What a P4 2.x can do a core i3 can't do faster ?

Does he really want a retro system ?

If he wants one contemporary to games he's gonna play (that is from quake 1 to quake 3), I'd totally go for a Slot 1 pentium 3, a nVidia Geforce 3 and a Voodoo 2, with 256MB ram.

Of course all those games would be at higher resolutions and FPS on the end of Windows 98/2000 line computers, that is something like a 3400+ Athlon 64 (crushing P4s in every way) with a 9800pro Radeon and 1GB ram.

People 'round here claim that a Voodoo2 will fry itself if it's run with too fast of a CPU. I have not verified this. 😜

Windows 98 can have issues with CPUs faster than 2.2GHz.

If he still insists on a P4, you'll want to choose a chipset with AGP, as PCI-E won't fly with '98. And (obviously) make sure there's driver support for it..

Mine ran on a 333MHz deschute pushed at 417MHz (83*5).
Can't say for higher speeds, but as long as PCI speed stays bearable, I don't see why there would be problems.
Unless by Fry you mean it becomes an awefull bottleneck 😁

Stull wrote:

People 'round here claim that a Voodoo2 will fry itself if it's run with too fast of a CPU. I have not verified this.

I never noticed problems with a v2 running in a 2.6 ghz p4. The v2 runs out of steam much lower than that, around cpu speeds of 1500 [but maybe a lot less - I haven't done any extensive tests]. I can only think that this frying issue must be due to one of the following:

1. absolutely nothing, it's just an apocryphal tale, based on the idea "they just keep scaling...!!!!" [contradicts what I've seen]
or
2. the v2 cannot actually run at it's full rate without it killing itself [seen no evidence]
or
3. later motherboards may overclock or overvolt the v2 in which case ymmv depending on what ya got [seen no evidence]

There are still chipset drivers for Pentium 4 boards that work in Windows 98, right?

coppercitymt wrote:

Also how do you guys feel about having matching keyboard and display for your system's say all Dell all Compaq ect?

That would be entirely a matter of personal preference and I for one cannot imagine it worth making any kind of fuss over, especially since there are a lot of keyboards which can be much, much nicer than the ones that typically get thrown in with a system.

From what ive been led to believe the Voodoo2 ( and 3 iirc ) issues with P4 boards and later is not due to the card working too hard but rather because of a kind of incompatibility that makes the card overheat.

Ive read somewhere a while ago from a link on this very forum that this has been verified and is a fact. Im sure someone here must know where the reference is located.

The bottom line is if you run a Voodoo 2 or 3 on a P4 + , Cool it down with fans.

For the 96-2000 period id rather go with a fast P3 and Voodoo 3, or Dual Voodoo 2

MaxWar wrote:

From what ive been led to believe the Voodoo2 ( and 3 iirc ) issues with P4 boards and later is not due to the card working too […]
Show full quote

From what ive been led to believe the Voodoo2 ( and 3 iirc ) issues with P4 boards and later is not due to the card working too hard but rather because of a kind of incompatibility that makes the card overheat.

Ive read somewhere a while ago from a link on this very forum that this has been verified and is a fact. Im sure someone here must know where the reference is located.

The bottom line is if you run a Voodoo 2 or 3 on a P4 + , Cool it down with fans.

For the 96-2000 period id rather go with a fast P3 and Voodoo 3, or Dual Voodoo 2

here

Voodoo2 vs modern motherboards

Seems to go back to a quote on falconfly from quantum3d.

I have built a lot of 3dfx systems enough to know that for a casual gamer a V2 setup is a good way to go along with a decent agp/pci/pci-e card is very easy to do. As for p4 personally isn't all my fancy but if he wants to go that way then let em. As for the card of choice any 8mb or 12mb v2 will do alongside any 2D and DX9/10 card he chooses. It is best for long term use that he applies some sort of chipset cooling to the V2 so that gets rid of any potential cooling issues. If he wants to go with a V3 or above then it must be pci or it won't be compatible.

Isn't a Voodoo2 really kind of unnecessary if one is not specifically looking to play Glide games, given that much better AGP cards are readily available?

Well 1996-2000 is like the glide period.
Lots of games were running smooth and perfect on voodoos and not so much on other cards at that time.

If you're going to build a glide system, then go with a V4 or V5 video card so you can take advantage of 32 bit color, larger textures, and a little bit of AA to make things more bearable.

Jorpho wrote:

Isn't a Voodoo2 really kind of unnecessary if one is not specifically looking to play Glide games, given that much better AGP cards are readily available?

