Very Nice! Thanks for everything guys, have a great day! 😀

( Honesty i would have prefer a Voodoo 3 just for the name and history but at 280$ i will never buy it. If i find one someday at good price in a marketplace maybe i will buy one 😀 )

( Believe it or not my Banshee at 59$US is the best ebay deal , best price, that happened in sold item for a voodoo card since May 1st. )

OK, so I did the benchmarks, and I was surprised to see that the GeForce 2 is not that bad.

I've also completed my benchmark on Intel chipsets with Pentium MMX and directly compared GeForce 2 MX and Voodoo3: Intel 430HX L2 256Kb VS Intel 430HX L2 512Kb VS Intel 430TX L2 512Kb - Motherboards comparison
Overall, driver overhead of early Nvidia drivers aren't bad and even T&L can boost performance.

Note: Also tested Banshee card in few games and it's slightly slower than Voodoo 3, even in constrains of PMMX and PCI setup. Although it doesn't drastically affect games which are still playable on such machine.

Just my 2cents:

On windows, older drivers use MMX for their internal operations, while newer drivers use SSE and even SSE2. If them don't find these, they will fallback internally to emulation libraries for these math operations, which will tax CPU in older configurations. This usage has been detected in ReactOS when testing these drivers in the system (using old drivers for NT/2000 vs new Detonator stuff for XP).

In DOS mode, FX GPUs still have hardware BitBlt and VGA/VESA engines (newer emulate these in microcode) and still access the PCI bus directly (without using an internal PCI-PCIe bridge), so the difference would only appear in the case of bad configured MTRRs at runtime for chipset.

On windows, older drivers use MMX for their internal operations

Except they don't and work just fine on pure FPU like Pentium Pro, with no real impact on performance.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-08-03, 20:16:

I've also completed my benchmark on Intel chipsets with Pentium MMX and directly compared GeForce 2 MX and Voodoo3: Intel 430HX […]
Show full quote

OK, so I did the benchmarks, and I was surprised to see that the GeForce 2 is not that bad.

I've also completed my benchmark on Intel chipsets with Pentium MMX and directly compared GeForce 2 MX and Voodoo3: Intel 430HX L2 256Kb VS Intel 430HX L2 512Kb VS Intel 430TX L2 512Kb - Motherboards comparison
Overall, driver overhead of early Nvidia drivers aren't bad and even T&L can boost performance.

Note: Also tested Banshee card in few games and it's slightly slower than Voodoo 3, even in constrains of PMMX and PCI setup. Although it doesn't drastically affect games which are still playable on such machine.

Hi guys ! I have 2 questions.

1. How much slower is the banshee vs voodoo 3 ? any examples ? Thanks a lot ! ( By the way your geforce 2 mx tests seems to have much better performance than my fx 5200)

2. I just read in forum that using a isa soundcard with windows 98 will get games slower than using a PCI Soundcard with hardware acceleration like sb live, did i understand correctly ? Is it a big performance difference ? Does it affect games on a pentium 233mmx Thanks.

dionb wrote on 2020-07-31, 11:43:

Complicated, as it depends on how much memory you are using. If you run out of memory, Windows starts using hard disk as virtual […]
Show full quote

renejr902 wrote on 2020-07-31, 10:32:

and last question , About my 128mb ram. How much performance in 3d game in % of fps i can gain if i downgrade to 64 mb? just give me your opinion, i know nobody can be sure.

Complicated, as it depends on how much memory you are using. If you run out of memory, Windows starts using hard disk as virtual memory. This is a factor 1000 slower than RAM. If you go over L2 caching limits, your RAM above that is uncached, which is maybe 20% slower depending on what's in that RAM and how it's accessed.

Bottom line is that if you regularly use >64MB, you will have *much* better performance with 128MB, but if you don't ever use more than 64MB, you will have better performance with only 64MB RAM. Overall I hear people quote about 5% impact in games etc.

Now, if you just use the machine for games and don't multitask, you're probably staying well under 64MB. Games that needed more than that wouldn't run on your CPU anyway. So say you win about 5%. Nice, but not enough to make manifestly unplayable stuff playable. Probably ditching that heavy, late nVidia driver would have more impact.

Theses ones are for Dionb or anybody that can answer it 😀 Questions about Running Uncaching:

I bought the 3Dfx Banshee but im a little short of money for now. I think i will buy 64mb ram later this year, it cost at least 40$ on ebay.

1. Just to be sure to understand well.. If i never use more than 64mb ram because i play only games with this computer, will i still have my 128mb ram run as uncached with a performance hit if i never use more than 64mb ? Because in that case, otherwise i wont suffer the penalty hit if i never use more than 64 mb ?

