powerful anyways. It can also be a tricky time period for compatibility, and we know the Voodoo 3 has the edge here. I've also read where the 3dfx cards have better 2D quality. This might be yet another consideration.
It was nice to see the Voodoo 5 in there, but it makes sense that it's not quite the right card for SS7. I would rather see it stretch it's legs in a PIII, or Athlon system. Even with my V5, I've hit a snag with certain games, like Deus Ex. It does well most of the time, but I get more frame drops than I'd like.
Great summary!
Your camera and lightning results are gorgeous. Very crisp and clear with accurate colors and proper brightness.
I have not much use for this exact research (cheap fx5500 is all I could get my hands on). But man, you have put so much time and effort to this - and it's so detailed, you really deserve to be commended for all the work. I just love to watch and/or listen to this stuff.
Well, thank you :D
Nice collection! I have the Voodoo2 SLI, a PCI Banshee, an AGP Voodoo4, and a Voodoo3 3500 with the huge cable and tv capture. To be fair, nothing beats the SLI, perhaps if I had the Voodoo5, but 3dfx's best and coolest product was the SLI ! It was a miracle seeing NFS2SE with glide, I was speechless the first time I saw that beauty running!
This reminded me of how hard the decisions were for us back then. Thanks for referring to the driver web sites. Links to the drivers you use as well as the sites you reference (like the Zeus one) would be great! I didn't even know these sites existed and have been using some horrible 3DFX drivers on an old CD with a mixed bag of results for years. From the looks of it you found some great resources :-) Showing which drivers to load for the Voodoo 1, 2 and 3 would be excellent. I have all of these cards from a variety of sources, but they didn't have manuals (or websites!) anymore, so trying to remember how to do this after nearly 20 years is a challenge, especially when you have to remember which games need to be patched and which don't.
I am just embarking on rejuvenating my old 486 tower PC to make it into the games machine I would have wanted back in the mid 90s to play 3Dfx games but could not afford so these videos have greatly expanded my knowledge. A few years ago I picked up a voodoo card without knowing much for around £30 which I now know is a Voodoo 3 AGP card and something of a bargain. When I had a look inside the PC case I realised I had forgotten I had upgraded the 486sx66 processor for an AMD K6 with a massive 32Mb of RAM.
I got a Voodoo 3 1000 agp card for 10€. It's basically a 2000 but underclocked to 127mhz. I did put a fan on it and overclocked ram and gpu to 150mhz, and it runs like a dream on my Asus p2b-ds with a 450mhz katamai slot 1 p3s.
I put a CPU fan on my Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card back in late 1999 when I saw the card showing weird colors on my CRT's screen when I was gaming.Once I put my fingers on the Voodoo 3's heat sink I knew that it was way too hot.3Dfx goofed big time for not putting a fan on these cards in the first place.
Yea it was odd that they didn't add a fan. It is indeed extremely hot to the touch without one.
My opinion is to go with the 3DFX Voodoo 3 instead of the NVIDIA TNT 2 Ultra because of the compatibility of certain games as well as the Intel Pentium III 450 Mhz Katmai. 3DFX Voodoo is great with games such as Star Wars Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight.
Yup, I agree.
Yup.... 3dFX are probably the most universal type of cards for SS7. Personally I think the ultimate setup for early gaming (97/99) are probably a question of mixing something up with V2-SLI. Though.... Hmmmm... You must give up stuff like good image quality. In retrurn, you get compatibility.
I agree too.There are just too many games of that era that support 3Dfx's API's.
The more I research, the more I realize the late 90s were a very niche period in gaming. The best graphics cards were 3dfx. The best sound cards were A3D. Stray a few years earlier or later than the late 90s, though, and those two cards would give you some compatibility issues. I feel like you need a special late-90s-only PC if you want to be serious about retro gaming in that period.
Hell... I do miss 3DFX... I really would like for a comeback... a tri way market would be way more interesting... or PowerVR returning to PC space....
Kinda funny how after Intel's one-shot with the i740, they're actually trying to enter the GPU market within the next year.
It is really very important to be careful about AGP slot power - if 3,3V is connected just to onboard regulator or directly to power supply. Onboard regulators are not very powerful and can be even damaged if used with power hungry AGP card like Voodoo3 or Geforce 256. Even on my only ATX mainboard Gigabyte GA-5AX my brother figured out that AGP was not connected to power supply. Luckily, I have newer revision where are jumpers to change, so both options are possible - connect AGP to 3,3V from ATX connector or from onboard regulator. I was surprised but my brother also figured out probably why is that - this mainboard supports also IDT Winchips with 3,5V for IO. If used, onboard 3,5V needs to be disconnected from power supply 3,3V.
