HighTreason wrote:

That's pretty much my approach. I think the problem some people have is that I tell it like it is, my experiences with 3DFX have not been good, so all I can tell of their products is what I experienced and I am a little bitter to them as I got tired of removing Voodoo 3 cards for people in the early 2000s when they brought in a machine because it wouldn't play a game or run an application they wanted to play/use. Am I going to tell other people not to like them? No, not really.

Some people are blinded by their fanboyism and think that their favorite company can do no wrong. This happens everywhere, not just Vogons - on gaming forums, it might be Sega. On synth forums it might be Roland. You get the picture - but I'll always tell it how I see it. Hell, I really like the Virge, but I cannot pretend to a second it was any good in 3D. Meanwhile I despise the Core 2 but can not for one moment honestly say it wasn't good in the games which were around at the time.

leileilol wrote:

Oh it's not blind fangirlism with the 3dfx recommendations around here. Most of the recommendations are for three, definitely n […]
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Oh it's not blind fangirlism with the 3dfx recommendations around here. Most of the recommendations are for three, definitely not hype bullshitty factors:

- Optimized drivers - 3dfx is nice in Pentiums, Cyrix6x86s, K6-2s, and even 486s. Far less overhead, sometimes faster than obviously faster cards (i.e. Geforce2) in these slower PCs
- More guaranteed game support - a lot of older games expected a 3dfx as that was the earliest common denominator of a 3d card that didn't suck (in a world of 3d cards that sucked, i.e. ViRGE, Matrox Mystique, etc). It's not just for Glide, but for early D3D caps and GL extensions as well (like paletted texturing)
- working, stable drivers 😀

Even though I wrote a reproduction of a 3dfx dac filter (which I associate my nostalgia of 3dfx with) it's not about "What could have been best company ever voodoo5 6000 will rule the world" history revisionism with us..... though i've seen some of those kind of 3dfx fans overlapping with the same kind of "dreamcast couldve ruled the world and have shenmue 3 sonic adventure 3 and halo" fanatics you speak of, who probably learned about 3dfx post-closure and took it up as a hipster thing, also probably learning from the alternate Dreamcast system design that involved 3dfx.

My scorn for Nvidia actually began later with the GeforceFX series, which also launched their stupid "WAY IT'S MEANT TO BE PLAYED" marketing campaign, forcing long seconds of arrogant blurb on screen in the start of many AAA games.

I agree with both of you here...and yes, that "WAY IT'S MEANT TO BE PLAYED" was only adding extra annoyance and an extra click of the mouse to skip it, why the h*** advertise a product I already paid for? 🤣! It's absurd....and annoying 😵

One thing I always liked about 3DFX which hasn't been mentioned here is because they were (at least the first 2 Voodoos) 3D-only, which adds flexibility in what hardware I can pick from and I do like flexibility 😁. Adding in that many games used an API that's nostalgic to me (friend of mine had a Voodoo 1 which is in my possession now) and it's usability, I like it also because 3DFX doesn't exist anymore, making it more obscure, but at the same time it's more useful than Cyrix 🤣!

No 32 bit support? My Viper 550 (Diamond made TNT) did have 32 bit support and boy was it ever sloooooow! I ended up playing all my games on that card in 16 bit anyway.

And the fanboys...well, I think it's ok to be a fanboy, but it's certainly no good if this makes one blind (sometimes even blind for the obvious)

meljor wrote:

I would also get a voodoo1 as it works perfectly on a p200mmx and the early glide games. Annoying hightreason is bonus! 🤣

It would work perfectly, yes... but just as long as the desktop is kept at a low resolution (800x600 or maybe 1024x768). The Voodoo/Voodoo2 passthrough just degrades the image too much at higher resolutions. A TNT+V2 can be a good combo since you have a decent OGL+DX accelerator capable of higher resolutions and Glide for games that need it. And V2 is, AFAIK, cheaper, faster, and capable of 800x600.

For 3DFX hardware the ultimate choice IMHO is the Voodoo3: no passthrough, good (high clocked) RAMDAC and guaranteed good analog output up to "ridiculous" resolutions (I use mine with a 1080p desktop - had to fix the timings in the INF file). Also I've seen people claim the Banshee was a bit faster in K6-2 systems, so I can only assume Voodoo4/5 drivers are even less well optimized for older machines, besides being harder to find and more expensive.

