VOGONS


First post, by voodoo5_6k

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Hi there,

This is it, my retro system containing my rarest and most beloved piece of hardware... An original 3dfx Voodoo5 6000. It is a Rev. 3700A, with Full PCI Rework. Tested to be fully stable @183MHz with 8x FSAA working! Although I will never use it at that clock speed. I run it at the standard 166MHz for it to stay cooler (and last longer, preferably forever 😀). I own it for about 14 years now, but it was always safely stored because it was not until now that the possibility of operating it in a proper and compatible system arose.

Originally, I had planned to use it with my Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3,40GHz on a server board with an AGP2PCI card in a PCI-X slot (thus, running in PCI66 mode, equaling its use in native AGP). Osckhar built that adapter (thanks again!).

But the system never really worked the way I’d liked to see it. First issue were artifacts with FSAA applied and random lock-ups in 3D applications. This got sorted out by osckhar who had the card for a check-up (thanks a lot again!). I think most people that are into this topic know that he fixed many dead Voodoo5 6000 cards, and even Rampage cards. If anyone has a dead or otherwise defective Voodoo5 6000, you can contact him via eBay, he offers a repair service package there. But now, back to my problem. The probable cause were incompatibilities between mainboard, AGP2PCI and the Voodoo5 6000. It was running fine in native AGP mode on one of osckhar's systems. Another issue were drivers. Benchmarking worked, but not the games I wanted to play. So I started looking for options. I don’t really like AMD, so many possible mainboard options vanished. With an Intel CPU, I only wanted an Intel chipset, which further narrowed down the possible options. I ended up sourcing a D815EEA2 which was reported as being compatible, although the Voodoo5 6000 revision used was not really known. Since the 3700A is the most common revision I decided to go for it.

The next issue I ran into was trying to get a Pentium III-S to run in that board. I did a comparable thing for my Voodoo5 5500 AGP retro systems. But the BIOS of the D815EEA2 is pretty restrictive, refusing to even POST with an unsupported CPU. I researched a lot and finally found a piece of information suggesting that Tualatin support could be flashed into the board using the P15 BIOS. Luckily, Intel has all this old stuff still available (really a great thing). Using a Pentium III 700MHz I flashed to P15 and reseated the Tualatin, and voilà, success, the system boots, CPU and 512KB cache recognized!

Booting the system with my Voodoo5 6000 I checked the HiNT temperatures during POST and while normally running, always with one finger on the PSU main switch. But the HiNT only gets lukewarm on that board, even under 3DMark stress with 8x FSAA applied! Great!

I added the Sound Blaster, installed Windows 98 SE, the system drivers and the 3dfx reference drivers (those will be replaced after I find a driver that hopefully supports all the games I’d like to run on this system). And that’s where I am right now. The case is still a TBD item. I prefer a desktop-style mainboard mount because the add-in cards are then “standing” and not “hanging”. But all desktop cases still available today either have no top window (because I’d like to be able to see the Voodoo5 6000 at any time 😉), have ridiculous prices or sizes, or are just plain ugly (well, that’s subjective of course). Most likely I’ll build something testbench-like with an acrylic cover so that I can see the card sitting in its final place... 😀

Updates (and more pictures) will be added whenever possible...

System specifications:

  • CPU: Intel Pentium III-S 1,40GHz
    Cooler: Thermaltake Volcano 12 + Noctua NF-A8 FLX
    Mainboard: Intel D815EEA2 (BIOS P15)
    RAM: Micron 512MB PC133 CL2 (2x 256MB)
    PSU: Cooler Master RS-500-AMBA-D3 Silent Pro M 500W
    Case: N/A (TBD)

Add-in cards:

  • AGP: 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP 128MB (Rev. 3700A, Full PCI Rework)
    PCI4: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS

Drives:

  • FDD: N/A
    SSD: Corsair CSSD-F60GBLSB 60 GB
    ODD: HP GDR-H30N

I/O Devices (via KVM):

  • Display: Eizo FlexScan F520
    Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro
    Mouse: Logitech S96
    Speaker: Canton Plus Media 3

Pictures:

  • The attachment system.JPG is no longer available
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Reply 1 of 19, by voodoo5_6k

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Reserved for updates...

