VOGONS


First post, by candle_86

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So I found a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI in my box of parts, it was unlabeled so i gave it a shot (sold my previous one)

I was planning to buy a voodoo 3 AGP but is there any advantage to AGP for Voodoo 3, I read that it doesn't support AGP textures.

It will be paired with

K6-3 400
256mb PC-100
Epox MVP3c2
400W Sun Cheer (recapped)
SoundBlaster Live
Windows 98SE

Reply 2 of 17, by SuperHanSolo

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Note the voodoo 3 runs extremely hot.

I recommend installing a fan on the chip heatsink or have the card near the case intake or exhaust fans. Also theres a power MOSFET on the rear which gets very hot, look at the back of your card and check if the PCB is starting to brown around that area. If it is I suggest a small heatsink on that MOSFET as well.
My PCI Voodoo 3 2000 ran too hot for too many years before it got it, the PCB is badly burned now but it still works but i think its reliability is questionable now.

Win 98 Retro PC: AMD K6-2+ @ 550mhz, Mitac 5114VU motherboard, 256MB RAM, Radeon 7000 PCI 64MB DDR
Win 95 Retro PC: Intel Pentium 233mmx, Elpina M571 motherboard, 32MB EDO RAM, Voodoo 3 2000 16MB PCI
Main PC: AMD Ryzen 7700x, 32GB DDR5-6000, Geforce 3080

Reply 3 of 17, by candle_86

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

On that machine you're not going to notice a difference 😀

Is it a good match for the system overall? Will I be able to enjoy Unreal, need for speed, ect properly?

SuperHanSolo wrote:

Note the voodoo 3 runs extremely hot.

I recommend installing a fan on the chip heatsink or have the card near the case intake or exhaust fans. Also theres a power MOSFET on the rear which gets very hot, look at the back of your card and check if the PCB is starting to brown around that area. If it is I suggest a small heatsink on that MOSFET as well.
My PCI Voodoo 3 2000 ran too hot for too many years before it got it, the PCB is badly burned now but it still works but i think its reliability is questionable now.

I'll see how it runs.

Reply 4 of 17, by PhilsComputerLab

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I prefer playing Unreal and Need for Speed III on a Pentium III to be honest.

Just give it a go and see how it runs.

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Reply 5 of 17, by candle_86

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I shall my choices are a K6-3 or an Athlon 64 X2 6000 and i think my 7900GTX SLI setup won't work quite right with 98SE 🤣

Reply 6 of 17, by BSA Starfire

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V3 and K6-III are from pretty much the same timeframe, and voodoo was always know to handle K6's better than other 3D cards at the time(less CPU overhead than others). So should be a great combination.

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
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Reply 7 of 17, by F2bnp

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Voodoo3 is a fine match for a K6-III. If you are looking for 60FPS minimums though, you'll have to look elsewhere, the K6-III will have many frame drops. See if you like it, otherwise move to something else 😀.

Reply 8 of 17, by Tetrium

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I found running Unreal on my K6-III 400 with a single Voodoo 2 acceptable though. If it did have bad slowdowns, I would've remembered it.

candle_86 wrote:
Is it a good match for the system overall? Will I be able to enjoy Unreal, need for speed, ect properly? […]
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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

On that machine you're not going to notice a difference 😀

Is it a good match for the system overall? Will I be able to enjoy Unreal, need for speed, ect properly?

SuperHanSolo wrote:

Note the voodoo 3 runs extremely hot.

I recommend installing a fan on the chip heatsink or have the card near the case intake or exhaust fans. Also theres a power MOSFET on the rear which gets very hot, look at the back of your card and check if the PCB is starting to brown around that area. If it is I suggest a small heatsink on that MOSFET as well.
My PCI Voodoo 3 2000 ran too hot for too many years before it got it, the PCB is badly burned now but it still works but i think its reliability is questionable now.

I'll see how it runs.

The PCI Voodoo 3s do run hotter, but mostly because of that little voltage regulator thingy. Wouldn't hurt to fix a (smallish) fan to it.
Those PCI Voodoo 3s kinda always have darker spots on the PCB near that voltage regulator thingy, most already had darker areas on the PCB and still worked fine (though I'd still attach a fan to it using those green wires).

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
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Reply 9 of 17, by nekurahoka

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candle_86 wrote:
Is it a good match for the system overall? Will I be able to enjoy Unreal, need for speed, ect properly? […]
Show full quote
PhilsComputerLab wrote:

On that machine you're not going to notice a difference 😀

Is it a good match for the system overall? Will I be able to enjoy Unreal, need for speed, ect properly?

SuperHanSolo wrote:

Note the voodoo 3 runs extremely hot.