Anyway, for the OPs system its all about the games he wants to play. For 2D only games the Virge is a sound choice (I have one, and I've got a soft spot for it for some reason), but it was nicknamed a 3D graphics decelerator for a reason. For 3D the TNT is the best choice.

alexanrs wrote:

It would work perfectly, yes... but just as long as the desktop is kept at a low resolution (800x600 or maybe 1024x768). The Voo […]
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meljor wrote:

I would also get a voodoo1 as it works perfectly on a p200mmx and the early glide games. Annoying hightreason is bonus! 🤣

It would work perfectly, yes... but just as long as the desktop is kept at a low resolution (800x600 or maybe 1024x768). The Voodoo/Voodoo2 passthrough just degrades the image too much at higher resolutions. A TNT+V2 can be a good combo since you have a decent OGL+DX accelerator capable of higher resolutions and Glide for games that need it. And V2 is, AFAIK, cheaper, faster, and capable of 800x600.

For 3DFX hardware the ultimate choice IMHO is the Voodoo3: no passthrough, good (high clocked) RAMDAC and guaranteed good analog output up to "ridiculous" resolutions (I use mine with a 1080p desktop - had to fix the timings in the INF file). Also I've seen people claim the Banshee was a bit faster in K6-2 systems, so I can only assume Voodoo4/5 drivers are even less well optimized for older machines, besides being harder to find and more expensive.

Anyway, for the OPs system its all about the games he wants to play. For 2D only games the Virge is a sound choice (I have one, and I've got a soft spot for it for some reason), but it was nicknamed a 3D graphics decelerator for a reason. For 3D the TNT is the best choice.

Voodoo 3 is a good choice, especially the AGP version. It's perhaps the only 3DFX that is still somewhat cheap along with being usable.

Ahum...... I just made a joke! I know how HT thinks about 3dfx hardware because he said it many times. Ofcourse he can have his own opinion, and i love the way he expresses them in his own way with a little bit of flavor of sarcasme. He made a comment about 3dfx first so i had to make a joke. I expected a response but nothing so serious....

Yes i am a 3dfx fan, not a fanboy as i realy liked all my Radeons and geforces. Never missed 3dfx in a way that something was really lost except some healthy competition. I just love 3dfx cards in my retro systems as they fit my needs and back in the day the v1 and v2 made a big impression and i was really pleased with those upgrades. speedwise (for me) still the biggest step up together with the hd to ssd upgrade much later.

About the Radeon drivers: I started using Ati cards from x1950pro and up with some Nvidia's in between, before that it was 3dfx and Nvidia. I never had big problems with Radeon drivers but in a way the Nvidia indeed seem better and more up to date with game releases. Crossfire was horrible but i never used sli. Does anyone know if Nvidia simply has a much bigger driver development team or is ATi/Amd simply not at the top of their game when it comes to drivers?

If I remember well, ATi has had a history of slow driver development. The hardware may be very good, but it takes a while for them to develop drivers that can fully exploit their capabilities. This is the main reason why I abandoned ATi after the first Radeons came out, it just took too long for decent drivers to appear and make good on their performance promises (particularly for Win9x). Nvidia on the other hand seems to have an automated driver making machine somewhere in their premises; at times they release drivers at an astonishing rate, IMHO.

With ATI I recently ran into a major slap in the face when I tried to run my old Radeon VE in Win2K. The problem was that the driver supplied by ATI will install, but requires a version of .NET which is not compatible with Win2K - who writes drivers in .NET anyway? To add insult to injury they then made the uninstaller a .NET application, so I had to remove it manually... Least I would, if i had kept the 2K install, but I ended up replacing the innards of the machine entirely anyway as the S370 machine I was using did not have enough power for what I was trying to do.

Hey guys, I love debating. But right now I'm really concerned about what I told you. Still no luck with this video card. I tried nvidia and diamond drivers. Some of them causes artifacts. Some others don't, but when I use any 3D software the screen flickers a lot. For example I triwd 3D mark 99. The Viper runs every test fine and without artifacs, but screen is misaligned and flickering.

It would be better if I upload a picture of this issue?

Sorry, my bad.

Pictures is generally a good idea, though it sounds like it might be a hardware problem. I hope it isn't because it would suck if the card wasn't working properly. I assume the monitor works with other machines / other monitors behave the same with this one? I have a CRT which behaves like you describe in certain modes due to something being wrong with its internal organs and I haven't really figured out why yet.

ramiro77 wrote:

Hey guys, I love debating. But right now I'm really concerned about what I told you. Still no luck with this video card. I tried nvidia and diamond drivers. Some of them causes artifacts. Some others don't, but when I use any 3D software the screen flickers a lot. For example I triwd 3D mark 99. The Viper runs every test fine and without artifacs, but screen is misaligned and flickering.

It would be better if I upload a picture of this issue?