So from my point of view it is important to ensure that AGP power is connected directly to ATX connector. I know that it was briefly mentioned in previous video but I just want to highlight. It is critical especially for dual AT/ATX supersocket board but as I gave an example, also with ATX only board it's needed to be careful.
Yes good point. Lowering the clock speed and / or voltage can make a big difference.
Used to love playing Project IGI on the old AMD K6-2 or K6-III+ and Voodoo card (I think it was the Voodoo 3 2000). Also remember seeing Quake II running on said rig, with AMD SIMD optimisations (aka 3DNow! instructions) for both game engine and + GPU driver..incredible.
Thanks for the video! I just got my first 3dfx card after so many years in beautiful condition 🤧 I paid such a low price at a local store i am greateful. (PCI Voodoo 3 3000 16MB)
Voodoo cards are spot on for socket7 motherboards, one of many working WIN98 machines i have... Pentium 200mhz cpu, Biostar M5ATA motherboard, 64mb edo mem, 3.2gb hdd, voodoo3 2000 16mb pci videocard, sound blaster 16 isa sound card, 3.5'' floppy drive, 40x cdrom, 250w AT psu, all wrapped up in a AT mini case with a three digit L.E.D display to show the cpu speed.
I'm currently working on a V3 video, I just love that card. So compatible and it just works.
Sometimes we don't know what we have. A few years ago I purchased a Voodoo 2 2000 new in box for less than $40 ....never used the thing because changed my mind about building a retropc...so I sold it later on eBay...yikes my mistake.
Voodoo 2 missing :(
I miss unreal in these benchmarks. I am curious to see if voodoo 2 sli is as good as voodoo 3 on this platform in unreal and if voodoo 1 is playable.
How about you make a video where you compare various drivers for 3dfx cards?
I use my Voodoo 2 in the Super Socket 7 as my Voodoo 3 has issues in Windows 98. It sometimes freezes the system when coming out of the DOS box. I paired the Voodoo 2 with a CL-GD5446 and it's awesome!
Is the card presented from around 4:20 really a custom compaq v3 3500 ? It looks just like my old v3 3000, and it had same ports amount. I guess V3 3500 had tv tuner which that card simply dont have so it's more likely v3 3000 and not v3 3500 like mentioned.
Paweł Słomiak I had a Voodoo 3 3500TV, I believe that's what you're thinking of. I also had a Voodoo 3 3500 with only TV Out. Different cards.
I'll probably still be sticking with my current Voodoo 2 setup since I'll be running it with a Pentium III running at 1.12GHz (Diamond Monster 3D II 12MB, Diamond Viper V550 16MB). I'm also going to be getting a second 12MB Voodoo 2 for SLI (not Diamond as they are extremely expensive). My Mum wanted a Windows 98SE gaming machine (which will also be used for crating and handling MIDI files due to her old keyboard with its FDD), and she's going to be getting the best.
Did you get it? How did it go?
@ I bought a 12MB STB Black Magic and it ended up working perfectly in SLI with a bridge that I assembled. However I repaired my uncle's Duron 1000 PC a couple of months ago, replaced it's dead GF2 MX200 with a repaired SiS 315 (143MHz SDRAM, runs Midtown Madness 2 and Crazy Minigolf without bugs unlike my V550 through FX5700 LE - or Ati's sidescrollimg bug in DOS), replaced the AudioPCI with an ESS 1868F that Imalso recapped, and as of Christmas 2022, she has a good DOS/98SE/XP PC that will last a very long time.
I'm not using the Abit VP6 anymore until I replace all of its caps. They aren't blown but they will fail and I just don't have a soldering set up good enough to solder with the VP6's huge ground layer. Far too much copper.
Sorry for the retro bump, but, if the 3DFX Voodoo 3 agp doesn’t take advantage of the added agp circuitry, bells and whistles and the socket 7 has the same wide variety of CPU choices, would it make better sense for the older 16bit color games to just buy a cheaper socket 7 MB and a somewhat cheaper PCI Voodoo 3 card and end up with the same (or close) benchmarks assuming the same processor?
Yes you are right!
Another alternative is to run both...the 3Dfx using a PCI interface version; and an AGP Nvidia card. I don't remember the specifics but I ran this setup for a while on a K6-3 overclocked as you have done...but I had 2x KTX Voodoo2 cards in SLI (PCI) and a GeForce 2 something on the AGP port. I recall that any game that was DOS or Glide was run through the voodoo cards and everything else went through the nvidia card. I think it was a bit of an effort to get it setup lol
Yes, you can do it but only with VooDoo 1 or 2. Since Voodoo 3, they are combined 2D/3D accelerators.
