WELCOME!

Aren't SB16 clones going for $10? PIII 450 sounds like a decent match for a Voodoo3.

you can get a Sound Blaster Live for a few dollars, that would solve the lack of onboard sound.

Darkman wrote:

you can get a Sound Blaster Live for a few dollars, that would solve the lack of onboard sound.

Follow this advice.

Ok. It sounds like you guys would prefer it to be in the PIII system. Me too. Hopefully there would be Win2k drivers for a Live! card or SB16.

Fusion wrote:

Hopefully there would be Win2k drivers for a Live! card or SB16.

Lots of drivers:
http://vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=7&menustate=42,35

a V3 is most suited in a late PII, early PIII or AMD k6-II/III. A athlon 64 is more suited with at most a V5.
currently running my V3 in a SS7 build works great.
Using a SB Live! in a PII rig in windows ME and Win XP with no problems.

Hi, welcome!

I don't think any Athlon64 board takes a voodoo3 agp so i guess you are using a pci version?

I agree, a p3 is a great match for a voodoo3. But a 450mhz might be a bit too slow. It will still work fine but to get the most out of the v3 i would use a little faster processor.

Thanks everyone.

meljor, yes it is the PCI version. My PIII is OCed to 560Mhz. Not a massive difference but it does help.

I use Windows 98 for every Voodoo 3, 4 or 5 I own. This prevents tweaks, tests, tinkering with
games and unofficial drivers installation and also helps performance.

I don't pass the 1GHz mark for Voodoos and I think there are better options for OpenGL
- a Nvidia card or something newer.
Are there glide games requiring a 1,2GHz processor to play them in full glory?

I will take the blows, but I have to say what I am feeling right now.
Sometimes going "correct period" is to pretty up 😀 😀 but I guess not this time.

Maybe I just plain wrong and not updated, not playing suitable games, but yeah,
My experience. I hope people here correct me cause this is one reason I love VOGONS, too.

I hope you're giving your V3 some extra cooling?
Out of the 2 systems you've presented us I'd definitely pick the P3, though I'd use a V3 in something a little bit faster (to me something like between 600MHz and 1GHz seem right for a V3).

Voodoo is also a good match for Super 7 boards due to Voodoos using hardly any AGP features, which increases the ss7 platform's stability. K6-X + Voodoo 3 == 😀 😀 😀

I've used WinME mostly when building systems that did not feature an ISA sound card.
And what the missing onboard sound is concerned, this was very common before i815. I'd say just throw something in there and see how it works out and otherwise I'd suggest you take the advices that are already given here 😀

The lame part is that the motherboard, a p6bx-an from Tekram normally does have onboard sound, but of course the one I acquired does not 🙁 I can even see where the solder points are for the outputs and sound chip.

Would my V3 fry itself without extra cooling? I was going to put a fan on the heat sink eventually. I only OC when I launch a game, and I was going to mount a 120mm fan to blow over it too.

The heatsink on my Voodoo3 3000 gets uncomfortably hot. It just felt right to put a fan onto the heatsink.

Better cooling will give the 3dfx chips a longer, happier life.

Voodoo3 tends to run faster with a faster CPU because of lack of hardware TnL, but also hotter, so it's a good idea to put a fan on it, especially since you're overclocking it. I'm running mine with a 1ghz P3, I think it's pretty much maxing out its potential at that point. Lack of onboard sound is not much of a problem as onboard sound tends to be meh anyways. Add an Audigy 2 ZS or even better an Aureal Vortex 2, install win98se, and you're set for all 1995-2001 games 😀

Or add both sound cards!

Fusion wrote:

The lame part is that the motherboard, a p6bx-an from Tekram normally does have onboard sound, but of course the one I acquired does not 🙁 I can even see where the solder points are for the outputs and sound chip.

Trust me, it's not a big deal 😀

Just add some random sound card you may already have laying around which has the proper support for hardware and drivers for your board and OS and you can always upgrade it somewhere down the road 😀
Or of you're really into the retro feeling you can try reliving your retro sound experience through the internal PC speaker 😁 (no volume knob 🤣 I hope my parents don';t wake up! 😜).

Onboard sound solutions were not considered very great back in the day and personally I tend to just put any decent sound card in there and experiment and see if I actually like it or not. It's also about just trying out stuff and trying a few sound cards is not really a big deal anyway 😀

Try out stuff, add some Live! and see if you like it 😀

You asked about Win2k and the SB16 - Win2k does in fact include drivers for all the ISA Soundblasters including the AWE32/64, and the various cards based on the ESS Audiodrive chipsets. I think there's built-in support for the Yamaha OPL-SAx cards too but I'm not 100% sure.

I'd like to see someone standing by ISA. Like in:

Lack or poor DirectX hardware acceleration wouldn't make any difference; *
ISA sound cards > Realtek onboard sound card; **

** During a long time, but of course time's changed.
The guy stating this was talking big, in a confident manner, saying something about 16-bit and resamples.
I can't remember his arguments.

* What I vaguely remember is my inconclusive tests with Undying.
I was like - Man, why my Voodoo 5 is stuttering and chopping ? I tried to change the
ISA Sound Blaster AWE32 for a Sound Blaster Live! to no avail! I hope this game isn't
just one more of those bad optimized games...Terrifying, yes.

How I hate myself cause I haven't been playing around this issue. 😠
I have all resources to do that, including the Aureal Vortex 2 mentioned here.

What sorts of things are you doing with these systems? If your target is late dos early windows games or being period correct then I agree the P3 is a much better fit in general but it deserves a good sound card, even if it did have onboard sound it wouldn't do games any justice. If your target is windows games only then the Athlon 64 would probably work just fine and the Voodoo3 would work although it would certainly be the performance bottleneck.