Nice work Phil on this and your especially Voodoo 2 Processor Scaling Project. It definitely looks like MDK2 and Unreal are too fill-rate limited on the Voodoo 1 to be really playable. You didn't even put in the SLI results, but what would probably be very unfair 🤣

When you say Incomming and Expendable show graphical corruption at speeds above 400MHz, does that apply to both Voodoo and Voodoo 2?

Great Hierophant wrote:

When you say Incomming and Expendable show graphical corruption at speeds above 400MHz, does that apply to both Voodoo and Voodoo 2?

Thanks for asking, V1 only!

I am in the middle of benching ALL my 3dfx cards in a p3-s 1400 with Asus Tusl2-c. (main reason: using them all again, see if they still work and watch for differences between pci and agp)

I simply get graphics corruption all over the place with my voodoo1 en voodoo rush and i had to stop using them in this project. Even at 66mhzfsb (700mhz) they refuse to play ball and keep corrupting every image.

With voodoo1 i tried 3 different brand cards (trust, canopus and diamond)

My Banshee (agp) is even worse: No post at all no matter what bios settings i try (reseated the card a dozen times). All these cards work perfecly fine in my pentium mmx system en my k6-3+ system....(re-check done)

So phil, can you get the v1 working in your tualatin system? And which chipset is on that board?

I also have a Diamond. My only V1 so I can't test other cards.

Board has an Intel BX440.

With a 400 MHz Pentium II I don't get the texture glitches. CPU everything works. Do you have a slower processor to try?

I know this isn't fully hardware related, but it sorta is too.
I'd be interested in knowing how fast NGLIDE is on a weak DX9 GPU like the 5200FX or 5500FX, vs a real Voodoo I, and Voodoo II, on something in the 500mhz 1-ghz region.
Just to figure out, if it is really worth the expending the effort of adding a V1\V2 for Windows glide games on old PII's, and PIII's. Since the Image quality of both these cards is meh, compared to the later 3dfx cards or Nglide.

I've never seen that Incoming corruption before, i'd suspect it would be the FSB than the processor clock, ans i've seen it not so corrupt on K6-2's past 400MHz...

You should also compare performance in Quake III Arena (but at picmip 3 for the sake of Voodoo's vram) and also compare the two with r_vertexLight enabled, which should be a big gain for Voodoo Graphics.

By the way, thanks for the VGA Voodoo captures!

@ alphawing

I don`t know the system requirements for glide emulators but for older games i think it should be fine. Big advantage with some of them is the possibility to play at higher resolutions or AA with older dos glide games but i guess it needs better hardware if you use them for that...

For me, it is all about the true retro feel and fiddling with the hardware is sometimes more fun than the games 😀

I have a bunch of 3dfx hardware and to me they are worth every penny (when bought at descent prices). Image quality for v1/v2 is okay but from v3 upwards it is indeed better.

If you do want 3dfx hardware (and it`s not for old dos glide games, it is voodoo1 territory) take the voodoo3, prices are low and it is a great allrounder for it`s time.

meljor wrote:

If you do want 3dfx hardware (and it`s not for old dos glide games, it is voodoo1 territory) take the voodoo3, prices are low and it is a great allrounder for it`s time.

More games work than not on the V3 in DOS. Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix I would take a look on the list for the games you like/intend to play before deciding on getting a V1 vs V3. V3 is as said much more of an allrounder for DOS, Direct3D, Windows, and Glide.

@ phil

The slowest s370 cpu i have is a 1000mhz@133fsb so it will still be 500mhz@66fsb.
Maybe i will try that....but the whole point was to test them all with the tualatin.

I just wonder why it is that v1 and voodoo rush are having trouble with fast systems, even though the pci bus is running at a normal 33mhz.
And the banshee agp is puzzling me also since every other pci and agp card i have works perfectly with this board.

The Voodoo 3 is definitely a nice card and it allows you to keep an extra PCI slot free, as it's a 2D/3D all-in-one. I've got both the PCI and AGP versions.

Woah.. I just checked ebay. I had no idea that the PCI version was going for so much. I bought mine like 10 years ago for $30.

meljor wrote:

@ alphawing […]
Show full quote

@ alphawing

I don`t know the system requirements for glide emulators but for older games i think it should be fine. Big advantage with some of them is the possibility to play at higher resolutions or AA with older dos glide games but i guess it needs better hardware if you use them for that...