2. And can it cause slowdown in fps only or stuttering in games or others things in game ?

3. Honestly, do you think it worth it to buy 64 mb ram ? Dionb said its probably 5% fps difference in game ( it will cost me 40$ Canadian)

Thanks SO MUCH again for help and answers

renejr902 wrote on 2020-08-05, 21:05:

I bought the 3Dfx Banshee but im a little short of money for now. I think i will buy 64mb ram later this year, it cost at least 40$ on ebay.

1. Just to be sure to understand well.. If i never use more than 64mb ram because i play only games with this computer, will i still have my 128mb ram run as uncached with a performance hit if i never use more than 64mb ? Because in that case, otherwise i wont suffer the penalty hit if i never use more than 64 mb ?

It depends on your operating system. However Windows 98 and DOS tend to fill RAM from the top down, so it will be slower unless you use more than 64MB so that the faster (cached) lower 64MB will be used. Windows NT (and derivatives) and Linux fill from the top up, so will be faster if you use less than 64MB

2. And can it cause slowdown in fps only or stuttering in games or others things game ?

It will cause lower memory performance. What the effect of that will be depends on your application and what its bottlenecks are. It won't help, that's for sure.

3. Honestly, do you think it worth it to buy 64 mb ram ? ( it will cost me 40$ Canadian)

Worth it to buy 64MB in this system: yes. Worth it to pay CAD 40 for it? No.

There's a DIMM in Italy for EUR 3, with EUR 9 shipping to me, so EUR 12 in total. That would be less than CAD 20. Shipping to Canada from Italy would be more expensive, but I'm sure similar prices will occur in CA or US, it's just a matter of patience and watching eBay (or better, that local Montreal marketplace).

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-08-03, 23:10:

On windows, older drivers use MMX for their internal operations

Except they don't and work just fine on pure FPU like Pentium Pro, with no real impact on performance.

They do, as old as Win98SE nVidia driver versions. MMX usage has been detected during debugging sessions.
Since i don't have non-MMX machines, I haven't tried to see if them have a sort of x87 fallback mode, so I didn't name x87 compatibility.
In any case, if PC has an MMX processor inside, nVidia drivers will make use of it, that's guarantee.

dionb wrote on 2020-08-05, 22:34:

It depends on your operating system. However Windows 98 and DOS tend to fill RAM from the top down, so it will be slower unless […]
Show full quote

renejr902 wrote on 2020-08-05, 21:05:

I bought the 3Dfx Banshee but im a little short of money for now. I think i will buy 64mb ram later this year, it cost at least 40$ on ebay.

1. Just to be sure to understand well.. If i never use more than 64mb ram because i play only games with this computer, will i still have my 128mb ram run as uncached with a performance hit if i never use more than 64mb ? Because in that case, otherwise i wont suffer the penalty hit if i never use more than 64 mb ?

It depends on your operating system. However Windows 98 and DOS tend to fill RAM from the top down, so it will be slower unless you use more than 64MB so that the faster (cached) lower 64MB will be used. Windows NT (and derivatives) and Linux fill from the top up, so will be faster if you use less than 64MB

2. And can it cause slowdown in fps only or stuttering in games or others things game ?

It will cause lower memory performance. What the effect of that will be depends on your application and what its bottlenecks are. It won't help, that's for sure.

3. Honestly, do you think it worth it to buy 64 mb ram ? ( it will cost me 40$ Canadian)

Worth it to buy 64MB in this system: yes. Worth it to pay CAD 40 for it? No.

There's a DIMM in Italy for EUR 3, with EUR 9 shipping to me, so EUR 12 in total. That would be less than CAD 20. Shipping to Canada from Italy would be more expensive, but I'm sure similar prices will occur in CA or US, it's just a matter of patience and watching eBay (or better, that local Montreal marketplace).

Thanks so much again ! Im very impress by the high quality of your answer and your high knowledge of computer science. THANKS A MILLION TIME for every answers since the beginning of my differents topics. Have a great day ! 😀

renejr902 wrote on 2020-08-05, 17:33:

1. How much slower is the banshee vs voodoo 3 ? any examples ? Thanks a lot ! ( By the way your geforce 2 mx tests seems to have much better performance than my fx 5200)

Since the Banshee only has one texture unit (but a higher clock speed), it will be a bit faster than a Voodoo 2 for games that use single texturing, while being almost twice as slow for multitexturing titles (for example, Quake 2 / Unreal use multitexturing, having an additional lightmap that needs to be applied on top of the original texture - in this case, the Banshee will need to do an additional pass, while a Voodoo 2 can apply both the texture and the lightmap in a single pass).

