GeForce will almost certainly work better with old D3D games.

Likewise I'd have to go with the GeForce on this one. Seemingly less compatibility issues with motherboards and I'm not really fond of ATI's drivers for this generation of cards.

ATI drivers are questionable for DX3-6 games. There are some features that they simply refused to support properly (like table fog). And the cards older than Radeon 9700 usually have limitations and quirks that make them quite undesirable.

A GeForce 3/4 (even MX) is definitely superior in features and compatibility.

swaaye wrote:

A GeForce 3/4 (even MX) is definitely superior in features and compatibility.

... unless of course its a rare 64-bit crippled MX, in which case I (and I suppose everybody else) would choose ATI instead 😉

If the ATI card is free / you already own it, yes.

The best choice for oldies is as usual a Voodoo 3-5 though. Maybe even Voodoo 1 if you are wanting to play the oldest 3D games like DOS glide titles.

swaaye wrote:

If the ATI card is free / you already own it, yes.

The best choice for oldies is as usual a Voodoo 3-5 though. Maybe even Voodoo 1 if you are wanting to play the oldest 3D games like DOS glide titles.

Anyway, what would be a good comparable alternative to the Voodoo's?
I know TNT2 is about the same speed as a V3, but the one I tried (a Diamond V770) had horrible graphics quality 🙁

swaaye wrote:

If the ATI card is free / you already own it, yes.

The best choice for oldies is as usual a Voodoo 3-5 though. Maybe even Voodoo 1 if you are wanting to play the oldest 3D games like DOS glide titles.

I already own both the Radeon and Geforce cards (both crippled "LE" and "SE" versions... but they were free 🤣). I also own a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP but it's not getting much use at the moment and the fans are getting a bit loud!

I'm looking for an AGP card suitable for a PIII system (motherboard only supports AGP 2X) and then i'll add a couple of Voodoo 2 cards for Glide games 😀

Tetrium wrote:

swaaye wrote:

I know TNT2 is about the same speed as a V3, but the one I tried (a Diamond V770) had horrible graphics quality 🙁

OK, this is hard to believe, but there was once a chinese no-name OEM TNT2 pro under the name 'Eagle TNT2 pro'. That one had the best graphics quality of all NVIDIA video cards I have ever tested (on a CRT). And it had the most awesome anisotropic filtering ever - 3D quality was even comparable with V5 5500 (at LOD -2). I also remember massively overclocking it (i think it was 200mhz or 220mhz instead of 175mhz). Try to find one of those.

And by all means avoid any other 'eagle' Nvidia card - all others were garbage (gf, gf2mx, gf4 etc)!

elfuego wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

swaaye wrote:

I know TNT2 is about the same speed as a V3, but the one I tried (a Diamond V770) had horrible graphics quality 🙁

OK, this is hard to believe, but there was once a chinese no-name OEM TNT2 pro under the name 'Eagle TNT2 pro'. That one had the best graphics quality of all NVIDIA video cards I have ever tested (on a CRT). And it had the most awesome anisotropic filtering ever - 3D quality was even comparable with V5 5500 (at LOD -2). I also remember massively overclocking it (i think it was 200mhz or 220mhz instead of 175mhz). Try to find one of those.

And by all means avoid any other 'eagle' Nvidia card - all others were garbage (gf, gf2mx, gf4 etc)!

hmm anisotropic filtering? Not sure if the TNT/TNT2 was actually capable of doing that, or if "8-tap anisotropic" was their way of saying "trilinear filtering."

Also my Diamond Viper V770 gives me nice crisp graphics on my LCD (granted, the RAMDAC isn't quite as good as the Voodoo3 3000), you might have just gotten a dud. Also the TNT/TNT2's trilinear filtering is "approximated," so that can take away from 3D graphics quality. Not sure if there's a way to force true trilinear filtering though, but my guess would be that there would be a severe performance drop if so.

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

hmm anisotropic filtering? Not sure if the TNT/TNT2 was actually capable of doing that, or if "8-tap anisotropic" was their way of saying "trilinear filtering."

You are quite right - it wasnt. But the option was there in detonator drivers, and it worked. Do not ask me how, but it just worked. As the matter affect, if you still have a TNT2 board, install the old detonator drivers and try it for yourself.

