You got me curious about an MSI nVidia Ti 4200, and so I had a browse on ebay...check this out -
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … _fvi%3D1&_rdc=1
See the 2nd picture - it's like a graphics card sandwich!
A very obscure piece of hardware indeed, almost impossible to find any info on it.
Matsonic was sort of the upper-end brand of the PCChips/ECS family. They're generally decent enough boards, not spectacular performers, but stable. But you're right, there's not a whole lot of documentation or support on 'em.
As far as bottlenecking with the Ti4200, meh, the CPU will hold it back at lower resolutions, but you've got the option to crank up the resolution and quality settings and still maintain good performance.
wrote:A Voodoo3 is superior to G400 Max because: […]
A Voodoo3 is superior to G400 Max because:
- Glide. Some of those '97-99 games do Glide much better than anything else.
- Somewhat better VESA VBE compatibility. There's a TSR can make it darn near perfect.
wrote:because it's DVI image quality is good.
DVI is either perfect or blank screen. 😀
To be honest i think the Voodoo 3 was probably the worst thing to come from 3DFX... i mean at the time of it's release there were 32mb cards that could handle 32-bit colour, hi-res textures and had cool features such as S3TC, DXTC, EMBM and some nice clock speeds 😀.... now the Voodoo 3 may be great at 2D (same as the Voodoo Banshee) but it's 3D was relatively poor compared to the competion! 16-bit colour and low 256x256 textures just did not appeal to me... I'm pretty sure Matrox cards have good VBE 3.0 support and i know the G400 Max is no slouch with 2D/3D.
People can argue that glide on a voodoo 3 is faster... but just run any other 16mb/32mb card (ATI Rage 128, Matrox G400, TNT2 and S3 Savage4) in 16-bit colour with low quality textures and chances are it will be faster than the Voodoo 3 and look pretty much the same! I just stick with the classic Voodoo 1 + 2 for glide only games... which is very few as most have optional OpenGL and D3D support. The Voodoo 5 on the other hand is another story 😎
ATI=Shitty drivers. Shitty OGL
S3=It was S3.
G400=OGL/D3D was kinda bad, drivers improved greatly over time
TNT2/V3=
D3D in game was still pretty poor compared to Glide. Most gamers had a v2/v2-sli so it made more sense to get a V3 (or keep v2 SLI) and most games didn't have 32bit color.
S3TC/EMBM were nice but list more than 5 games that supported it and didn't do it half-assed even when they did.
I bought a G400 in 1999 over a TNT2/V3 because I had a 21" CRT and I wanted decent 2D and the G400 was good enough for me.
Yeah 32 bit 3D color in 1998-00 was way overrated. G200, G400, and TNT1/2 took a huge speed dive at 32-bit color. Rage 128 sucked in general. 3dfx's 16-bit color looks great and I'm not convinced that it's a significant disadvantage for the games of the time.
32MB of video RAM was never a tangible advantage for TNT2-era hardware as I remember. It probably became beneficial with the GeForce, Radeon and Voodoo5. Before that you'd have had games limited by aspects such as Voodoo2's very small, split memory architecture and game devs weren't going to break compatibility for those popular cards.
Glide is always better than D3D in those old games. It's not just about speed.
BTW, I was a G400 guy. I thought they were the best, most magical graphics cards around in 1999. 😀 Oooh sparkly VCQ2 full 32-bit rendering (blah blah). Nevermind those weird rendering errors, OpenGL horribleness, lack of control panel 3D tweaking options, poor drivers overall..... TurboGL ftw... (eh go NV if you want to use GL).
But my perspective has changed since I've been able to see how much better Glide works overall in those old games. Rather minor speed differences and claimed technical advantages come in way below practical results & compatibility.
Voodoo5 has to be the best choice out there for games from '99-'00 or so. That card is seriously underrated and the gaming press should be ashamed of how they judged it based on 3DMark 2000 bullshit scores. Its FSAA is really fantastic and works fine even with older games.
Interesting debate. Looks like I'll need to collect more classic cards to ehem, conduct 3D rendering benchmarking tests. 😉
I'll add these to the shopping list then:
Nvidia TNT2 ( 😒 I just sold one a month ago...)
Radeon 7500LE (the first Radeon and a giant leap forward for ATI)
S3 Savage4 AGP (I'm quite impressed with the 8mb PCI version on my MMX, I'd like to see what this would do on a faster system)
Matrox G400 (I loved this card)
Voodoo3 2000 (to see what I've missed in the last 10 years)
See the 2nd picture - it's like a graphics card sandwich!
Nice! Most of them look flashy, except mine which is very nondescript in green with a large flat black heatsink. An OEM market model maybe?
As far as bottlenecking with the Ti4200, meh, the CPU will hold it back at lower resolutions, but you've got the option to crank up the resolution and quality settings and still maintain good performance.
