It's not about having as many retro rigs as can possibly fit inside your house, it's about enjoying what you do 😉
The 2 rigs you have look pretty well balanced for the later 9x games 😉

GA-5AX 4.1 is a good motherboard, I got one as well. Very stable 😀
Btw, what graphics cards are you using in your rigs?

Tetrium wrote:

Btw, what graphics cards are you using in your rigs?

Since hes a 3dfx hater, he must be from the evil side (nvidia) 😏 😁

noshutdown wrote:

i am a 3dfx hater.

Get out!

Seriously, though, that's very unfortunate for you because a Voodoo 3 is probably the best video card for a retro rig with a high level of compatibility with all DX and OpenGL games made up to that point and with Glide games both before and since. You'd be well covered with a Voodoo 3 as your main or only video card in a retro rig.

sliderider wrote:

noshutdown wrote:

i am a 3dfx hater.

Get out!

Seriously, though, that's very unfortunate for you because a Voodoo 3 is probably the best video card for a retro rig with a high level of compatibility with all DX and OpenGL games made up to that point and with Glide games both before and since. You'd be well covered with a Voodoo 3 as your main or only video card in a retro rig.

Indeed. Voodoo 3's are a great retro card for a bunch of reasons:
-They are well supported by games of that time (partly because of Glide, which only works with 3DFX cards).
-They generally have good drivers.
-Because they aren't actually using most of the AGP features, it also means they will work in AGP slots which are badly implemented (think Super 7 AGP boards).
-They have relatively good image quality.
-They are quite fast compared to other cards of their time.
-They work in virtually any Windows OS you throw at it.
-Voodoo 3 AGP's are still relatively easy to find these days.

Otoh Voodoo 3's have only a couple drawbacks:
-No 32bit support
-No textures larger then 256x256 (which is not much of an issue usually)
-Maybe some more that I can't remember atm.

Voodoo 3's are relatively fuzz-free, quite fast, passively cooled and very compatible.
Not many retro graphics cards are as versatile and easy to use as the V3's 😉

yeah i can get some v3-2000s for $3-5USD each with ease, but i just don't.
since i am a 3dfx hater, i never looked into glide games. after all, ID games are not glide exclusive.
i also hate creative soundcards, with the 33cm awe32 being the only exception due to its length.

I'd stick with system No. 1. I don't understand the 3dfx hate, but you could use these at once:
- Nvidia TNT2 32MB for the standard OpenGL stuff (those id games work best with these). you'll be bottlenecked by CPU anyway, so anything better won't be much, plus you still have some of the VESA compatibility here
- 3dfx Voodoo2 12MB for running the Glide exclusive games (typically early UnrealEngine games, Tribes, and crappy platformers that try hard to be Mario64)
- Matrox M3D for running the PowerVR SGL exclusive games (Ultimate Race, Moon Racer, Winter Race 3D, the best looking Mechwarrior2, the best looking Tomb Raider, special editions of Virtual On, Resident Evil, etc)

noshutdown wrote:

since i am a 3dfx hater, i never looked into glide games. after all, ID games are not glide exclusive.
i also hate creative soundcards, with the 33cm awe32 being the only exception due to its length.

Mah daddy was a 3dfx hater, an his daddy was a 3dfx hater...

😜

Seriously though, despite whatever irrational emotional hatred you harbour, Voodoos are pretty much defacto standard for a retro rig that predates GeForce 256 DDR.

My very first 3D card had a 3DFX chipset and it was passed to me from my dad. I remember in the late 90s thinking 3DFX was as good as it got then suddenly, they just became irrelevant seemingly overnight. The retro rig I use most often now has a Geforce 256 DDR.

My guess would be that he "hates" them because he never fell in love with one of the games that glide kicks ass with. He basically said as much. Heck if he's all about id's GL games then a NV card can be better than a 3dfx card.

Hate is kinda strong though. Like Yoda said.....

Ah, the Voodoo Rush chipset paired with Alliance AT25 ran Half Life quite nice. But we all differ in our preferences.

GXL750 wrote:

Ah, the Voodoo Rush chipset paired with Alliance AT25 ran Half Life quite nice. But we all differ in our preferences.

This is why I just bought a Rush in spite of having a V3, V5, and SLi V2's. I needed a Voodoo for a slower rig where the other Voodoos would be overkill. Truthfully, the Rush is probably overkill too, but I didn't want to waste a slot using a VGA card AND a Voodoo Graphics or Voodoo2.