A Voodoo 3 is approximately equivalent to two Voodoo 2 cards running in SLI. So, you could assume that it's probably up to 4 (or even 5) times faster than a Banshee (in some games).
The catch is that this speed is impossible to achieve on a Pentium MMX. The CPU bottleneck will generally kick in way before the GPU bottleneck does.

Let's take Quake 2 as an example (640 x 480 resolution):
- A Voodoo 3 3000 scales well up to a Pentium 3 Tualatin running at 1+ GHz. With such a CPU, you can expect ~150 FPS in this game.
- A single Voodoo 2 will scale up to a Pentium 3 Coppermine at ~700 MHz. With such a CPU, you can expect ~90 FPS.
- A Voodoo Banshee also scales up to a Pentium 3 Coppermine (500 / 600 MHz), achieving ~ 60 FPS in this configuration.

And now, also Quake 2 @ 640x480, running on the Pentium MMX 233 😁 :
- Voodoo 3 3000: ~ 40 - 45 FPS
- Voodoo 2: ~ 40 - 45 FPS
- Voodoo Banshee: ~ 40 - 45 FPS

Sure, you could argue that - since you're already heavily CPU bottlenecked - a Voodoo 3 would allow you to at least increase the resolution up to 1024 x 768 in many games, while maintaining the same FPS. But if you really want to do that, might as well just go with a whole different platform altogether. I, for one, prefer to stick to 640 x 480 on a Pentium MMX, that's how I get my nostalgia high 😁

bloodem wrote on 2020-08-06, 06:39:

I, for one, prefer to stick to 640 x 480 on a Pentium MMX, that's how I get my nostalgia high 😁

Same for me when I'm using my Celeron rig.

It's also worth mentioning that the UI in most games from the late 90s was designed around the 640x480 resolution, or at best for 800x600. Any higher than that, and the UI icons get tiny while the text becomes hard to read. Take Quake 2 as the perfect example of this.

Indeed. But I guess there are situations where you would basically be forced to go to a higher resolution, particularly when playing on a modern LCD, on which certain resolutions can look less blurry than others (depending on the native resolution / interpolation). Fortunately, for me this is not an issue. I have a 1440p / 75 Hz monitor from AOC, which I honestly believe that it was designed by a retro enthusiast 😁 It has a very powerful internal upscaler, making all resolutions look sharp, as if you were playing on a CRT. I'm actually thinking of buying another one, keep it as a backup 😁

bloodem wrote on 2020-08-06, 09:17:

Indeed. But I guess there are situations where you would basically be forced to go to a higher resolution, particularly when playing on a modern LCD, on which certain resolutions can look less blurry than others (depending on the native resolution / interpolation).

Yeah, LCD scaling can vary quite a bit between models. Some do it well, others not so much.

This is why I keep my Celeron rig hooked up to my (recently repaired) Samsung SyncMaster 17" CRT. Best thing about that is, I can play 640x480 games at 120 Hz, or even 160 Hz if I really want to push it. Kids nowadays raving about their 144 Hz monitors and I'm like "welcome to 2005".

Thanks for answer.
In some games i prefer to play at 1024x768 if possible like Need for speed iii hot pursuit, so it can help to have a voodoo3. But i will still be satisfied with the banshee. and a voodoo 3 pci is too much expensive right now. And i dont want to change my system because it runs perfect in pure dos. I will always keep it. So maybe someday i will buy a PII 400-450mhz or PIII 500mhz+ to play more glide games and at 1024x768 resolution, but not for now. 😀

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-08-06, 08:38:

bloodem wrote on 2020-08-06, 06:39:

I, for one, prefer to stick to 640 x 480 on a Pentium MMX, that's how I get my nostalgia high 😁

Same for me when I'm using my Celeron rig.

It's also worth mentioning that the UI in most games from the late 90s was designed around the 640x480 resolution, or at best for 800x600. Any higher than that, and the UI icons get tiny while the text becomes hard to read. Take Quake 2 as the perfect example of this.

640x480@256c also was the optimal resolution for Windows 3.1 games.
Higher colour depths usually didn't support palette cycling, which was required for many applications and games. The hyperlinks in Windows Help were also erroneously in grey instead of green on depths higher than 256c..