Sorry about that ramiro77, going off-topic is something that happens here every now and then. Disculpanos 😅

Yes, a picture would be useful to see what's happening with the Viper. From what you describe, it appears the monitor goes out of sync when the video card is in 3D mode - probably a screen resolution the monitor can't support? Do try what HighTreason suggested. As for the screen being misaligned, it's a common timing issue with Nvidia video cards - my TNT does the same in my Socket 7 PC, and all I can do is use the monitor screen controls to pull it back to center.

EDIT: Something else I just remembered. Go in Display Properties/Settings/Advanced and make sure Refresh Rate is set to Default or 60Hz, just in case the monitor can't support anything higher.

Jajaja don't worry guys! I enjoy reading this forum. But in this particular topic I'm really worried about this card. It would be nice if I can diagnose this as fast as possible because if this card is broken I will ask for refunding.

About the monitor: It's a CRT. Philips 109e5. It behaves perfectly with any video card. I tested it with several models of nvidia (Geforce 2, Geforce 4, Geforce 5500, Integrated APU from AMD 5800k, and others). It does support a lot of modes. I'm running it now at 800x600x16@ 85hz. At that resolution it does support as much as 120hz of refreshing.

About other monitors: No, I didn't try with other monitor. I will try with my main monitor. It's a Dell ST2410. But I don't think this will resolve the issue.

About the issue: I need to be more specific: when I'm in any direct3d game, the game is watchable but the screen makes some flashing / flickering. Something like an stroboscopic light. The screen goes off center and the portion that goes outside the screen shows in wrong corners. Something like a split screen but incorrectly organized. I don't see any artifacts, except for one particular driver I've tested that makes a ridiculous amount of artifacts at any condition.

I uploaded two videos for you. The first one is the demo from 3dmark99. The second one is the benchmark @ 640x480x16, although it does the same thing in other configurations:

https://youtu.be/yWSvt3tGJ6A

https://youtu.be/U2J8fqLn7DE

In the second video, when it goes to the second test, I got a BSOD whining about some VxD, then my computer just restarted. None of this happened with my old Trident 9680.

What do you think? Driver issue? Card issue?

I have never seen that before. My only thoughts are perhaps try toggling "VGA Pallet Snoop" in the BIOS, it probably won't work but it did correct a color issue on an nVidia card for me once, perhaps it will have an effect here and it won't break anything if it doesn't work. You could try disabling anything you're not using (Like second COM Port, LPT and whatever else) in the BIOS too to free up a few resources and eliminate a few potential conflicts. Again, not likely, but also not out of the realms of possibility. If nothing is too complicated in there, you could load the defaults and start from scratch, just in case the BIOS has gotten some strange memory settings on the go as there are usually hidden options in the BIOS, I don't know how long you left the machine prior to fixing it up and on rare occasions strange values can end up in the CMOS RAM if the battery ran out or something, again, not likely to fix but it won't hurt to try.

Updating the cards BIOS might have an effect, but that should be saved as the very last resort and other members will probably have other ideas about what might work that are much more simplistic. I tend to over complicate things, I'm one of those people who takes his TV apart because it doesn't work, only to realize an hour into it that I never turned it on at the wall, so...

ramiro77 wrote:

Jajaja don't worry guys! I enjoy reading this forum. But in this particular topic I'm really worried about this card. It would b […]
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Jajaja don't worry guys! I enjoy reading this forum. But in this particular topic I'm really worried about this card. It would be nice if I can diagnose this as fast as possible because if this card is broken I will ask for refunding.

About the monitor: It's a CRT. Philips 109e5. It behaves perfectly with any video card. I tested it with several models of nvidia (Geforce 2, Geforce 4, Geforce 5500, Integrated APU from AMD 5800k, and others). It does support a lot of modes. I'm running it now at 800x600x16@ 85hz. At that resolution it does support as much as 120hz of refreshing.

About other monitors: No, I didn't try with other monitor. I will try with my main monitor. It's a Dell ST2410. But I don't think this will resolve the issue.

About the issue: I need to be more specific: when I'm in any direct3d game, the game is watchable but the screen makes some flashing / flickering. Something like an stroboscopic light. The screen goes off center and the portion that goes outside the screen shows in wrong corners. Something like a split screen but incorrectly organized. I don't see any artifacts, except for one particular driver I've tested that makes a ridiculous amount of artifacts at any condition.

I uploaded two videos for you. The first one is the demo from 3dmark99. The second one is the benchmark @ 640x480x16, although it does the same thing in other configurations:

https://youtu.be/yWSvt3tGJ6A

https://youtu.be/U2J8fqLn7DE

In the second video, when it goes to the second test, I got a BSOD whining about some VxD, then my computer just restarted. None of this happened with my old Trident 9680.

What do you think? Driver issue? Card issue?