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Reply 2 of 19, by voodoo5_6k

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Reserved for updates... (2)

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Reply 3 of 19, by voodoo5_6k

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Since Jade Falcon asked for it, I performed a quick run with 3DMark2000 and 3DMark2001SE although the reference drivers are not that good for a Voodoo5 6000. I'll perform additional runs when I have found the best driver for my system configuration.

Re: Intel P6 Gen. 1 Retro System

The attachment 3DMark2000.jpg is no longer available
The attachment 3DMark2001SE.jpg is no longer available

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Reply 4 of 19, by Jade Falcon

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Thanks!
I have your scores up! Hopefully they will stay up. Usually hwbot needs more gpu info in the screenshot. But I think given the card and the photo it should pass!
If you post any new scores can you add v.control to the screen shot?

http://hwbot.org/submission/3375268_vogons_te … ecalculate=true

http://hwbot.org/submission/3375265_

Reply 5 of 19, by havli

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Nice rig 😀
But PIII is seriously bottlenecking V5 6k... 2380 points in 3DM01 is lower than my V4 4500. AGP2PCI might be tricky to get working properly. The easiest way to get decent CPU performance is probably KT333 board and unlocked AXP-M @ 2.4+ GHz.

HW museum.cz - my collection of PC hardware

Reply 6 of 19, by voodoo5_6k

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Jade Falcon wrote:
Thanks! I have your scores up! Hopefully they will stay up. Usually hwbot needs more gpu info in the screenshot. But I think giv […]
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Thanks!
I have your scores up! Hopefully they will stay up. Usually hwbot needs more gpu info in the screenshot. But I think given the card and the photo it should pass!
If you post any new scores can you add v.control to the screen shot?

http://hwbot.org/submission/3375268_vogons_te … ecalculate=true

http://hwbot.org/submission/3375265_

Cool 😀 Yeah, no problem. The next time I'll include v.control. If there's anything else you'd like to have for the team account just ask.

havli wrote:

Nice rig 😀
But PIII is seriously bottlenecking V5 6k... 2380 points in 3DM01 is lower than my V4 4500. AGP2PCI might be tricky to get working properly. The easiest way to get decent CPU performance is probably KT333 board and unlocked AXP-M @ 2.4+ GHz.

Thanks 😀

Yes, the PIII-S is not the fastest possible CPU, but if the Voodoo5 6000 would have hit the shelves end of 2000 or early 2001 no one would have even dreamed of something like the PIII-S 1,40GHz (release date early 2002). Furthermore, 3DMark has never and will never be an indicator of real life performance, it is just a joke (that's of course my personal opinion). You are absolutely right that higher scores could be achieved with a faster CPU (the Voodoo cards don't have Hardware T&L which has to be performed by the CPU), but what's the use of that? I don't care for synthetic benchmark scores, I play games 😀 However, the 3dfx reference driver that I used is far from being optimized for the Voodoo5 6000. Replacing it with a Voodoo5 5500 results in roughly the same score (less than 100 points lower). And, as I already stated above, I don't like AMD, so I don't have the "easy" option 😉 Hence, the initial Pentium 4 EE plan... For me personally, pairing a Voodoo5 with a Pentium III feels about right (and somehow period correct, although I don't care that much about that 😉).

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Reply 7 of 19, by Jade Falcon

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havli wrote:

Nice rig 😀
But PIII is seriously bottlenecking V5 6k... 2380 points in 3DM01 is lower than my V4 4500. AGP2PCI might be tricky to get working properly. The easiest way to get decent CPU performance is probably KT333 board and unlocked AXP-M @ 2.4+ GHz.

There are a lot of factors to take in here regarding the score. The cpu is a big one, drivers, the lack of an over clock are another. Then there's software tweaking. And maybe the OS.

Reply 8 of 19, by Jade Falcon

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voodoo5_6k wrote:

Cool 😀 Yeah, no problem. The next time I'll include v.control. If there's anything else you'd like to have for the team account just ask.

I honestly have a hard time asking you to bench the card given its rarity. The only other benchmarks I could ask for are 3dmark 99. If your alright with that.