I recommend installing a fan on the chip heatsink or have the card near the case intake or exhaust fans. Also theres a power MOSFET on the rear which gets very hot, look at the back of your card and check if the PCB is starting to brown around that area. If it is I suggest a small heatsink on that MOSFET as well.
My PCI Voodoo 3 2000 ran too hot for too many years before it got it, the PCB is badly burned now but it still works but i think its reliability is questionable now.

I'll see how it runs.

I think you're golden. That's a similar setup to what I have going for that era and I've no issues running through unreal. I get smooth frame rates and great visuals with glide. A heatsink fan is a good idea, but it isn't necessary. I personally don't use one so that I can reduce noise from the system. I've owned my V3 PCI since it launched and it's still going strong.

Dell Dimension XPS R400, 512MB SDRAM, Voodoo3 2000 AGP, Turtle Beach Montego, ESS Audiodrive 1869f ISA, Dreamblaster Synth S1
Dell GH192, P4 3.4 (Northwood), 4GB Dual Channel DDR, ATI Radeon x1650PRO 512MB, Audigy 2ZS, Alacritech 2000 Network Accelerator

Reply 10 of 17, by kixs

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I had a similar system in 1999/2000. Didn't play 3D games very well. Q3A was pretty bad. But I'm not sure if the drivers were 3DNow optimized.

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 11 of 17, by candle_86

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Well short list of games (Quake3 based games work fine on my Windows XP/X2 6000/7900GTX system)

Starfleet Command Gold
Starfleet Academy
Unreal Gold
SimCity 2000
SimCopter
Streets of SimCity
Roller Coaster Tycoon
Roller Coaster Tycoon 2
Star Wars X-Wing collectors edition
Star Wars Tie Fighter collectors edition
Star Wars Tie Fighter vs X-Wing collectors edition
Sid Meier's Civilization II MGE
Sid Meier's Gettysburg
Sid Meier's Colonization
Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator
Midtown Madness
Midtown Madness 2
Monster Truck Madness
Monster Truck Madness 2
Need for Speed II SE
Need for Speed III Hot Pursuit
Need for Speed High Stakes
Star Wars Rouge Squadron 3d
Warcraft II Battle.net Edition
Hover!
Quake
Quake II
Star Wars Jedi Knight II
Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Mysteries of the Sith
Star Wars Shadows of the Empire
Duke Nukem 3d
GENS Emulator
and SNES Emulator

Ok not a short list but not very long list either.

Any problems big glaring ones with my system?

I have a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 and a Gravis Multi-Port with 2 game pads for the emulation tasks (wife really wants to play some Mario and Sonic multi player and my only controllers dont support NT 🤣)

Reply 12 of 17, by Ace

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I had a serious problem getting good framerates from Rogue Squadron 3D as soon as I would install DirectX because the game seems to force Direct3D on you even when you want Glide, the latter of which has considerably smoother framerates on the Voodoo 3 than Direct3D.

In regards to Shadows of the Empire, I don't know if you can underclock the K6-III like you can with the K6-III+ (I personally use the latter), but this game runs too fast if its framerate exceeds 30FPS. I don't exactly remember how the game ran on the K6-III+ at full speed (450MHz on a 100MHz FSB, in this case), but I believe it ran too fast.

Ideally, the game should be run on overpowered hardware with a framerate limiter to keep the game steady at 30FPS, although I have yet to find any framerate limiters for Windows 9x. Those that are available work wonders for Windows XP to Windows 10, but I can't find any such tools for Windows 9x.

Creator of The Many Sounds of:, a collection of various DOS games played using different sound cards.

Reply 14 of 17, by Ace

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That should be fine for Shadows of the Empire. If you see the game runs a bit choppy, bump up the multiplier to the next step.

Creator of The Many Sounds of:, a collection of various DOS games played using different sound cards.

Reply 16 of 17, by PhilsComputerLab

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Ace wrote:

Ideally, the game should be run on overpowered hardware with a framerate limiter to keep the game steady at 30FPS, although I have yet to find any framerate limiters for Windows 9x. Those that are available work wonders for Windows XP to Windows 10, but I can't find any such tools for Windows 9x.

I wonder what GOG did with their release. It seems to run at a constant 60 fps.

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Reply 17 of 17, by Ace

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They use nVidia Inspector with a profile to cap the framerate at 60FPS, which is wrong. At 60FPS, the game runs noticeably faster than it should as it was designed to run at 30FPS. You should drop the framerate limiter down.

What I'm not sure of, however, is what the GOG release of Shadows of the Empire does if you use an ATi/AMD card. nVidia Inspector works brilliantly with nVidia cards, but I don't know if anything's done for ATi/AMD cards with that game.

Creator of The Many Sounds of:, a collection of various DOS games played using different sound cards.