V2 never really made into being agp form with one exception. The reason for the V2 is basic glide support while leaving an option for newer games such as using a 7800gs as the main card rather than being stuck with only older games by using a v3 or v5. Second only a handful of P4 era machines are compatible with 3.3v spec agp cards.

sliderider wrote:

If you're going to build a glide system, then go with a V4 or V5 video card so you can take advantage of 32 bit color, larger textures, and a little bit of AA to make things more bearable.

Here I do not agree.
V2 are the sweet spot for glide games.
After them, challengers had brought cards better than V3, games were more DX oriented, and V3+ actually were not so good cards out of old games.
I really think a good GeForce with some V2/SLI makes more sense.

Wow that takes me back 😀

I finished school in 1998 and in that year (or the year before) built a brand new Pentium II 300 machine. Cost me a fortune but the main reason I got it was because I was so gutted when I upgraded the Voodoo 1 of my P133 to a Voodoo 2 and got almost no performance boost.

On the PII 300 however the Voodoo 2 was quite the beast. It's been a long time but I also agree that with a Voodoo 2 you were well set during this period. It was THE card to have. Other games I remember are forsaken, G-Police, Tomb Raider 2, Wing Commander Prophecy. After that I kinda stopped gaming and don't really know much about what cards came next.

I once read all the articles on tomshardware (brilliant resource) and it was a back and forth between 3DFX and Nvidia with Nvidia quickly coming out on top. The TNT2 was a great card I believe but yea not sure.

After 4 years when I got back into gaming the Ti4200 was king and the Radeon 9700 was just released.

EDIT:

In the Core 2 Duo launch review of Tomshardware they used a ATI Radeon X1900 XTX. And this card was quite held back by the Athlon 64 and continued to scale with clock frequency on the Core 2 Duo.

That's what I have in my XP system- a Barton core Athlon 2800+, a GeForce 5900 XT, and a pair of BlackMagic V2's in SLI. All I need is a big picture of the Quake Ranger and Unreal characters spray painted on the case! I save my Voodoo 1 for my Win98/DOS rig, and the Voodoo 5 is in a Quantum3d Graphite with a Pentium III. I have a GeForce 3 sitting around, but no spare AGP boards to put it in...the Voodoo 5 has taken the spot.

I agree with what has been said about SLI voodoo2. Voodoo3+ don't work so well in some old glide games. I was putting a setup with a voodoo 5 5500 and ended up with a SLI Voodoo2 and Geforce combo. Works much, much better with glide games (at least the ones i want to play).

Thanks for all the feedback, We are a bit confused, What's the best graphics card choice for a 1ghz P III PCI? The system has integrated AGP graphics.

COMPAQ PRESARIO 5012US

Direct AGP 3D Graphics with up to 11 MB video memory

• 64-bit hardware-accelerated 3D graphics

• Compaq DVD player / Navigator

• Microsoft DirectShow

• Video Player (AVI, MPEG2 and others)

• Maximum non-interlaced resolution of up to 1600 x 1200 @ 75 Hz (when supported by monitor)

So would a V2 be to slow for said system. A SLI V2 setup on eBay is over 100 bucks he don't have that kind of budget. A Voodoo 3 PCI sounds good but it sounds like its buggy? What about the new style Geforce 2 4000 MX cards?

Go on amazon if you are willing to roll the dice on two 8mb models, that was the only way that I was able to afford two without spending a mountain of money. $11 for the first one and $15 an change for the second. What is left will run you $15-20 a pop but without the pass through cable and sli bridge. Go with the better seller that doesn't have "disk" in the description.

As for the pass through cable well good luck getting one as they are Rare but you can use a regular male and female vga cable but it will degrade single a little. You can wrap the cable in foil and tape if it isn't shielded.

This will still run $50 easily unless you waited to get lucky on eBay. The V2 isn't a slug and will run very well for any glide games. Faster the cpu the faster the V2 is.

Pass through cables arent that hard, there is a old post here
Voodoo passthrough cable

but the long of the short search ebay, Amazon, etc for a VGAEXTAA6IN
Dont actaully have one myself as 1 of the cards I got came with a pass through, not sure if its the original, but people question if they were the best quality to start with.

I have a P3 1GHz (SL4BS) and Voodoo 2 SLI which holds up quite nice, but the most heavy use they get is in Need for Speed 4 or Porsche

I can test a game or 2 if you tell me which ones?