That aside hwbot does not give out points for 3dmark 99.

Anyway thanks for benchmarking the card!

Reply 9 of 19, by voodoo5_6k

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Jade Falcon wrote:
I honestly have a hard time asking you to bench the card given its rarity. The only other benchmarks I could ask for are 3dmark […]
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voodoo5_6k wrote:

Cool 😀 Yeah, no problem. The next time I'll include v.control. If there's anything else you'd like to have for the team account just ask.

I honestly have a hard time asking you to bench the card given its rarity. The only other benchmarks I could ask for are 3dmark 99. If your alright with that.

That aside hwbot does not give out points for 3dmark 99.

Anyway thanks for benchmarking the card!

You're welcome 😀 Once I have identified the best driver for my configuration and have setup the final Windows 98 SE installation I'll perform an additional run of 3DMark99-2001SE and post the screenshots for you (with v.control this time 😉).

If you need points and don't restrict yourself to really old systems, I could benchmark other stuff on my current gaming PC (Intel Core i7-4960X @4,0GHz with Noctua NH-D15, Asus Rampage IV Formula, 32GB Corsair DDR3 1866MHz, Evga GeForce GTX Titan X SC @1354-1367MHz via more aggressive boost table and 300W power target with Raijintek Morpheus, Creative Labs Sound Blaster ZxR, Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit). Maybe that PC can rum some stuff that gives you points. It only has to be executable offline because this PC won't access the internet. If you'd like me to do that, please be patient, I currently don't have that much spare time and it may take me a while to do this.

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Reply 10 of 19, by Jade Falcon

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Bench any thing you want abd send me the screenshots and I'll post it on the team account.
Or you can setup a hwbot account and join the vogons team.

Last edited by Jade Falcon on 2016-12-12, 21:54. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 11 of 19, by melbar

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voodoo5_6k wrote:

The case is still a TBD item. I prefer a desktop-style mainboard mount because the add-in cards are then “standing” and not “hanging”. But all desktop cases still available today either have no top window (because I’d like to be able to see the Voodoo5 6000 at any time 😉), have ridiculous prices or sizes, or are just plain ugly (well, that’s subjective of course). Most likely I’ll build something testbench-like with an acrylic cover so that I can see the card sitting in its final place... 😀

Maybe something like that? Even a plexi-tower... you can place it on the side panel..

Or a plexi- self-made desktop case, but bigger as below...

#1 K6-2/500, #2 Athlon1200, #3 Celeron1000A, #4 A64-3700, #5 P4HT-3200, #6 P4-2800, #7 Am486DX2-66

Reply 12 of 19, by Mr.Scott

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Mr.Falcon,
You cannot have a "team account" listed as a member on another team account, and I'll explain why. It affects the league points as members are divided into separate leagues based on Time, cooling method, and experience level. Right now your Vogon's team account member is listed as rookie league. That means that EVERY member that uses that account is considered a rookie, which also means that it's possible for a different team member to exploit the lesser league designation to his advantage. Not that I'm saying that would happen but......

Also, I know you already share an account with Horse, and multiple accounts are not allowed either. It makes hardware sharing/score sharing almost impossible to prove who the original bencher is.
Just letting you know for your team's own good.

~Scotty aka Mr.Scott
Warp9-systems

Reply 13 of 19, by Jade Falcon

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Thanks for the heads up.

Mr horse had cleared all that up with with websmile long go. He gave us the ok. We aren't the only ones with team/shared accounts. It was all done in the open on the hwbot chat. Feel free to look up the logs to see what websile said.

The team account is not shared. I'm the only one that uses it and it's only for posting scores for those that don't have an account, so no exploiting goes on there.

Edit:
Does not look like hwbots chat logs go back that far.
It you'd like to farther discussion this shoot me a pm. I reenabled my inbox so you can pm me now.

Reply 14 of 19, by kanecvr

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Welcome to vogons.

havli wrote:

But PIII is seriously bottlenecking V5 6k... 2380 points in 3DM01 is lower than my V4 4500. AGP2PCI might be tricky to get working properly. The easiest way to get decent CPU performance is probably KT333 board and unlocked AXP-M @ 2.4+ GHz.