Yup. My thoughts exactly. Even with the slow CPU, this system should play anything that it was built for, i.e. games from the late 90s to 2001. Basically it's meant to do everything better than my MMX retro rig.
A bit of an update on my P3 machine. I've swapped out the 650E for an 800EB (133mhz bus). I also got a Voodoo3 2000 for $2.50 😁 I'll just store that 4200Ti for some other project. The 905B ISA ethernet card has been replaced with a 905C 10/100 PCI card while another 128mb of ram has been added for a total of 384mb ram. The only piece of hardware on this rig that's not from 1999 is the hard disk... dunno if I should swap that out for a 10-20 gb disk though.
Also, I haven't used Windows 98 since 2001 or so and have totally forgotten what a PITA it was. Damn thing crashes constantly and has ZERO multitasking ability. Windows 2000/ XP runs faster and better and is stable as a rock but given that this rig is purely a nostalgia trip, I guess I must run a period correct O/S as well, warts and all.
I was a little late to the 3D game, but the first time I saw glide in action was with Unreal in 1999. I was immediately sold. I went out and bought a V3-3000 the next day.
A couple of people I knew were all over the TNT cards at the time, trying to tell me how much better it was with its magical D3D and 32-bit rendering. It was one of those classic "Who are you going to trust? Me or your lyin' eyes" moments. I trusted my lying eyes and told them they were full of shit.
The V3 still stands as one of the finest cards I've ever owned. Great 3D performance, and great 2D output for a very reasonable price. My only regret was getting the V3-3000 over the V3-2000. I think the 3000 ran a little too hot, and overheated sometimes.
My next card was a Creative Labs Geforce2. I really felt it was a big step down in many ways, and the 2D quality sucked ass. I still feel depressed knowing that 3Dfx was bought out by Nshittia.
"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium
Yeah, the V3 does run hot, which surprised me since the Matrox G400, Savage4, Geforce2 MX and TNT2 that I own(ed) don't really put out much heat. Still, I've run mine at 190mhz with no issues, playing NFS PU for hours on end. That I've got a 12cm case fan blowing air right across it might be the reason why it's not acting up though.
Oh I love Star Wars Pod Racer! Pretty much built my win98 retro rig so I could play it. Best racing game next to Flatout 2 imo.
I think the Voodoo 3 is a great single card solution for a win98/DOS machine. You can pick them up on ebay so cheap. I have 7 of them in different flavors, 2 with boxes.
Just to give a quick update. I have retired my 233mmx and chucked it in the store room as my "computing area" became far too messy with so many systems lying around. Meanwhile my P3 has received more goodies in line with it becoming my sole retro gaming station, as follows:
1ghz socket 370 chip + MSI 6905 rev 2.3 slocket
Nvidia 4200ti + Voodoo2 12mb (woohoo!)
4 port USB 2.0 card
3c905b 10mb ISA ethernet card (ran out of space around the PCI ports)
I may try out a Tualatin/ Tualeron next, maybe SLI with another V2 if I can find one and up the ram to 512mb.
wrote:wrote:A Voodoo3 is superior to G400 Max because: […]
A Voodoo3 is superior to G400 Max because:
- Glide. Some of those '97-99 games do Glide much better than anything else.
- Somewhat better VESA VBE compatibility. There's a TSR can make it darn near perfect.
To be honest i think the Voodoo 3 was probably the worst thing to come from 3DFX... i mean at the time of it's release there were 32mb cards that could handle 32-bit colour, hi-res textures and had cool features such as S3TC, DXTC, EMBM and some nice clock speeds 😀.... now the Voodoo 3 may be great at 2D (same as the Voodoo Banshee) but it's 3D was relatively poor compared to the competion! 16-bit colour and low 256x256 textures just did not appeal to me... I'm pretty sure Matrox cards have good VBE 3.0 support and i know the G400 Max is no slouch with 2D/3D.
I was on the Voodoo side of the fence, I bought a V3 3000 the day that it came out and I was impressed. Everything I was playing ran great and looked great, but maybe I was limited to my 17" monitor at 1024x768.
The disappointment came when I upgraded to the "32bit color world" with a Radeon VIVO 64mb. Nothing I was currently playing looked better or played better, like Dungeon Keeper 2 for instance (still on 17" monitor). I remember the new games that were coming out like Sacrifice and Giants had graphical glitches due to ATI's sucky drivers. But I had bumpmapping!
Fortunately I didn't enter the 3D scene until Direct3D had just surpassed Glide in terms of game support. I was an early adopter of the nVidia TNT1 and remember eagerly downloading Unreal 1 patches and nVidia drivers to get Unreal working decently (it looked great in 32-bit color though, the difference between that and the dithered 16-bit graphics was night and day).