Yeah, the V2 SLI (around V3 2000 performance) together with a GF 2 to get best of both worlds.
Get the Glide support with the Voodoos and the DirectX and T&L support of the Geforce.
Depending on the actual power of the machine even a GF 3 Ti 200 could work out fine.
Also a V3 3000 PCI isnt that bad combined with a GF2/3 either use a monitor with multiple inputs or just a KVM switch if you don'T want to crawl behind the machine every time you want to switch the card used.
i run both a gf2 mx400 64mb and a diamond monster 3d ii voodoo 2 sli on my pentium 3 500 windows 98 retro PC
Just to let you all know there is a glide addon for modern PC is called nGlide Its free to down load not all games will work.
Ok,gonna install my Voodoo 3 in my Epox Mobo with K6-2 500.Have a TNT2 also.
Maybe it's me but that DFI board looks way ahead of its time even now. Like you're expecting Socket 370 by the looks of it but then you surprisingly find Socket 7 on it.
TNT2 M64 is a perfect choice, best price/perf ratio I think.
It's a bit on weak side though... Great value for sure but it will struggle with higher resolutions and settings. A great start though no doubt!
@@philscomputerlab I would love to see a M64 test against others.
I just picked up a Voodoo 3 2000 -- is it equivalent to benchmarking of the Velocity 1 or 2 TMU? Seems to be a pretty big difference! Also - do your recommend rigging a fan to this card or is it really only the 3000 and 3500 that run hot?
A fan never hurts IMO. Velocity with the second TMU activated, should be on par with the Voodoo 3 2000.
The Voodoo 3/4/5 cards tend to have better 2D image quality than the Nvidia cards (I suspect that ELSA card is probably ok , but some look pretty blurry), certainly something to consider if youre planning to run these cards on a more modern LCD.
That said, I have noticed an issue with the Voodoo cards when using some LCDs , where any game using the Commander Keen engine (Bio Menace for instance) will have a red hue to it , Ive yet to see that on an Nvidia or ATI card.
And the V1/V2 card are best paired with a decent Matrox card. They had superior 2D image quality in the time.
Yup, Matrox is a popular choice for V2 SLI.
Hello. I'd like to know where is the glide games list that you show at almost the end of the video. Nice video, congrats.
It's the zeus software nglide compatibility list. I'd like to see a similar list but regarding actual glide (not nglide) compatibility.
I know this is a bit late, but I've discovered that this is due to some Voodoo cards grounding VGA pin 11 on the output and confusing the monitor. You simply need to bend pin 11 on the output VGA port and break it off. Then monitor DDC would work properly afterwards.
Very interesting! The VGA port is female, do you mean bend the pin in the cable side?
@@philscomputerlab My memory was clouded only after a month! But I'm sure you've seen my post on Twitter with pictures explaining my findings. Hope it solves your problem!
Phil you don't need to buy a TNT 2 Ultra, you can just overclock for benchmarks your TNT 2 Pro to 150/183 mhz. Also you can just underclock it to 125/150 mhz if you want to have a simple TNT 2. This way you don't even need to change the cards on the motherboars, it saves you a lot of time. You can do the same with Voodoo 3 cards, if you have a 3500 you can just underclock it to get the results for the 3000 and 2000 versions.
True. I've done this in the past, but then noticed that also the memory timings can be different. To do with the BIOS. For example when I down-clocked a V3 3500 to V3 2000, I later tested a Velocity 100, and that card ran faster, because although it had the same memory speed, the timings were tighter.
But I could just flash a BIOS of a Ultra onto a TNT2 Pro and see what happens?
The Velocity card is a little different from the Voodoo 3 line because it has just 8 MB of slightly faster SGRAM instead of the 16 MB SDRAM used in the Voodoo 3 line. Because of this the Velocity with the 2nd TMU enabled will have similar but not identical results to the Voodoo 3 2000. Memory timmings differ from Producer to Producer, the TNT2 / Voodoo 3 cards have memories from different producers with different timmings. The memory brands and timmings are not identical for the hole line of TNT2 / Voodoo 3 cards.
Ah, I see. That would explain it :)
It was just a suggestion :). It would make things a lot easier. It won't work with the Velocity card because that one is a littel different from the Voodoo 3 line. With the TNT 2 Pro card you can even get the results for a M64 just by lowering the frequency to 125 / 75 mhz (memory). Great videos by the way :)
Hey Phil, good analysis... indeed voodoo 2 missing (especially SLI); will myself try geforce3 SDR + voodoo 2 SLI to hopefully get best of both worlds. Working with a PIII 3 700Mhz. Thoughts?