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

elfuego wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

OK, this is hard to believe, but there was once a chinese no-name OEM TNT2 pro under the name 'Eagle TNT2 pro'. That one had the best graphics quality of all NVIDIA video cards I have ever tested (on a CRT). And it had the most awesome anisotropic filtering ever - 3D quality was even comparable with V5 5500 (at LOD -2). I also remember massively overclocking it (i think it was 200mhz or 220mhz instead of 175mhz). Try to find one of those.

And by all means avoid any other 'eagle' Nvidia card - all others were garbage (gf, gf2mx, gf4 etc)!

hmm anisotropic filtering? Not sure if the TNT/TNT2 was actually capable of doing that, or if "8-tap anisotropic" was their way of saying "trilinear filtering."

Also my Diamond Viper V770 gives me nice crisp graphics on my LCD (granted, the RAMDAC isn't quite as good as the Voodoo3 3000), you might have just gotten a dud. Also the TNT/TNT2's trilinear filtering is "approximated," so that can take away from 3D graphics quality. Not sure if there's a way to force true trilinear filtering though, but my guess would be that there would be a severe performance drop if so.

Now when I think about it, you may be correct. But perhaps it was a bad thing to compare it directly to a Radeon 9600 I had in my other lan computer when running AVP2. I remember the V770 looking MUCH worse.
Also it's performance in AVP2 wasn't that great, at least not in multiplayer.
But of course I'll have to take into account that the TNT2 preceded AVP2 by a couple years I think.

Hmm..maybe the Radeon 9600 is a good alternative to the Voodoo line?
I know it's a lot newer, but (apart from getting the right drivers) it has so many advantages like: Good image quality, passive (so no noise) and it runs quite cool. Only problem with it is that it won't run on AGP 2x boards since it's one of the very first AGP 8x cards.

I never tried any newer games (from beyond 2000) on my TNT2, but yeah, I can see why the image quality would be worse. And its 16-bit dithering is quite bad too (compared to the Voodoo3).

Here's a good article comparing the TNT2's image quality to that of a GeForce3's in various games (2000-01 era):

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200302110310 … ideo-tnt2u.html
Max Payne seems more noticeably washed out on the TNT2, also in addition to the "trilinear approximation" noticeable in many of the games.

If you wanted to use an R3xx based card on an AGP 2x motherboard, go with the 9500 or 9700 instead. Also if you want to run Windows 98 it's also a good bet; it was ATI's last line of cards that had drivers for Win98.

I'm not sure if those are fair comparison shots though... being reduced a res down, a colordepth down and other settings down. The q3 shots being most blatant of them

I decided to use a Radeon 8500 in the end (Hercules 3D Prophet 8500 - 128mb DDR).... So far so good and the performace/visual quality is actually pretty good 😀

I'll just get rid of the Geforce 4 MX440 and Radeon 7500 as i'll never use them 😜

Radeon 8500 is an interesting board. I used one for a few years.

But: 😉
-anisotropic filtering can't work at the same time as trilinear filtering and is also extremely angle dependent (misses many textures)
-doesn't support MSAA and its SSAA imparts a gigantic performance hit starting at 50% for 2x.
-drivers are quite buggy even after years of work (probably hardware issues)

One big oops of the 8500 was that ATI screwed up with their texture cache design and crippled the chip. This came up most notably with Doom3 where even though the 8500 does fewer rendering passes, thanks to its superior pixel shader capabilities, it's still slower than a GeForce 4. Bummer.

I still think that GF4MX is nicer because it has fewer image quality constraints even if it's only DX7. It also will most likely be less buggy. But I am jealous of that Hercules card you have. They are hard to find. I just have a plain 64MB 8500.

And don't forget about the quirky "TruForm" feature, which made everything look like novelty balloons. So useless that ATI dropped it from the RV250/280 (Radeon 9000/92x0) core.

Yet, so awesome it's a DX11 feature. Flipflop yay.

I'm pretty sure it is possible for Truform to work right but since it wasn't a standard feature it was doomed. Just like the preDX11 tessellators in R600 and R700.

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I decided to use a Radeon 8500 in the end (Hercules 3D Prophet 8500 - 128mb DDR).... So far so good and the performace/visual quality is actually pretty good 😀

I'll just get rid of the Geforce 4 MX440 and Radeon 7500 as i'll never use them 😜

The GF4MX is a great testing card though. AGP 4x it'll work in virtually any board with some AGP slot you don't trust one of your expensive beloveth AGP gaming cards in 😜
Better to fry a GF4MX then to fry the 8500 or a V5, right? 😉