For me, it is all about the true retro feel and fiddling with the hardware is sometimes more fun than the games 😀

I have a bunch of 3dfx hardware and to me they are worth every penny (when bought at descent prices). Image quality for v1/v2 is okay but from v3 upwards it is indeed better.

If you do want 3dfx hardware (and it`s not for old dos glide games, it is voodoo1 territory) take the voodoo3, prices are low and it is a great allrounder for it`s time.

Its not that I don't have them to use, its just the Voodoo II's IQ is bad.
I don't actually like playing Windows glide games on them, especially when 2 are running in SLI with the interlacing\scanline effect going on.
If I don't have to put one in a system for glide its a boon, and I wonder just how slow a system you could be able use with the slowest DX9 FX cards to equal Voodoo II level performance under a glide wrapper like nglide.
Its something I wanta test sometime under Unreal or maybe Uprising I or II.

leileilol wrote:

I've never seen that Incoming corruption before, i'd suspect it would be the FSB than the processor clock, ans i've seen it not so corrupt on K6-2's past 400MHz...

Well the thing is the PII was also a 100 MHz FSB. But I haven't tried underclocking the PIII 500 or 600 for example. Might give this a go though 😀

AlphaWing wrote:

Since the Image quality of both these cards is meh, compared to the later 3dfx cards or Nglide.

I find the IQ for a single V2 at 800 x 600 quite good. Better is 1024 x 768 with V2 SLI, but I recommend turning on V-sync. At 75 or 85 Hz refresh rate there is no noticeable input lag and the IQ is pretty good. However I have never seen a V3/V4/V5 on a LCD monitor, so maybe I'm wrong 😀

I will know more soon as I will have all the cards soon, from top to bottom.

Regarding nGlide, I'm going to be blunt 😊 I'd love to test this, but I don't want to have to fiddle around to getting it going. So if you could help me and give me something that is ready-to-go with minimal fuss I can quickly test all my benchmarks on nGlide.

- What cards should I use (Nvidia only please)
- What software do I need
- Is there anything I need to configure?

meljor wrote:

I just wonder why it is that v1 and voodoo rush are having trouble with fast systems, even though the pci bus is running at a normal 33mhz.

My guess that the game/driver/other software component has to wait until something (texture upload?) has finished and the wait is simply not long enough on a fast enough CPU.
AFAIK texture uploads on V1/V2 (maybe even later 3dfx cards?) are done by the CPU, not by the video card as a bus master. So usually this shouldn't be an issue, unless the game or driver uses multithreading. If the game changes the textures before the upload is complete this would result in texture corruption.
IIRC V2 has much faster texture upload speed that V1 so this is somewhat plausible.

Nglide is very easy to setup Phil. You just install it on any modern machine and you're pretty much good to go!
It has a very easy to use tool for configuring aspect ratio and internal resolutions. Give it a try!

Ok I tried running a 100 MHz FSB PIII 600 MHz at a lower FSB, but the BIOS only allows overclocking of the FSB which is weird...

meljor wrote:

I just wonder why it is that v1 and voodoo rush are having trouble with fast systems, even though the pci bus is running at a normal 33mhz.

I've read that the Voodoo Rush had a lot of problems as 3dfx had sourced the 2D chip (there were two variants) with varying degrees of success. I think I also read that the Rush struggled compatibility-wise even with regular Voodoo 1 games.

There was no good 2D/3D chip from 3dfx until the Banshee/Voodoo 3.

You just set the res you want in Nglide and it uses it transparently independent of the game settings, but it needs DX9 shaders.
Meaning you need DX 9.0b or C installed in 9x or use 2k\XP, and a card that supports it.
The slowest and cards we often use for retro machines that do are PCI 5200's FX's and 5500FX's. If these are comparable to a real V2 at 640*480 on something like the slowest P-III that would be an interesting alternative.

As for V2 image quality on an LCD, its not great compared to a Banshee or Voodoo 3, its noticeably blurrier on my displays, as I'm also running them through a Vga switch too, and that is not using the pass-through, I sacrifice a spot for them on the switch.

AlphaWing wrote:

As for V2 image quality on an LCD, its not great compared to a Banshee or Voodoo 3, its noticeably blurrier on my displays, as I'm also running them through a Vga switch too, and that is not using the pass-through, I sacrifice a spot for them on the switch.

Sorry I'm using W98SE on my machine 😒

Got my V3 3500 today 😀

You are right, the IQ is fantastic. Even at 1600 x 1200 the image is mint.

How would you compare it to a Voodoo 1 or 2? I've never owned one so I can't make a comparison.