It's a popular approach, to get great D3D and OpenGL performance, as well as glide. I just prefer a single Voodoo 3 rather than 3 graphics cards basically.
@@philscomputerlab Thanks Phil; need to revive the debate as this thread has gotten stale
Another excellent video Phil! :D Will you be doing the Kyro cards? Also did you consider including anything on what the guys with alot of time or money do, which is install Nvidia as maincard and Voodoo2 SLI for 16bit and Glide?
Nah that card is too exotic IMO. But I will review it as part of my Windows 98 benchmark project.
I'm actually thinking about a totally non-mainstream system using a S3 Chrome and a VIA CPU. They are still in the x86 market, competing with the current Atoms and SoC Athlons.
Cool project idea!
Great review as always! I don't mind about the length, it's fine with me! How about the best graphic card for socket 370?
Thanks :) Socket 370? I don't see why not. Thought I'm more keen on the Slot 1 stuff to be honest.
From my knowledge the fastest slot 1 CPU is a 1133 Coppermine with 133 FSB. A Tualatin with 512kb of cache would be considerable faster, even faster than a first generation pentium 4 and I saw a video with you building a very nice Tualatin rig.
1 GHz AFAIK. 133 MHz FSB would be needing an overclock on Slot 1.But there is also a 1.1 GHz 100 MHz FSB chip, but you need a slot 1 adapter for that.
wow, that is an excel.lent review of retro hardware. Your channel is awesome and makes me feel younger than I really am.
Now a stupid question, what card would be 2 Voodoo2 in SLI comparable to?
A Voodoo3 2000 to 3000 would be comparable to V2 SLI!
What's the difference between regular Voodoo3 3500 and Compaq Edition?
The 3dfx 1st party V3 3500 had a TV tuner installed, the Compaq version didn't.
out of curiosity have you ever tried placing the actually chip eprom or missing components on any of your graphics card's. they have them on the silk screen. just something of interest.
Why no Voodoo1, Voodoo2 and Voodoo-rush? If you have given a reason for that in the video, then it might have slipped my attention. How about matrox cards? Are there going to be a fourth installment in this series?
Well, the Voodoo 1 and 2 are 3D only cards, requiring them to be paired with another primary video card, and this series is about which single card works best. The Voodoo Rush, while both 2D and 3D, is not even a good card because it's pretty slow and buggy, and is not recommended except as a curiosity. Also, being an earlier card, it has more limited features compared to the later cards. Any other Voodoo card would outperform this.
Oki...
Great summation! You'd only need a Voodoo Graphics card for very specific early Glide games like MechWarrior 2, Scorched Earth, Pandemonium, Screamer 2, Tomb Raider, etcetera that are a pain to get working even on a Voodoo2.
There is only one thing I would like to add to your review. I love the 3dfx Voodoo 3, but the AGP version cannot be recommended blindly to a SS7 user. A lot of motherboard models of the SS7 platform have a poor implementacion of the AGP standard that results in a below standard voltage regulator that is unable to supply the correct amperage to the GPU. It usually ends in a fried motherboard or a fried motherboard and a fried voodoo 3 (or other AGP card that demands more power). The SS7 motherboard I used between 1999-2001 was one with this problem (FIC PA-2013 Rev 2.0) therefore at the time I ended up combining a Matrox G400 16MB with my voodoo 2 12MB. The Gygabite boards also have lot of issues and one must check the revision number before using an AGP voodoo 3. 3 motherboard models I have used without problems, with a Voodoo 3000 AGP, are the Abit AX59 Pro, The Soyo SY-5EHM v1.3 and de Soyo SY-5EMA+.
I'm sure I mentioned this. You can always just clock it lower to save power.
The problem is that you mentioned the AGP implementation without regarding the voltage issues, and in the end considerations you skipped the issue again (minute 37).
I don't see how an AGP card like the voodoo 3, that demands 3.3V @ 4.8A is going to work in a motherboard with a linear voltage regulator that cannot supply more than 2.5A, without burning something, even with underclock.
This issue was present in most of the earlier AGP boards (to lower the BOM costs, lots of models were equiped with linear regulators, instead of switching regulators abble to supply the 6A mentioned in the intel AGP 1 specs), even BX (slot 1) models.
I believe that in 99 the motherboard makers started to update their models to switching regulators due to issues with Voodoo's 3, TNT2's and other demanding cards.
I have at the moment 3 assembled working SS7 systems:
A Pentium 200 mmx with a PCI Banshee (FIC PT-2007 - intel i430TX - impossible to use an agp card);
Two Amd-K6-III+ 400 @ 550mhz with AGP Voodoo's 3 (a Soyo 5EMA+ with 1MB cache and an Voodoo 3 3000, and an Abit AX59-pro with 512kb cache and a Voodoo 3 2000).
