Speed. Voodoo3/4/5 is much faster then Voodoo2.
1024x768 (w/o SLI), 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 videomodes.

IIRC Voodoo 3 is very roughly as fast as Voodoo 2 SLI. (Depends on the game, though. I think that's for Voodoo 3 3000.)
And you get more texture memory. Even Voodoo 2 SLI effectively only has 4 MB of texture memory (2 MB if you use 8 MB cards.)
With 16 MB on Voodoo 3 (more on Voodoo 4/5) texture memory depends on the resolution, if you use 1024x768 there will be about 11.5 MB left.
More texture memory will enhance compatibility and speed with later Direct3D/OpenGL games.

Those cards are not only a good choice for (later) Glide but also for early Direct3D, early OpenGL and also DOS.

See also http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/3dfx

A V3 agp is your best bet on the cheap, anything that is pci is going to cost you 3-5 times more and a 5500 agp isn't cheap.

I understand all that but what is the advantage of using a Voodoo over a Riva TNT2 for example?

What's all the fuss? I understand that some games had exclusive 3dfx support but just how many games are we talking about here?

Half-Saint wrote:

I understand all that but what is the advantage of using a Voodoo over a Riva TNT2 for example?

What's all the fuss? I understand that some games had exclusive 3dfx support but just how many games are we talking about here?

its not just a matter of exclusivity , its also games that ran best on the 3DFX cards , games like Diablo 2 , NFS3 , Deus Ex , Unreal , UT etc, games that used the Glide API generally ran or looked better on the 3DFX cards.

to give you an idea, I tried Unreal Tournament on 2 cards, a Voodoo3 and a Geforce2 Ti (a card that is far ahead of the TNT2 and V3) , due to Unreal being designed for the 3DFX , the frame rates were equal on both , albeit it looked better on the Voodoo.

not to say the TNT2 was bad by any means, it was very competitive in alot of games.

Darkman wrote:

its not just a matter of exclusivity , its also games that ran best on the 3DFX cards , games like Diablo 2 , NFS3 , Deus Ex , U […]
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Half-Saint wrote:

I understand all that but what is the advantage of using a Voodoo over a Riva TNT2 for example?

What's all the fuss? I understand that some games had exclusive 3dfx support but just how many games are we talking about here?

its not just a matter of exclusivity , its also games that ran best on the 3DFX cards , games like Diablo 2 , NFS3 , Deus Ex , Unreal , UT etc, games that used the Glide API generally ran or looked better on the 3DFX cards.

to give you an idea, I tried Unreal Tournament on 2 cards, a Voodoo3 and a Geforce2 Ti (a card that is far ahead of the TNT2 and V3) , due to Unreal being designed for the 3DFX , the frame rates were equal on both , albeit it looked better on the Voodoo.

not to say the TNT2 was bad by any means, it was very competitive in alot of games.

I've found that the colors can be more vibrant in some games with Glide support than the DX or OGL versions, more like an arcade machine, and action scenes like in racing games render more smoothly under Glide though banding can sometimes be an issue when 16-bit color is used, but not every game suffers from that to the same degree. Voodoo 4 and 5 can also use AA with less of a performance hit than other cards of the time.

Some associate with the high default gamma in Glide as "looks better".

I don't think its necessarily just Glide, I looked at Quake2 on both the Voodoo and GF2 , the Voodoo had brighter, more vibrant colours even though the game was in OpenGL , the GF2 looked very dark , almost too dark

not to mock the GF2 of course , in 2000 and after games it stomps on the Voodoo3

That's because 3dfxgl.dll kicked the gamma to 1.7. It can be "very dark almost too dark" on a Voodoo2 if you set the gl_driver cvar to "3dfxvgl" to use the ICD with "Default OpenGL" instead of the MiniGL.

I made a post somewhere with comparison shots with other cards at the same gamma exposing dither patterns and the lightmap blending precision in 16bpp. 3dfx being "better" is pretty placebo from the gamma.

It's not just about the looks. Games like Unreal and Turok 2 stutter like shit in D3D while they run perfectly smooth on Glide. Plus those two actually do look bad on D3D, washed out bright image per default plus graphic glitches galore...

On the the other hand, as idspispopd wrote Unreal will stutter on Voodoo2 at times due to texture trashing. And a V3 2000 is usually enough to match V2 SLI framerates.

Of course let's compare a beta implementation of a driver for another API from someone who is probably just learning the API at the time.

SGL didn't have texture thrashing either, but it doesn't mean SGL is totally superior over Direct3D.

leileilol wrote:

Of course let's compare a beta implementation of a driver for another API from someone who is probably just learning the API at the time.

...and why not? It's not like knowing that they were just starting to learn D3D will help you anything if all you have is a TNT card.

Why people use Voodoo 4 & 5 cards in their retrobuilds? FSAA ofcourse! 640x480 is blocky on modern large monitors, FSAA somewhat counters this.

Then there's the amount of memory, support for textures larger than 256x256 and support for 32bit colors in D3D/OpenGL.

In terms of the V4 & V5, the competitors at the time were clearly superior in most aspects (except 3dfx had better FSAA). Mainly due to the lack of Hardware T&L.

So I dare say that it's simply because it's a 3dfx card. And I personally can vouch for that 😁 having a V4 in my P3 system instead of a GF2MX.

V4 is also the smarter choice compared to GF2 MX cuz of the guaranteed high quality DAC (i.e. no blurriness) compared to the variable GF2 cards.

DX7 fixed-function T&L never really caught on so it was more of a marketing advantage than anything. It's the reason those Kyro cards were OKish for 2001 games. Plus with fast CPUs the advantage diminishes even more. I read some posts about people complaining how UT2k3 had graphics that were basically on the level of those demos Nvidia showed for Geforce 256, and that game is certainly not well playable on those cards.

I suppose, as I am only going off benchmarks. And youre right about the quality of DACs in GF2 cards. Most of them are hopeless. TV out is even worse.

The GF256 was highly overrated, a TNT2 Ultra had parity with it in most games of the era.

Perhaps the best usage of fixed-function T&L is on Flipper/Hollywood GC/Wii GPUs. ArtX had this Socket 7 integrated GPU on ALi chipsets which is the precusor of that. I'm sure somebody here owns such a board... a topic about this is long overdue 😀

I thought Ali SS7 integrated GPUs were Blade3D's? Interesting board for me to try and find 😀

idspispopd wrote:

Even Voodoo 2 SLI effectively only has 4 MB of texture memory (2 MB if you use 8 MB cards.)

Where do these claims come from?