Okay, this is different; not what I was expecting at all. I can say for certain that the monitor is not at fault here.

I have seen this before, but with TNT/early GeForce series cards. This is the first time I see it on a Riva 128. Most cases it was a driver issue - broken beta drivers, wrong drivers used or new drivers installed without uninstalling old ones first. A couple were terminal however, the GPU overheated (probably due to overclocking) and was damaged beyond repair; I certainly hope that's not the case here 😐

To begin with, what driver versions were you using? Did you uninstall the previous drivers? And did you remove the Trident driver as well?

Never seen such a thing either. Don't these cards have separate chips to regulate the VGA output?
In addition to the above, would perhaps a VGA BIOS flash help in this case? I reckon trying such a thing could still be worth trying if all others are exhausted.

And it wouldn't hurt to check the chips (and their 'legs') and the PCB for any visual damage (scratches and such).

Good morning guys! I inspected the PCB yesterday. Nothing. It looks ok. The bios version is 1.82. I investigated this and it looks that this is the last version. The GPU doesn't seems to overheat while using the computer, it's barely warm.

About drivers: I tried with nvidia riva 128zx official driver, Diamond Viper V330 VPR0024, VPR0130 and Diamond Multimedia Super CD driver (I downloaded from this forum). And no, I didn't uninstalled the old Trident driver.

I'll try from a new Windows installation. Which driver would you recommend me?

That looks mental. Maybe one of the resident coders could work it out from a 'what would you have to do to reproduce such craziness' point of view. First I think we need to work out whether it's software or hardware. Other than Direct3D, what takes advantage of the 3D hardware in the Riva? Also, have you run DXDiag to diagnose any potential driver compatibility issues? It would be interesting to see the results of the rendering tests, both fullscreen and windowed. Remember that if you are trying multiple drivers, some remnants of previous versions can get left behind so starting from a fresh OS is often the only way to be 100% sure there is no crossover.

(edit: added detail)

ramiro77 wrote:

Good morning guys! I inspected the PCB yesterday. Nothing. It looks ok. The bios version is 1.82. I investigated this and it looks that this is the last version. The GPU doesn't seems to overheat while using the computer, it's barely warm.

About drivers: I tried with nvidia riva 128zx official driver, Diamond Viper V330 VPR0024, VPR0130 and Diamond Multimedia Super CD driver (I downloaded from this forum). And no, I didn't uninstalled the old Trident driver.

I'll try from a new Windows installation. Which driver would you recommend me?

To rule out software, you could do a new install of Windows on a separate harddrive in the same system and see how that goes.

And also try an OpenGL application. The usual 3D Windows screensavers will do, but a game is preferable.

ramiro77 wrote:

Good morning guys! I inspected the PCB yesterday. Nothing. It looks ok. The bios version is 1.82. I investigated this and it looks that this is the last version. The GPU doesn't seems to overheat while using the computer, it's barely warm.

About drivers: I tried with nvidia riva 128zx official driver, Diamond Viper V330 VPR0024, VPR0130 and Diamond Multimedia Super CD driver (I downloaded from this forum). And no, I didn't uninstalled the old Trident driver.

I'll try from a new Windows installation. Which driver would you recommend me?

I would recommend the official Nvidia driver, preferably version 3.37 for PCI cards (don't use the AGP version). As others have suggested start a new install of Windows with another hard drive if available, run DxDiag and OpenGL screensavers for basic testing, and try Direct3D and OpenGL games as well. In addition, look at how the GUI in general behaves (open some applications and move them around the desktop, change color depth and display resolution, open Notepad, start typing anything then minimize and maximize it) and reboot into pure DOS to play games like Duke Nukem and Crystal Caves (shareware versions will be fine) to see if anything doesn't look right.

Allright guys. I will test all of those things. The GUI behaves perfectly. No issues at changing resolution, depth or refreshing. Every 2D program works fine. I've tested Fatal Racing (it's a 2D old game) and it works slow but fine, no artifacts or anything. By the way, this game has to be faster with this card. I remember playing it perfectly in a P54C 133 mhz, 32mb ram and a Trident 9685 2mb PCI.

Tonight I will be doing a fresh reinstall of Windows and testing all of that. Ah, I've tested the nVidia 3.37 driver for pci version too. Same issue as the original Diamond driver.

That's good, GUI/2D is working as it should. Now if only D3D/OGL would actually work without glitches.....

Fatal Racing (aka Whiplash) should run really well with the P200MMX and Riva 128 (it runs great with my P166MMX and TNT). Just in case, go to Configuration/GFX Detail and make sure display is set to VGA and give it another try; should be very smooth and fast (if a bit blocky).