None of the cards is underclocked, but I've always placed fans in the heathsinks. And now that I've replaced the heatsink of the 2000, I'm considering flashing it with the 3000's bios - I've cannibalised the heathsink from another 3000 I have, that has a lot of artifacts/corruption in the picture, and I do not see how I can repaired it, it got damaged due to a failing PSU (another issue one must also be constanly on guard, and usully avoidable with good psu.But the Soyo SY-5EHM I was using at the time, arround 2007, only worked with AT and ATX v1 PSU's ... that's really "voodoo" stuff).
Here are some link's that explaind the issues of the Voodoo's 3, that I would recommend you tho add to the video decription.
www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/3dfx
Voodoo 3 section
www.falconfly.de/info/faqV33k2k.html
Question 9
I'm sorry for insisting on this matter, but I wrote you this to help you avoiding getting flamed by people who burned their motherboards and/or AGP Voodoo3 on earlier SS7 motherboards, after watching your video, without studing the possible issues before the GPU instalation.
Bruno Filipe I just watched that part again and I say specifically "the other issue is power draw. There have been reports that some motherboards are not up to spec , they didn't quite...". "So if you're using one of these cards double check that everything is legit"
This is enough information, if you disagree, that's fine, but I'm not going to change anything.
No problem. It's just an issue that needs to be remebered all the time.
When in doubt the PCI versions are a safe choice.
BTW, regarding other contenders for the best card for the SS7 platform, when my main machine was a K6-2 450 (between 99 and 2001), with 128mb of ram, and a Matrox G400 16mb (FIC didn't recomend cards with more than 16MB of ram and Voodoo's 3 AGP with a FIC PA-2013 Rev 2.0), combined with a Powercolor Voodoo 2 12MB, I remember playing Shogun total war with the Matrox with everyting on Max at 1600x1200, pretty reasonable.
On some flight sims, such as Rowan's Battle of Britain for instance, was were the K6 started to show it's limitations, but those that used glide had good performance.
I kept the G400 drivers updated , but the Voodoo 2 with the drivers V3.03.00 directx 6.1. The games that looked best in direct 3d on the voodoo didn't require directx 7 drivers (after all the card is directx 5/6), and Warhammer - Dark Omen is quite picky about 3dfx drivers (ditto for the voodoo 3 ones - I'm forced to install onde of the earlier versions to play the game).
I do want to check out the Matrox, but got a few other videos I need to do first.
V3 2000 - The Starsiege Tribes card....
I want to use my V3 with the build, but Pinball Illusions is unplayable in the SVGA modes. My nVidia cards run those graphics modes just fine.
Not sure, haven't used that game on a V3, and done nothing with V cards lately.
PhilsComputerLab Once I can get my case and PSU for my build, I will see what kind of utilities may exist to help fix the issue.
I have got A Voodoo 5500 I still use it in my Windows 98SE Pc for rero gaming.
Good work Phil.
Thank you!
Another great video Phil, cheers,
yeah TNT2 Ultra are quite hard to find now, I was lucky and managed to get a Xentor 32 off ebay for £15 a few months ago.
I too would go with a Voodoo 3 for SS7, but what about V2 sli with the AMD 550?, would there be more performance and better Glide support for Voodoo 1 games?, ok you need a 2D card but that's not a problem and even better if your board doesn't have AGP, just a thought
V2 SLI lies between V3 2000 and 3000. But the image quality is worse, you get scanline artifacts at high FPS and you got to use three cards! Plus V2 SLI is becoming a bit of a collectors item, especially if you have two exact same cards. It's awesome tech, good to showoff, but I wouldn't use it on a daily basis.
Yeah especially the great Diamond and Creative 12MB V2 are pretty expensive nowadays (think about 20-30 € per card). V3 are cheaper than V2 SLI (around 30-40€ for a V3 3000). But V5 are ridicously nowadays. Haven't seen one for less than 150€ in the last year.
Yup, prices for some of these parts are getting out of control that's for sure. I simply won't get any more. If the V5 dies, so be it, life continues...
Great video, well on retro gaming i have some resolution that i like to use on determined os, like Win98 i like to run on 1024x768 @85 on my CRT, Win XP i like to run at 1280x1024@144 on my BenQ XL2720Z using 17" mode, and later OS i run on 1080p@144 cause most of the games support this resolution.
So SS7 for me is meant to run DOS/Windows 9x that means that usually the V3 3500 will do the trick.
