I'm skeptical anything faster than the Voodoo2 will realize any serious benefit here, but Voodoo3 is probably the "neatest" choice since it's a single PCI card that will do 2D/3D and provide Glide and decent performance in place of a much more complex setup (like option 3) - I agree with it being the "best fit" situation.

obobskivich wrote:

I'm skeptical anything faster than the Voodoo2 will realize any serious benefit here, but Voodoo3 is probably the "neatest" choice since it's a single PCI card that will do 2D/3D and provide Glide and decent performance in place of a much more complex setup (like option 3) - I agree with it being the "best fit" situation.

You're right. I won't get any serious benefit out of the Voodoo3 let alone the Voodoo 5. Voodoo3 is a good all-in-one package card with DOS compatibility & speed along with high resolution and Direct3D&Glide support in Windows.

For sound I plan to use a AWE64 if I go for S-ATA. If I go for SCSI I'll go for a card using the ASUS Media Bus with Vibra16 OPL3. I think the latter will provide a more interesting build 😀

Dual boot Windows 98 (primary) and Windows XP. I plan on having 256MB of EDO RAM installed.

Please do yourself a favour and be sure that the ASUS mobo can feed the Voodoo 3 card with the needed current. If not you can damage your system.
I have a dual PPro System (Tyan S1668D based) with PPro Overdrives and for me, 2x V2s are running very well along with a Matrox M3D and a ViRGE GX2. A Rendition card would be nice in such a system, too.

I also have the mentioned ASUS MediaBus Card (PCI card with Mini-ISA Extension) and must say it is a shame it has the hanging notes bug. The card is very prone to it. But it still gives you a real OPL3.

FGB wrote:

Please do yourself a favour and be sure that the ASUS mobo can feed the Voodoo 3 card with the needed current. If not you can damage your system.
I have a dual PPro System (Tyan S1668D based) with PPro Overdrives and for me, 2x V2s are running very well along with a Matrox M3D and a ViRGE GX2. A Rendition card would be nice in such a system, too.

I also have the mentioned ASUS MediaBus Card (PCI card with Mini-ISA Extension) and must say it is a shame it has the hanging notes bug. The card is very prone to it. But it still gives you a real OPL3.

Could you please elaborate how a Voodoo3 PCI card can damage my system? I've been using them in all kind of builds, even older boards.

I know the card has noticable hanging note problems, but I was planning on using a S-MPU-IIAT card for MIDI (yes, I know its not fully compatible with some intelligent games, but that is not the primary usage of this machine).

vetz wrote:

Could you please elaborate how a Voodoo3 PCI card can damage my system? I've been using them in all kind of builds, even older boards.

Apparently from drawing too much current. But I am sure that a dual PPro board is built pretty hefty so it shouldn't be an issue.

I am pretty sure that 98 doesn't have any support for multi processing so unless I am wrong there is little reason to run 98 on it

smeezekitty wrote:

I am pretty sure that 98 doesn't have any support for multi processing so unless I am wrong there is little reason to run 98 on it

I'm aware that Win98 does not support multi processors, but all the games I want to play are on Win98. I will ofc install WinNT and WinXP, but that is more for fun to explore the possibilities.

Hi vetz,

I have a dual PPro 200 system that I've had since 1998. I've changed it's setup many times, but what I ended up with for the last few years is this:

TMC motherboard
2 PPro 200's
192 megs EDO 72 pin RAM
Plextor 8X SCSI drive caddy style
8.4 GB IDE drive for WIN98SE
9.1 GB UWSCSI drive w/ 2940UW adaptec for WIN2K
SB 16
3COM 10/100 PCI
Voodoo 1
TNT2 M64, 52.16 WIN2K drivers are the only ones I found that work in SMP with Quake 3 and give me a 30% framerate boost (20 FPS to 29.5 FPS). I ran a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI for awhile but no drivers worked in WIN2K with Quake 3 SMP.
As for WIN98SE drivers I just used ones I had on a generic driver disk, 🤣.

I also run fastvid on it for a big boost in dos video performance. I'm happy with it and I hope it helps with your decision making:)

Instead of XP, why not go with Windows 2000? It'll be somewhat lighter in all aspects, but still give you SMP and has "official" driver support for 3dfx.

I used a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI on my Dual PPro for a long time (Intel PR440FX dual 333 overdrives), but ended up sticking an 8MB Matrox Millenium in it. OS is Windows 2000, 1GB RAM.

FGB wrote:

Please do yourself a favour and be sure that the ASUS mobo can feed the Voodoo 3 card with the needed current. If not you can damage your system.

What is the max current draw from a Voodoo3-2000/3000 on each 5V and 3.3V rails? How does one determine the motherboard spec. for max current to the PCI rails if it is not published? While the PCI 2.1 spec. mentions 5 A max to 5 V and 7.6 A max to 3.3 V, it also notes that this is vendor dependent. So your motherboard vendor may have only qualified the 5 V PCI line to 4 A, for example, or they may not have bothered to quantify this spec at all.