Hi! i didnt receive the Banshee yet. But i got a 100$ deal for Voodoo 3 PCI 2000 16mb on marketplace in kijiji Canada. I will receive it friday. At least 1024 x 768 should be good enough even with pentium 233mhz at some games like NFS III.. at least 30fps or 25fps, maybe higher like 50-60fps with medium graphics settings. I have a monitor vga lcd screen that have great scaling and resolution result at 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768. and no motion blur with high clarity and details in these resolutions. and 1024x768 is fullscreen with no scaling at all in 4:3. its a 1368x768 samsung tv monitor with a LOT of vga options and settings. i love it for retro stuff.

But i just think about something. My father is a great electronic technician and work with pc too. Is it possible in some way to bypass a solder or something like that to have my Pentium bus speed to go higher like at 75mhz or 83mhz to get my cpu overclocked to 266mhz or 300mhz ? I know the clock chip dont permit more than 66mhz bus and cant go higher than 233mhz. Is it a way ? thanks for answer and check my pictures of my computer and motherboard in previous post or in my others topics.

( By the way, im currently trying to buy a P3 500mhz with isa slots, i have 2 deals one for 40$, i waiting the guy to come in my city in the next days. the others guys its for a similar pc P3 at 500mhz too but for 80-90$, but i have to meet him at 1h from my home. Im still thimking about these 2 deals. One of them have a pci soundcard from yamaha with a real opl3, but its still pci, so im not sure the sb compatibility in dos is really that great. it seems it need a sb connector to the board for better dos compatibility.)

( If i found my pentium 233mhz mmx pc performance with the voodoo 3 still struggle or too slow or any stuttering, i will buy the 64mb edo memory and trash the 128mb dimm, but i prefer to try the voodoo3 before i pay 40$ for 64mb of edo memory.)

You couldn't resist, huh? 😀 Yeah, the Voodoo 3 2000 should be perfect for 1024 x 768 in all games where the P233 has acceptable levels of performance.

Regarding the FSB overclock, even though I'm a software engineer and electronics is just a hobby for me, I'm pretty sure there is no easy way of doing that, even for a senior electronics specialist. It would probably be a lot easier and cost effective to just buy a motherboard that is able to achieve the same thing out of the box.

renejr902 wrote on 2020-08-18, 03:36:

One of them have a pci soundcard from yamaha with a real opl3, but its still pci, so im not sure the sb compatibility in dos is really that great. it seems it need a sb connector to the board for better dos compatibility

That should be a Yamaha YMF7x4 card, which on a 440BX motherboard does not really need an SB-Link/PC-PCI cable, it can also work in DDMA mode, which, in my opinion, has the same level of compatibility (and I tested both). And speaking of compatibility, this card is my favorite sound card. I have more than 10 😀 Not only is it more compatible than many ISA cards, but the sound quality can be extremely good, better than most ISA sound cards (certainly better than Yamaha YMF71x cards). Not to mention, it's also a decent Windows sound card, with EAX support (it's not as good as a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 in this regard, but it's way above average). Even if the chipset doesn't natively support DDMA (like newer Intel / VIA chipsets), it works very well with DSDMA (DDMA emulation), however this requires the expanded memory manager, which will break compatibility with some games (though it will still work with 95% of DOS games or more).

renejr902 wrote on 2020-08-18, 03:36:

One of them have a pci soundcard from yamaha with a real opl3, but its still pci, so im not sure the sb compatibility in dos is really that great. it seems it need a sb connector to the board for better dos compatibility.)

If that's a YMF7x4 card you're in for a treat. DOS compatibility should be pretty good on that setup thanks to DDMA, but if the motherboard has a SB-Link connector, using that will make it as compatible as any ISA card.

The YMF7x4 cards also come with Sensaura support which is nice for A3D 1.0 games. Additionally, they have a software wavetable for General MIDI under Windows which sounds pretty awesome.

Indeed, Final Fantasy 7 sounds extremely good on a YMF7x4 card 😀
By the way, Yamaha YMF7x4 cards also work with native DDMA on 430TX chipsets. So you could actually use it with your current P233 system for earlier DOS games (because the Pentium MMX has very powerful slowdown capabilities). You can turn it into a slow 386, fast 386, slow 486, fast 486, etc 😀

bloodem wrote on 2020-08-18, 10:01:

Indeed, Final Fantasy 7 sounds extremely good on a YMF7x4 card 😀
By the way, Yamaha YMF7x4 cards also work with native DDMA on 430TX chipsets. So you could actually use it with your current P233 system for earlier DOS games (because the Pentium MMX has very powerful slowdown capabilities). You can turn it into a slow 386, fast 386, slow 486, fast 486, etc 😀

Hi guys ! One of The system i talked about is very similar to these spec:

Brand Dell
Model Dimesnion Dimension XPS T600 (or T500)
Form Factor Tower
Powers On? Yes
Post to Bios? Yes
Bios Password No
Processor Pentium 3 600MHz ( maybe 500mhz)
RAM Memory Size 448MB
RAM Memory Type SDRAM
# of RAM Slots 3
Hard Drive Size 20GB
Hard Drive Type IDE
Optical Drive CD-Rom, Zip 250, FDD
Additional Drives Zip 250/FDD
Graphics Output Port Nvidia Riva TNT2 Model 64
Audio Yamaha YF724F DS-1 Audio
Dial-Up Modem N/A
Ethernet Yes | 3COM 3C905C-TX
Wifi N/A
Additional Cards Promise ULTRA 66
# of ISA Slots 1
# of PCI Slots 5
# of USB Ports 2

The other one in picture, i just know its a P3 500, check the picture.

But if i dont want to wait 1 to 3 weeks. I can buy tomorrow a Pentium 2 266mhz with 128mb for 40$. But i dont think its enough strong to play Glide games in 1024x768 with high details at 60 fps like NFS III , NFS IV and Porsche unleashed, Tomb Raiders series, Ultima 8 and several others games of that time. What do you think ? Is it it enough for 60 FPS in most games in 1024x768 ? Maybe i could buy the P2 266mhz and the P3 too.
Is it ANY advantage to have a Pentium 2 266mhz vs Pentium 3 at 500-600mhz for DOS GAMES?
i alreay saw the dos games compatibility list that show maximum mhz speed for each dos games to not have problem. I know that i will gave to patch Jazz Jackrabbit higher than 233mhz 😉

About overclocking the Voodoo 3 2000 PCI.. Is it any risk to overclock it at 166mhz core and 166mhz for ram like a voodoo 3 3000? I will add a fan on the core heatsink. But i dont know if i should add heatsink for memory ? If you think any risk exist in overclocking it at 166mhz for core and memory, i wont do it. I think of using Powerstrip. If it safe and stable i can always update the bios to the Voodoo 3 3000 pci version, but it surely risky.
In 2002 i burned a geforce 256 with overclocking. i was very sad. But for punishing me my parents bought me a Geforce 2 GTS 😉 LoL! i never overclocked it LoL!

About slowing down my P233 mmx like a 386 and 486. Is it any better way than disable L2 Cache or using utilities ? ( i know 2 utilities to do it) and i can change board jumpers to get it at 75mhz.

Thanks again for the time you take to answer my questions. Its really appreciated it a lot. Special thanks to Bloodem, you pretty much answered all my questions since the beginning of my topics. 😀 But thanks to you ALL guys ! Its a new hobby to me playing with old hardware 😀
And yes i couldnt resist buying a voodoo3 LoL! i work hard to get one because i really want the PCI version for future testing in differents computers 😀

By the way my first PC was a 8088 with a green monochrome monitor. 2rd was a 8086 with a 4 colors CGA monitor. 3rd a 386 DX 20with VGA. After that a Pentium 133. 5th A 486 DX2 50mhz Laptop. Yeah i never had a 486 desktop computer. I would like to buy one today , but i cant find one in Montreal , no one in marketplace. Only on ebay i can find one at more than 200$ , its way to much for a 486. I would be happy to find either a 386 dx at 33mhz or any 486 with a preference of a intel cpu like a dx2 50mhz or 66mhz or even dx 33mhz. But dx4 at 100mhz not so much, and could be too fast for some old dos games.

Earlier today on my p233 mmx, with my 2 young daughters, i played the dos Bubble bobble game with bbfast patch at 2 players with 2 usb logitech dual action controller with the usbjstick.com driver , it was a strange and fun experience. 2 usb controllers on dos game its very special. i also have 2 gameport controllers including one gravis gamepad, but i dont have the splitter Y cable for 2 controllers 2 buttons at the same time. 😀 i played the dos simpsons game too, but prefer the mame one for infinite lives. and for your curiosity Bloodem, i played FF7 with a voodoo 1 card with my Pentium 133mhz in 1997 or 1998 😉 and it plays very well. well enough, i just had sometime to change the music fm quality to not have slowdown. 😉

I forgot to ask, is it enough 1 ISA Slot ? ( except a isa souncard im not sure i need another isa card)

I dont have a picture of the P2 266mhz , the guy didnt send me a picture yet. He told me ge can sell me 2 others p2 or p3 pc for 29$ each that dont power on.

And is The Yamaha sound card use any sb emulation processing power like a sblive ? if i have the sb link connector does i avoid sb emulation "processing power " ? So DDMA is not a sb emulation, but only if i have to use DSDMA ?