Yea. I really like 1024 x 768 @ 75 Hz. I have a little monitor that does 1366 x 768, so it displays that resolution 1:1 and looks very sharp. Some games show the font a bit too small though, so sometimes I just play in 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 but it's not as nice of a picture of course.
The Voodoo 4 and 5 scales better with faster CPUs than others 3dfx and NVidia competitors. My Voodoo 4 got 6455 on 3DMark 99 and 3009 on 3Dmark 2000 with a Pentium 3 1.0 GHz, i think on a similar system the TNT2 will fall behind, other advantages of the Voodoo 4 and 5 over other 3Dfx cards is the support for larger textures.
I used to have a Voodoo 3, then upgraded to the short lived Voodoo 4 (massive 64MB I think). I used to think, "How can it get better than this?"... Then I got a Rage128 Pro! :P
I'll be doing a video on ATI soon :D
the Voodoo4 have 32mb of memory "stock". If you happen to own the AGP version, and if you happen to be good in soldering, you can add another 32mb on it and flash the card with a custom firmware so it can see the whole 64mb. The PCI version just doesn't have the extra "sockets" to add the memory on it, since the card use 8mb memory chips. The Voodoo5 also use 8mb chips, but peoples were able to upgrade it to 128mb (8 x 16mb instead of 8 x 8mb), but those 16mb memory chips are extremely hard to find (TSOP86 i think they're called) since it's not a common kind and size.
RaptorZX3 It was AGP, and it did have 64MB. I purchased it off from eBay cheap. However, since I was using a Mac, I simply could not get the 64MB to show, only 32MB. I just assumed it was a Mac issue since the drivers were unofficial, and IIRC the card had to be re-flashed. I eventually bought a Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB in which it served me for many years.
One time I saw an Voodoo 4 with 64MB mod (and author of this mod said that Voodoo 4 should was like 64Mb not 32Mb). Sadly, I didn't bought this Voodoo 4, it was selled for to high price i was thinking then, but todays price on Voodoo 4 and 5 even higher on eBay.
Btw, I have a Voodoo 3 1000 16 Mb. It's official and from 3dfx, it was oem card and didn't sells in retail. It's clocked at 125Mhz and I can overclock it to 160Mhz so I can get Voodoo 3 2000 or 3000 power?
I have a InnoVision 3Dfx Voodoo1 4Mb for a while, but I didn't have those male to female cables needed for Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 (I mean pass-through cables). I found one cable on my work so when I was home I've intantly install Voodoo 1 in PII-350 and 2D card was a 2Mb S3 Virge/DX. I connect all cables correctly turn on the PC and picture appeares on monitor (very good I was thinking, voodoo 1 is working!), but when I start install voodoo drivers from 3dfx in the beginings and later 3rd party drivers like iceman voodoo 1 driver I always have one error: glide games didn't work! games crashes, carmageddon 1 with 3Dfx patch crashes to desktop, Lara Croft 1 says that game cannot load texture to board and crashes to, GLQuake crashes with critical error, only Blade of Darkness runs with Glide Driver well and actually runs very well for this card (in 640x480) and WizMark benchmark runs with dd3dfx driver and have 48 fps. So I think this InnoVision 3Dfx Voodoo 1 4Mb is dead or I do something wrong? How I can check this 3dfx?
On vodoo 3 the heating is just SHIT Ive checked it on my thermal imaging cam .Need to be replaced as soon as You get one VD3 . Maybe coper heatsink with fan or something
Yes good to look after vintage parts!
@@philscomputerlab To be precise on thermal cam the card is all red and you can see hrat comming around from underneath the heatsink but heatsink itself is blue (colder) works more like insulator 😲😲😲😲😲
I was an amazing card.
Then came the GF256 and games using voxels ...
My poor V3 suddenly looked like a POS :)
good review on the 3Dfx cards i am running a Voodoo 5 5500 on a Socket 7 good to have some comparisons to work with to see how my system is doing.. i am running an AMD K6-III 450 at 500Mhz when i get home ill post up my 3dmarks 99 and 2000 results
To be honest the 3DMark scores are really more a CPU / System test than anything. The V5 is really not a good match for the Socket 7 IMO. Much better to have a fast Pentium III, like 800 MHz.
Yes i understand and can see the. Video capping out do to the cpu bottlenecking the system
Yup that's it.
Give that V5 something 1 GHz+ You will see the difference, they scale well up to 1,4 GHz.