We first need to determine the max current on the various lines the Voodoo3 is drawing (+-12V, 5V, 3.3V). Determine the max power a PCB trace of certain cross section and length can carry. For the power source, The +-12V and 5V is likely governed by the PSU. For the 3.3V source, look for a voltage regulator of some sort on the motherboard, then look up the spec. sheet to see what the max. continuous output current is rated for. Keep in mind that the 3.3 V regulator may be powering multiple devices.

IIRC only the AGP Voodoo3 cards required too much current for some motherboards, PCI cards should be fine.

For me I think running SLI in a SMP computer is pretty cool, 2 CPU's, 2 Voodoo cards, its twice as cool!

chinny22 wrote:

For me I think running SLI in a SMP computer is pretty cool, 2 CPU's, 2 Voodoo cards, its twice as cool!

Could continue the trend - have RAID hard-drives, run a dual-GPU card as the 2D/3D adapter, etc. 😎

idspispopd wrote:

IIRC only the AGP Voodoo3 cards required too much current for some motherboards, PCI cards should be fine.

I have a super socket 7 board with via mvp3 chipset and agp voodoo 3 3000 keep reseting the pc,the pci version works fine,could this be becouse agp version needs more curent to run stable?
Afaik voodoo 3 and via mvp3 should e a ok combination.

Unknown_K wrote:

I used a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI on my Dual PPro for a long time (Intel PR440FX dual 333 overdrives), but ended up sticking an 8MB Matrox Millenium in it. OS is Windows 2000, 1GB RAM.

I forgot the Matrox G200 PCI is also an alternative 😀

For me I think running SLI in a SMP computer is pretty cool, 2 CPU's, 2 Voodoo cards, its twice as cool!

Hehe, you got a good point. Also using the Voodoo 2's would be more time period correct for the Pentium Pro system.

Instead of XP, why not go with Windows 2000? It'll be somewhat lighter in all aspects, but still give you SMP and has "official" driver support for 3dfx.

I'll probably install that as well (along with NT4.0 just to test it out). Just mentioned Windows XP since I know that operating system alot better 😀

Not really a practical suggestion here, but an Oxygen 202/402 card would be pretty cool to have in a PPro box.

Don't know why, but the name got stuck ever since I've seen a listing of them in a 90s computer expo. At thousands $ for the top model, that was my first WTF moment on a computer component's price.

archsan wrote:

Not really a practical suggestion here, but an Oxygen 202/402 card would be pretty cool to have in a PPro box.

Don't know why, but the name got stuck ever since I've seen a listing of them in a 90s computer expo. At thousands $ for the top model, that was my first WTF moment on a computer component's price.

Correct for the era would be GLINT500 or GLINT/MX - like Symmetric GLyder series or Accelgraph Falcon series (they were generally explicitly marketed for Pentium Pro workstations). The Accelgraph cards aren't terribly hard to find on ebay, and generally aren't very expensive either. Drivers are for 9x, NT 4.0; they won't work in 2k, XP, etc. Same will be true for the x02 series (the manual also states no 3D in 9x).

^The GLINT 500TX and Oxygen 202/402s are all among the most period correct (and context-correct) for 1996 to early 1997 PPro systems, but were obviously focused on (archaic by today's standards) CAD stuff.
But none were apparently as 'cool' as the $125k SGI Onyx2 Reality: http://www.netexpresslabs.com/video/video.html 🤣

Anyway, back to OP I tend to agree with the V3 PCI option for DOS+win9x games.

archsan wrote:

^The GLINT 500TX and Oxygen 202/402s are all among the most period correct (and context-correct) for 1996 to early 1997 PPro systems, but were obviously focused on (archaic by today's standards) CAD stuff.
But none were apparently as 'cool' as the $125k SGI Onyx2 Reality: http://www.netexpresslabs.com/video/video.html 🤣

PPro with 3DLabs is the "anti-SGI" - Symmetric actually used to advertise like that. The x02 series is interesting as they weren't always sold as 3DLabs parts (3DLabs didn't acquire Dynamic Pictures until '98), and they were competitors for the Glint500 series for a time in 1997 (the article you linked actually shows that as well). They're also newer than Glint to an extent - they came out in 1997 (Glint was originally released in 1995).

As far as what these cards were used for, it wasn't just CAD - they were high performance OpenGL accelerators that targeted a variety of users as a "low cost" (comparatively speaking) alternative to SGI. At times 3DLabs tried to promote their hardware for gamers as well.

Anyway, back to OP I tend to agree with the V3 PCI option for DOS+win9x games.

Yes, especially if 2k/XP/etc is ever going to be a consideration - there are no Glint/x02 drivers for 2k, XP, etc (no official drivers for 98/Me in most cases), and the x02 won't do 3D acceleration under 9x (per its user manual). 😊