Well, Pentium 4 = GF6800 Ultra/Radeon X850 PE + Voodoo2 SLI + Win9x/WinXp dualboot, I agree...

Well, as has been said in previous page, it could be that the V2s have reached their maximum with the 1.4GHz Tualatin. But on the other hand it is also unfortunate that the Pentium III (P6) is compared to a P4 (Netburst--much longer pipeline, branch prediction etc) when there are other options along the P6 heritage (from Pentium M to Conroe to even Wolfdale).

I say this because naturally games of that time (1998~1999) would have been optimized for P6 and Pentium architectures and I'm not sure if there doesn't exist some drawbacks from using Netburst generation CPU for retro purposes. At the very least it's wasting GHz and watts compared to, say, a humble Conroe-L Celeron. I mean I do have a P2.4C and I used to run it at 3GHz+ and it was fun. But now that there are other choices...

With some LGA775/865 boards, you can use single core 2.2GHz Conroe-L Celeron 450 or even a 3.2GHz Wolfdale Pentium Dual Core E5800 (ignore the extra core in this case) with ASRock (FSB 800, no overclocking required). Of these options the Conroe-L has more similarities to Tualatin (single core, 512K L2), and I haven't tried it but maybe it can be run at close to 1.4GHz by lowering the FSB, to compare them clock for clock. Note: If this model is available in your country, I strongly recommend that you try it: ASRock 775i65G R3.0 (the model that supports E5800).

P4 was the obvious choice as it was simple released next. I always try to go for options that are easily available. As fun as testing V2 with a Core 2 Duo sounds, this is really a very extreme and rare combination.

Just throwing ideas, besides it wasn't me who brought that up first, I mean, you even said i5 yourself 🤣

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

That sounds interesting...

What about on later boards, Core 2 Duo and i5 supporting chips?

Yea I must have gotten carried away 😵

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yea I must have gotten carried away 😵

Nah, it's normal. 😁

Hm, so the win2k driver works in XP? If my i7 board had two adjacent legacy PCI slots I'd give it a try!

EDIT: just read Phil's V2 benchmarks, seems like the Conroe/Wolfdale/~i7 'scaling project' would be better suited for V5 (PCI)? Now where are those damn V5 PCI cards...

archsan wrote:

Hm, so the win2k driver works in XP?

Yes. At least with Pentium4s. Theoretically it must work with any PCI 2.1-2.3 system, Ivy Bridge included... Unfortunatedly Haswell drops WinXp support...
I use this PC: Asus P4P800 SE/P4 3.2E/2 GB RAM/Radeon HD2600 Pro (Catalyst 12.3) + STB Voodoo2 12 MB (W2k 1.02.00), WinXp Sp3 as the nGlide test machine. Voodoo2 drivers are in %windows%\system32, if I need to test a game with nGlide - I just copy Zeus' glide2x.dll/glide3x.dll to the executable directory... Unfortunatedly my Radeon X850 PE died from aging, so currently there is no dualbooting with this PC...
But I repeat - you must set fxgpio and fxcpl as system services in Xp.
And even Tualatin 1400 is bottlenecked with single Voodoo2 or SLI... Why use something more powerful then?

Hence the edit above. No longer for the V2's, but thanks for the tips. 😀

What OS are you running? For the P4 system, be sure to install the Intel chipset drives (Intel INF) and Intel Application Accelerator:

Here for Intel chipset drivers:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult … =816&ProdId=816

and here for IAA:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc. … d=4857&lang=eng

I used Windows 98SE and of course did I load the Intel chipset drivers 😀 But not the Application Accelerator. Would be very surprised if this made a difference.

But yea, no need for anything faster than a P3 for V2 SLI anyway. I think nobody is going to game at 512 x 386 these days. I was just curious to see the limits.

Found this amazing CPU scling review from 2007:

http://www.voodooalert.de/board/index.php?pag … 2749&highlight=

That person ran into the same issues with an older P4 platform: Lower performance on the P4. He states that it is likely weak PCI performance of the chipset...

This cements my belief that these Voodoo cards are fastest on a BX440 or 815 chipset.

the 3dmark 99 thread has a bench of a PCI Voodoo 3 on an i875, and I was disappointed in its performance on that board.
It would also not work in any PCI slot but slot 3, Thinking the board was not giving it enough juice in the others.
I distinctly remember it doing better on an Athlon 64, something I will test soon as I've disassembled that P4 and its going to be replaced with a Athlon XP x2 4400+ that I'm waiting to arrive. Gonna use an Abit-KN8 ultra Nforce4 board.

I can confirm Voodoo2 SLI works under Win 7 x64 SP1 on a Haswell system (i7 4770k at 4.7; Gigabyte Z87X-OC; 8gb 2666 ram) with GlideXP64 driver. Performance is bad but <for the hell of it> it actually can be done. I can post pictures if anyone wants...

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

I can confirm Voodoo2 SLI works under Win 7 x64 SP1 on a Haswell system (i7 4770k at 4.7; Gigabyte Z87X-OC; 8gb 2666 ram) with GlideXP64 driver. Performance is bad but <for the hell of it> it actually can be done. I can post pictures if anyone wants...

Not native PCI though?

archsan wrote:

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

I can confirm Voodoo2 SLI works under Win 7 x64 SP1 on a Haswell system (i7 4770k at 4.7; Gigabyte Z87X-OC; 8gb 2666 ram) with GlideXP64 driver. Performance is bad but <for the hell of it> it actually can be done. I can post pictures if anyone wants...

Not native PCI though?

The last Intel chipset with the native PCI was Q67 IIRC. The last mainstream Intel chipset with the PCI was P55.
But if the PCI bus is working as "PCIe <-> 3rd party controller <-> PCI" - there is no difference, except possible speed reduction.

^Q77, Q75, B75.

possible speed reduction.

Isn't that the issue...

archsan wrote:

^Q77, Q75, B75.

Yes, forgot about these 3.
So - Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge HAVE the native Voodoo2 support. 😀 The ulimate test must be Q77 + Core i7 3770(K) + WinXp Sp3 32-bit + Win2k 1.02.00 Voodoo2 drivers. 😀
And no, the PCI bus can be slower if a 3rd party controller is used. But a single Voodoo2 bottlenecks even PIII 600. So - you always get the naximum FPSs with anything better than P4.

OK, how about V5 (PCI)? 😀
Curious.

Gamecollector wrote:

But if the PCI bus is working as "PCIe <-> 3rd party controller <-> PCI" - there is no difference, except possible speed reduction.

I think these bridges can cause problems with bus latency. I can't use my X-Fi PCI on the fake PCI slots on my Z68 board because it causes audio distortions and eventually the sound card will cease operating until a reboot.

I'm not sure how this might affect a Voodoo2. 3D cards do like to get as much bus time as possible though.

archsan wrote:

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

I can confirm Voodoo2 SLI works under Win 7 x64 SP1 on a Haswell system (i7 4770k at 4.7; Gigabyte Z87X-OC; 8gb 2666 ram) with GlideXP64 driver. Performance is bad but <for the hell of it> it actually can be done. I can post pictures if anyone wants...

Not native PCI though?

PLX PCI-to PCI bridge, as most socket 1155 boards (yes, z77 too) and 1150 boards like mine