But doesn't V2-SLI scale all the way up to P-1000? Meaning @ 450 wouldn't more a moderate GPU be perfectly fine? I have my V3-3000 running with a C-300 @ 450 and it feels pretty sweet.

V2 12MB has only about 4MB effective texture memory (incl. SLI config) and this causes stuttering in games beyond Quake 2 complexity. Unreal exposes it for example. Voodoo3 is the way to go.

Putas wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

I use a 128-bit TNT2 32MB paired with 2 Voodoo cards in my PII-450 (which is almost exactly the same as P-III-450). It's very nice to have both Glide and a powerful D3D card, that way I can play D3D titles at higher resolutions and compare Glide rendering to D3D.

But TNT2 won't do that much better then V2 SLI. Aim higher.

Works fine for me... Anything that's too slow for that machine works well on my Athlon rig anyway.

btw, I love your website 😀

Voodoo 2 SLI
Radeon DDR
GeForce2 GTS/Ultra
if it supports AGP 2X then you can consider
Voodoo 5500 or
Geforce FX5600
as people wrote to you previously, this last card has geat backward compatibility and drivers support.
Is up to you, what brand you like, personally I would go with 3dfx SLI Diamond, but as this is retro, things goes not easy to find or unnaturally priced.

Godlike!

Well, I went ahead and went with the Geforce FX5600. I installed the card and drivers and it seems to run ok. Except everything is very jerky.

Not sure why. But I suppose I'll have to deal with it. The card was only 20 bucks so I'm not terribly upset, the voodoo3 was probably the better choice here.

Try using the 45.23 and/or 43.45 drivers. The oldest FX drivers tend to work best with old games and old hardware.

I like FX cards quite a bit as Direct3D 5-8 and OpenGL cards. They have advantages over older GeForce cards. But yeah a Voodoo3 is probably ideal for a PIII 450.

Glackenburgen wrote:

duralisis wrote:

Any Radeon 9600-9800 would work pretty good with the P2-450. I've used a 9600XT and 9700 Pro with a P2-400 and now a P3-650, it really complements the CPU well. In most games the CPU doesn't seem to be holding the card back at all. Very handy for flight sims.

I do rarely see V3's on ebay every once in a while; but I wouldn't pay more than 30-40 USD. I bought my V3-3500 for approximately the same.

You could also try reconditioning your V3. It does get quite hot when your thermal paste dries out. Had to reapply AS5 and the like to V3's even back "in the day". If you have the V3-3000 I'm familar with, then the heatsink comes off pretty easy. Just clean up any gunk with mineral spirits and use Ceramique or some type of Arctic Silver variation.

While those cards sound well, The motherboard sports an AGP 2X Slot. So a 4X/8X card wouldn't work.

As for reconditioning, I may consider but it would be a last resort.

According to... http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html
The 9700 (but not the 9600) is a "Universal AGP 3.0 card" - and the 9800 could be Universal or 1.5v.
A 1.5v card (unless wrongly dual keyed) will not fit a 3.3v slot ... you can find "fits but doesn't work" combinations, for instance, where the 3.3v AGP is supplied by an inadequate voltage regulator (a legacy from AT PSU not having 3.3V).

I'm hardly a stickler for period correctness but isn't a P-450 more at home with the sub 64mb/pre 2000's family of video cards? Things like the Voodoo 3, Voodoo 4, TNT 1/2 etc.? I'm not against maxing out the GPU slot on any given motherboard but if you do that you might as well max out the CPU as well, and the board can probably handle a P800/933, maybe even more. However, if a P-450 is the target CPU range I'd back off the 128mb+ cards such as the 9700 and FX5600 just for the sake of CPU/GPU symmetry.

In other words many games that would benefit from the big GPU would struggle with the lightweight CPU right off the bat - so you'd just be adding a new problem into the mix. And If you stuck to just P-450 era games you'd be fine, but the GPU component would have a mountain of unused potential...

tincup wrote:

I'm hardly a stickler for period correctness but isn't a P-450 more at home with the sub 64mb/pre 2000's family of video cards? Things like the Voodoo 3, Voodoo 4, TNT 1/2 etc.? I'm not against maxing out the GPU slot on any given motherboard but if you do that you might as well max out the CPU as well, and the board can probably handle a P800/933, maybe even more. However, if a P-450 is the target CPU range I'd back off the 128mb+ cards such as the 9700 and FX5600 just for the sake of CPU/GPU symmetry.

In other words many games that would benefit from the big GPU would struggle with the lightweight CPU right off the bat - so you'd just be adding a new problem into the mix. And If you stuck to just P-450 era games you'd be fine, but the GPU component would have a mountain of unused potential...

You just put in words my main graphics card selection principle, the one thing I could not seem to accomplish 😀

Yeah - in fact I almost always *start* with the GPU then optimize all the other components around it. But that's because graphics are my main interest. For many it's audio, CPU, motherboard or other exotic components, so something like the GPU may be more of a 'free-floating' consideration.

As someone else mentioned, the tricky part of the fx series of cards is picking out which drivers to use. Since you are playing p3-450 type games go for 45.something or another, I can not recall from the top of my head but there have been a few threads around here that mention what drivers to use for what purposes.

Don't get the 5500FX or 5700FX if you want to use the 40.xx drivers, they don't show up till the 50's.
TNT1\2 + 1 or 2 Voodoo II's would be a good combo for such a system if you don't want to use a newer cards, but want good dos\win3.x support too.

AlphaWing wrote:

Don't get the 5500FX or 5700FX if you want to use the 40.xx drivers, they don't show up till the 50's.
TNT1\2 + 1 or 2 Voodoo II's would be a good combo for such a system if you don't want to use a newer cards, but want good dos\win3.x support too.

He bought a 5600

ODwilly wrote:

AlphaWing wrote:

Don't get the 5500FX or 5700FX if you want to use the 40.xx drivers, they don't show up till the 50's.
TNT1\2 + 1 or 2 Voodoo II's would be a good combo for such a system if you don't want to use a newer cards, but want good dos\win3.x support too.

He bought a 5600

c'mon, just sell 5600 and go with V2 8mb sli 😎

Thats ok, can still add a V2 to compliment the 5600 🤣

AlphaWing wrote:

Thats ok, can still add a V2 to compliment the 5600 🤣

Definately! And switch between API's if any game issues 😊

That would be idiotic. With a 5600 one could simply use a wrapper or use Direct3D/OpenGL which is generally better anyway.

HighTreason wrote:

That would be idiotic. With a 5600 one could simply use a wrapper or use Direct3D/OpenGL which is generally better anyway.

That's true opengl is better, but some games are dedicated for glide nor opengl. this will give API choice. As someone's wrote. large GPU under 450mhz rig will not use it full potential. IMHO I would go with V2 (8, 12) SLI and basic pci/agp card, it depends on expectations

I remember running CoD on a P2-266 with a Radeon 9200 at a decent frame rate once because the PCI-E FireGL in my Pentium D rig wasn't capable of it. So you'd be surprised how much you can get out of an older AGP slot.

Glide dependent? So a paperweight with the logo of a game on it then. I never did get 3DFX's ridiculous API to work on anything. I'm not going to tell you not to like it but all I can do is relay my experiences which boil down to it being overrated, overpriced, unreliable and a bitch to uninstall. Not to mention a waste of space I could have used for a DVD decoder (Ironically I probably wouldn't need one if I didn't use a Voodoo), capture board, modem, USB header, SCSI or RAID card and whatever else.

That's a fascinating opinion of Glide.

Also, we already had chat about Glide wrappers in this thread. You don't want to waste the CPU time on one with a PIII 450.