1 GHz should be fine for a V3 3500/V4 4500, depending on the games.
600-800 MHz for a V3 2000/V2 SLI seems fitting for me.
i have a AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz but the MB needs a recap just have to order the parts
Riva TNT2, or a Rage 128 (try to get a hold of the "GL" version, it's usually written on the sticker of the BIOS, or on the back of the card). On a Super Socket 7 you can up an AMD K6-2 or K6-3 most likely, so about 550Mhz i would say, but performance-wise i think it's not as good as a real Pentium 3 processor. I had super crappy performances with a K6-2 300Mhz before, and i don't know why, but with a Voodoo1 card, with Quake 1, the performances were WORSE than in software mode!
Voodoo 1 & 2 only has a 3d chip. Software mode is not handeled by it so a faulty comparsion :P. And I have a voodoo 1 on a 166mmx with 32mb system ram. Q1 & 2 runs great on it. Never did test my voodoo 1 on my P3 though to compare.
The AMD K6 and K6-II had two major bottlenecks. The L2 cache is on the motherboard and communicates with the processor over a slow 100 MHz bus; where as the pentium II had L2 cache soldered on the CPU cartridge operating at half the core clock. The K6-III introduced an on-die 256 kB L2 cache which was a huge improvement.
The K6-II and K6-III had 3DNOW, which wasn't used as widely as intels SSE and not supported by early graphics drivers. The FPU generally was much weaker, which was fixed in the k7.
+soylentgreenb K6-III (plus and none plus) had L1 and L2 on the cpu. Wich makes the motherboard cache into L3.
Don't forget some of the better S7 mobo came with 1m L3 cache like my Aopen AX59 mated with a K2+ 533 overclock at 600 ghz. I also have a MSI mobo that has 2m cache L3.
NeovanBC
I have heard about them. Never seen them up close in person. Hmmm.... So these boards have L2 and L3 on the motherboard. Basically making them L3 and L4 when using a CPU like the K6-III+ ?
What about the 'Voodoo Rush' cards?
Same company / technology so you can expect similar outcome 🙂
I have several socket 7 CPU's and a motherboard for it. But I personally use a P3 with a voodoo 3 for the most part. Can't say my creative voodoo 3 have hade any heat issues so far. I have voodoo 4 and 5 around to, but for the games I play, voodoo 3 is the best option for me vs PC power. And a 2nd rig with a 166 mmx with a Diamond voodoo 1 that runs Q1 and 2 just great along with the early NFS games.
After a gaming session, put your finger on the heatsink, it should be piping hot!
The V5 actually scales well up to 1,4 GHz and beyond.
I think a time fitting machine would be using either a P3 1400 (on a nice 440BX or i815 board. 440BX is slightly faster, but doesn't officially support 133 FSB that the bigger P3 use. The i815 supports 133 FSB but is limited to 512 MB RAM) or a Athlon 1400.
It does, but it also depends on the resolution. I have benchmarked most of the Voodoo cards here: www.philscomputerlab.com/3dfx-voodoo-shootout-project.html
At 1024 x 768, even the V5 starts to show its limits.
1024x768 was basically the quivalent of 4k in it's time. A high resolution that not everybody could run.
HappyBeezerStudios Well, IMO 1600 x 1200 was the "4 K" resolution back in those days. I'm always surprised how old games supported this high resolution.
The Amigamerlin will give you better results on Benchmarks and games, look for WickedGL also (gives a good boost on some games).
Yes, even on the K6 it runs a little bit faster. It also is more compatible, I had an issue with Descent 3 and the latest reference driver, AmigaMerlin fixed that :)
TNT2 or Voodoo3...
ss7...
How about AGP TNT2(or GF2/4) + 2х PCI Voodoo II SLI? :)
amusingly enough, my v3 2000 pci does 32bit color. nfi why, but it does. had it in a DFI slot1 board i think. p6a1. if i ever toss it back in that box i think i'll take a pic and upload it to vogons for a wtf. that is, provided it still does hah.
Yes on the desktop, but not in games 🙂
Matrox cards next Phil?
ATI is next, but I'll try to test at least the G400 MAX.
Will you be testing the ATI 9700, since it was released just a while after the Geforce 4?
I had this card back in the day, but with an Athlon XP 2100+.
In Socket 7? Don't think so, IMO a shame to put such a fast card into SS7.
I still have a 9600 Pro (LE) running,, but it'S getting tired next to my 1035 MHz P3.
Just haven't found a better fitting card that also fits my price range. Older AMD cards from that time are cheap as hell in comparsion to the Voodoo, Geforce and Matrox cards.
My choice for beloved Voodoo 3 of cause! Nice card, great power, 24-bit color is awesome it's sometimes almost like 32-bit and it's the way was meant to be played! :)
Currently having Velocity 100 and Voodoo 3 1000 at Voodoo 3 series. In 00s have Voodoo 4 4500 PCI, but today's didn't and very sad that now Voodoo 4 costs so much. Btw, is there any difference between Voodoo 4 4500 PCI and Voodoo4 4500 AGP?