^this. KT333 boards are not hard to find, and later revisions also support FSB 333 barton CPUs, allowing for up to Athlon XP 3200+ (the 2333MHz fsb 166 version). I look forward to seeing your V5 6k tested on such a system.

Reply 15 of 19, by Mr.Scott

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Jade Falcon wrote:
Thanks for the heads up. […]
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Thanks for the heads up.

Mr horse had cleared all that up with with websmile long go. He gave us the ok. We aren't the only ones with team/shared accounts. It was all done in the open on the hwbot chat. Feel free to look up the logs to see what websile said.

The team account is not shared. I'm the only one that uses it and it's only for posting scores for those that don't have an account, so no exploiting goes on there.

Edit:
Does not look like hwbots chat logs go back that far.
It you'd like to farther discussion this shoot me a pm. I reenabled my inbox so you can pm me now.

Did not know you had a previous special agreement.
It is not normal HWB rules. That's the only reason I even mentioned it.
It makes it real easy to double dip points if your members have their own separate accounts also.
Again, I'm not accusing anybody of anything, I'm just telling you why they don't usually allow it.
Carry on. It wasn't any of my business anyway. Sorry.

Reply 16 of 19, by Jade Falcon

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No problen.
I alway duble check to see if the score was already posted too.

Reply 17 of 19, by feipoa

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All of what was included in the PCI rework? Every single soldered component was removed, verified, and resoldered?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 18 of 19, by voodoo5_6k

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feipoa wrote:

All of what was included in the PCI rework? Every single soldered component was removed, verified, and resoldered?

No, it is only a minor change to the card (component wise, but it definitely can render the board inoperable when not successful). The PCI rework was developed by 3dfx engineer Hank Semenec after closure of 3dfx in his free time. The Voodoo5 6000 never reached a fully stable state when FSAA was applied (especially 8x, involving all four VSA-100 chips), over all PCB revisions. Hank tracked down the issue and came up with a solution for this (at least for the later, almost final revisions, like my 3700A). His rework makes the board rock-solid with all FSAA modes under full load. Imagine this would have been identified in time...

Details about this can be found around the various 3dfx fan sites, e.g. here (scroll down to section "Internal PCI bus rework"): http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/v6k_faq.htm

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Reply 19 of 19, by voodoo5_6k

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kanecvr wrote:

Welcome to vogons.

Sorry, didn't see this post between those hwbot related ones. Thanks a lot 😀

kanecvr wrote:
havli wrote:

But PIII is seriously bottlenecking V5 6k... 2380 points in 3DM01 is lower than my V4 4500. AGP2PCI might be tricky to get working properly. The easiest way to get decent CPU performance is probably KT333 board and unlocked AXP-M @ 2.4+ GHz.

^this. KT333 boards are not hard to find, and later revisions also support FSB 333 barton CPUs, allowing for up to Athlon XP 3200+ (the 2333MHz fsb 166 version). I look forward to seeing your V5 6k tested on such a system.

Currently, I have two parallel paths for this project:

  • - Find "best" drivers for my current configuration and test again
    - Build case (current state: system mounted on a Cooler Master aluminum mainboard tray which will form the basis for the case)

For me, testing on an AMD platform is not really a priority. Like I mentioned earlier, I do not really like AMD. I have built several AMD systems for my little brother and a few friends over the years. Nothing there caused me to say: Well, this performs really good, I might try this in one of my own systems... I have never owned a single piece of AMD hardware, and this will not change for the foreseeable future.

I don't want this to start one of those AMD vs. Intel discussions, so I explicitly add: This is solely my personal opinion, formed by my own experiences over more than 20 years of PC building. Others of course are entitled to and have other valid opinions.

However, I will definitely test the card with my P4 EE 3,4GHz. For this test I'll use my Supermicro P4SCT+ with 4GB of Kingston DDR400 RAM. The Voodoo5 6000 is used via an AGP2PCI adapter in a PCI-X slot (i.e. PCI66 mode). That should suffice to get rid of CPU limits of any sorts (no Athlon XP can match a Northwood P4 @3,0GHz or above, let alone any P4 EE 😉)

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