So what did you pay for yours?

d1stortion wrote:

So what did you pay for yours?

Alot, not as much as the Ebay auctions, but not exactly cheap either. I should've bought it before the Ebay auctions came up as that would've given me more bargaining power, but back then (when I started this thread) I thought the price was way too high 😜

vetz wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7tTYwNDWlU

Good effort, as usual. Any idea how is it handling resolutions above 640x400?

Putas wrote:

vetz wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7tTYwNDWlU

Good effort, as usual. Any idea how is it handling resolutions above 640x400?

There are only three programs that show the card in resolutions above 640x400, two of them being games. NASCAR Racing - 640x480, Euro96 - 800x600. As you can see in the video Euro96 is running very nicely in 800x600, much better than Actua Soccer which I thought were based on the same 3D engine. The last one is the 3D Blaster test program that comes with the drivers that tests all supported resolutions from 320x200 to 800x600. The test program also states that the refresh rates are supposed to be standard ones at 640x400@70hz and 640x480@60hz, but these are not the ones I experience in practice which results in my CRT monitor and VGA capture card refusing to work with the 3D Blaster. 800x600 runs at 56hz by design. Maybe it's my card or my system, but I've tried switching everything beside the board and card itself.

Other things I've noticed is not to run the card on higher IRQ's than 7 or the games will lock up at times. Using the other VLB slots at the same time really hurts performance, especially with another VLB graphics card. It is recommended to use the 3D Blaster with a ISA 2D card. Windows drivers is a bitch to work with, and I've not yet got it working in Windows 95 and 98. This again could be my motherboard causing compatibility issues with the driver, but reading from Google Groups this was a common problem back in 1995-96.

I remember my old 14 inch CRT using 56 Hz for 800x600. Perhaps Powerstrip could enforce other frequency.
My concern is with memory management though, this should not be possible with double buffered 16 bit.

VL blaster can't coexist with another VL graphics card? That's retarded. Running Windows on an ISA VGA card is not something you really want to do unless you have a 386 and have no other choice. I'm guessing the 3D Blaster as no onboard 2D, right?

Also, 56Hz is painful to look at. I can barely tolerate 640x480 at 60Hz. 800x600 at 60Hz is intolerable. 56Hz makes my eyeballs bleed.

It can coexist, but on my board it suffers a performance hit. I don't know if that is a general issue or just my setup. It does have 1MB VRAM for 2D Windows GUI acceleration, but I've not been able to make the drivers work.

Only one game that can do 800x600 (which also offers 640x400), so it's not that much of a problem, and on a LCD monitor it is tolerable 😀

Perhaps Powerstrip could enforce other frequency.
My concern is with memory management though, this should not be possible with double buffered 16 bit.

All 3D Blaster games are DOS based so I don't think Windows based Powerstrip will have any effect.

Putas wrote:

My concern is with memory management though, this should not be possible with double buffered 16 bit.

This site says 800x600 at 16bit is only single buffered:
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~bm/3dcards/3d-car … s1.html#GLINT08

That should cause ugly tearing on CRT, unless primary card does some magic.

vetz wrote:

name=ADME:B:SS:US:1123

If anyone is curious to how the supported games perform on the 3D Blaster VLB, it is running on a AMD 5x86 P75-S 133@160mhz (says roughly equal to a Pentium 90 in the video, but it is more like the Pentium 75 tbh even overclocked) in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7tTYwNDWlU

Excellent video! That satisfies my curiosity of how the card performs, I agree that an AM5x86 133 overclocked to 160mhz is probably the best cpu that will run this card.

dirkmirk wrote:

Excellent video! That satisfies my curiosity of how the card performs, I agree that an AM5x86 133 overclocked to 160mhz is probably the best cpu that will run this card.

Thanks 😀 I have a Pentium Overdrive on the way in the mail. I'm planning to use it for performance comparison video on the NV1 vs the 3D Blaster in NASCAR Racing and Battle Arena Toshinden. I have already tried the NV1 on the AMD 5x86, but it runs like crap compared to a Pentium CPU. The NV1 and its games (except Battle Arena Toshinden which gave 20FPS on the AMD CPU) was really tailored to the Pentium. Do anyone know how the POD is overclocked to 100mhz? Is it just to set them motherboard bus jumper to 40mhz?

Works like 1% of the times 😉

sunaiac wrote:

Works like 1% of the times 😉

Lets cross fingers mine will be the 1% 😉

just being curious, are there still any 3d accelerators you don't have so cannot test/record some games?

I don't think he has V5 6000... yet 🤣

He should get something like a single board 4440 or an AAlchemy AA5 PT enabled board 😀 and benchmark them of course 🤣

robertmo wrote:

just being curious, are there still any 3d accelerators you don't have so cannot test/record some games?

hehe, missing the V5 6000 as mentioned, but I don't care so much about 3DFX cards as they have been documented so well. The cards I'm missing that I would love to play around with is the Neon 250 and the Paradise Tasmania. Hopefully NitroXinfinity will present some data on these soon 😀

vetz wrote:

robertmo wrote:

just being curious, are there still any 3d accelerators you don't have so cannot test/record some games?

hehe, missing the V5 6000 as mentioned, but I don't care so much about 3DFX cards as they have been documented so well. The cards I'm missing that I would love to play around with is the Neon 250 and the Paradise Tasmania. Hopefully NitroXinfinity will present some data on these soon 😀

Actually rare cards such as the triple v2 chipset Primary Image barracuda and the second generation AA5 cards are pretty unknown when it comes to gaming performance since they were designed mostly for flight simulators and so on, and there are almost no benchmarks of them on the net 😜

That latest 3D Blaster did'nt sell at its $500 reserve price, I've got a few theorys

#"I used this card in my system many years ago and it has been stored ever since. It was working when pulled, but no guarantees on its functionality", On a $500+ vintage part you need assurance that it works, no sane person would fork over good money with no guarantee of functionality.
#Seller offered no returns
#Seller made no reference to international shipping, on a part this rare you would be crazy not to offer it.
#Perhaps the market wont tolerate $500 or $700 for a 3D Blaster anymore.

dirkmirk wrote:

That latest 3D Blaster did'nt sell at its $500 reserve price, I've got a few theorys […]
Show full quote

That latest 3D Blaster did'nt sell at its $500 reserve price, I've got a few theorys

#"I used this card in my system many years ago and it has been stored ever since. It was working when pulled, but no guarantees on its functionality", On a $500+ vintage part you need assurance that it works, no sane person would fork over good money with no guarantee of functionality.
#Seller offered no returns
#Seller made no reference to international shipping, on a part this rare you would be crazy not to offer it.
#Perhaps the market wont tolerate $500 or $700 for a 3D Blaster anymore.

It's been relisted

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-3DBlaster-VL … =item2c6daaeb51

One other point you forgot to mention, it does not come with the games that shipped with it, and if the games are missing then there are probably some other little doodads that came with it that are also missing like the warranty registration card, a Creative product catalog, or some other thing that normally gets thrown away. Those can be make or break items for a deal in that price range. I picked up a Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 a while back for a really good price because it was missing the game demo CD's that were originally packed with it but came with everything else. Prior to that, the last one of those I saw CIB with the CD's sold for three times what I paid. Now, I know damn well that those CD's on their own aren't worth nearly the difference in price on their own, but if they are included in a CIB item, that enhances the price a lot.