Hi! There is little difference between the AGP and PCI cards. The AGP cards might be a tiny bit faster, but not by much :)
I love your video's and am now hooked on reliving my childhood gaming experiences by building a few systems atm for DOS and very late(st) windows 98 games. I am getting mostly the same scores with all your testing video's, except this one... What were the exact options for the benchmarks of 3dmark99 and 3dmark2000 here? I get much better results with my voodoo 3 3500... Although thats with a BX440 and intel pentium 3 450Mhz. both ran at 640x480 (as the charts indicate) and I get 4456 with 3dmark99 and 2515 with 3dmark 2000.
I remember trying Mechwarrior 2 at 800x600 in the mid 90's. It was incredible. I thought we'd never need something that overkill for gaming.
I would conclude from the figures as follows:
Banshee - too low on power
Voodoo 3 - decent power but lacks 32 bit colour. This would be the choice if you don't mind being stuck at 16 bit.
Voodoo 4 - power same as Voodoo 3 but supports 32 bit colour. This would be my choice of card if you want the Voodoo compatibility with Glide and older games as well as later Windows 95/98 titles.
Voodoo 5 - Way to expensive and rare. I doubt this is really something that can be recommended here. You would be better to just go with a higher power Nvidia or ATI card as it is more towards the Windows XP era gaming performance than Windows 95/98 level. For that group it falls behind its competition quite badly which is why this card failed to sell.
That was actually the argument of nVidia back in the day "The Voodoos can only do 22 bit, our 24/32 bit is superior"
Yea. I'd love to do a video just exploring that 22 bit colour filter and how it compares against 16 bit and 32 bit of Nvidia.
+PhilsComputerLab I would like to see a comparison on this subject too :)
As I remember it the company of the time exploiting full 32 bit was ATI where as stated Nvidia had 24 bit.
I've seen the 24 bit option for the desktop, but games always had 16 or 32. 32 AFAIK is 24 bit RGB + 8 bit of transparency?
Great video! Keep up the great work. There are several great articles to follow-up this video on Anandtech, written by Anand himself. Here is one of them www.anandtech.com/show/307, you can search for the other ones by using the search option. In this article and the one for the Voodoo 3 he looks at CPU scaling, which ties in nicely to some of the observation made here.
Of course, I studied those articles many times :D
nostalgiagasam.
the banshee was probibly the worst video card i ever owned. i had intended it to be a replacement for a voodoo1 card, but i quickly regretted it. endless stream of driver issues. ran the voodoo3 3500 after that, and didnt have any major issues till i bailed on 3dfx. i really liked the fact that some dos games could run accelerated, i always dropped to dos to play descent 2 since the performance was just awesome vs running under windows.
So Banshee standalone card was worse than traditional 2D card + Voodoo2? I never had a Banshee so I've was always interested in them.
Not quite. In single textured games it is faster than V2, but in multi textured games it is slower.
when it worked the banshee was ok. it just came with driver hell. one driver version would work with half my library, another driver version would work with the other half. and some of the games that ran fine on the voodoo1 didnt work at all with the banshee. the voodoo1 on the other hand just worked. i dont think i ever updated my drivers and had games break because of it. i never owned a voodoo2 so i really cant comment on those.
as far as performance goes i kind of think that these early cards brought so much to the table that you didnt really care if you ended up with slightly less performance than another card. compared to anything without a 3d accelerator you would just blow it out of the water.
Is it possible you are talking about the Voodoo rush rather than the banshee?
totally sure it was a banshee. of course i was a stupid teenager at the time and didnt have the computer know how i do now. i could have been doing something stupid like using beta or reference drivers.
Comparing graphics cards with DOS benchmarks is pointless; they rely on raw CPU power so it doesn't really matter.
Yea looks like it :(
+PhilsComputerLab Whoa! That was a fast reply! Although the same can't be said about mine... Anyway, why didn't you benchmark the voodoo 2 cards?
SomeGuy1997 As always, time and too many cards to go through. The Banshee and Velocity 100 should give a good picture of what's going on though.
ohwww
How can you sound so German when you're Australian?
Because he's from Austria.
Ohhnoo... no Voodoo 2 SLI tested ???
V3 2000 / Velocity 100 is basically the same thing.
Yeah, but it looks like V2SLI+TNT2 is a somewhat popular combo for SS7 on vogons: you can switch between 32 bit color and Glide at any time, basically. I'd be interested to see a video on this configuration.
im so early