I've got the exact same setup here. I've got mine overclocked to 504 Mhz.

It runs titles like Quake 2, Unreal and Half-Life really well. Also racing games like Dethkarz and Collin McRae Rally run with good FPS. I've also happily played Conflict Freespace (1) on this system. As soon as you get closer to the 1999/2000 mark, the games become far more demanding. Unreal Tournament is somewhat playable, but a the FPS are a little on the low side for such a fast paced game.

Personally, I find the PII 450 and the Voodoo 3 a perfect pairing if you respect the era it was made in. Back then, PC hardware was obsolete within 2 years because of the fast developments in hardware and gaming engines. Especially since you've got that PIII Tualatin with the GF4 for the later games, I wouldn't put a lot of effort into pushing the Pentium II much further. Since you also want to play DOS games, the Voodoo 3 gives excellent compatibility with those older VGA games.

I can't tell you exactly where the bottleneck is, but I suspect a GeForce 2 GTS would be the the maximum tier card for this system. Putting anything higher in might just be a waste of rendering power.

Thanks! It's good to know I'm on the right track with this build. I also wanted to get away with using the PII Deschutes since having another PIII build in my collection seems duplicative.

Is UT99 not a "glide native" game like Unreal is? Performance/fps aside, will the Voodoo3 or GF4 Ti4200 provide better rendering/image quality in that game?

mrzmaster wrote on 2022-05-13, 20:31:

Is UT99 not a "glide native" game like Unreal is? Performance/fps aside, will the Voodoo3 or GF4 Ti4200 provide better rendering/image quality in that game?

Yes, UT99 has great Glide support, but the game is just more demanding graphically than Unreal.

As for image quality: this is where the Voodoo 3 has its greatest weakness, because it can only render 16 bit and a maximum texture resolution of 256x256. The competition at the time was able to do 32 bit and 512x512, but not often as fast as the Voodoo 3.

The GF4 will be able to render 32 bit with high texture resolution, but the card is 4 generations ahead of the Voodoo 3, so it's not even a fair comparisment.

There were some late Glide native games based on the Unreal Engine (Deus Ex for example). For the most part, these ran decently on a Voodoo3, at the usual resolutions (800x600) and frame rates (around 20-30 FPS), even on a 450MHz PII. If you have similar demands, you will be satisfied with it. If you need modern FPS Rates stable over 100, than take a Athlon64 or a fast P4. If not, SSE (Pentium III) can bring a noticeable advantage for titles from the middle of 2000. In general, the Voodoo3 fits very well with a 450 PII or PIII in terms of speed. If you notice that the CPU is the bottleneck in a game, set the resolution to 1024x768, then the tide will turn.

mrzmaster wrote on 2022-05-13, 18:43:

I am slowly working on putting together a slot 1 machine built around a Pentium II 450MHz (Deschutes) processor and Voodoo 3 AGP (16 MB) graphics card.

You're right on the mark. I'd say once you break 500MHz you might as well live in GeForceVille.

Which voodoo3 do you have? If you want a bit of extra performance, there are plenty of good programs to squeeze some more mhz out of the cards. I managed to get my v3 2000 running as fast as a v3 3000 without any issue.

Hello i join the discussion because i just got a V3 3500 paired with a P2 450Mhz, i just do 1600 points at 3DMark2000.

Then i tried a TNT2 Ultra and what i got it's more or less 2000 points. ( 128Mb RAM, Fresh Win 98 SE install, no tweaks, only drivers and the USB mass storage drivers installed ). Games in general runs well at 1024x768, but the score at 3DMark2000 looks too low for both video cards ??

Am i bottlenecked ?
Thanks

V3 3500 score (1600) looks a bit low to me. I would expect something in range 2200 - 2400...
What mobo do you have? Is it something based on i440bx chipset?

TnT2 U result looks okay for PII 450.

Cards like TnT2 Ultra or V3 3500 really shine when paired with something like Athlon/Duron/PIII/Celeron 800 - 1000 MHz.

Yes I have an asus p3b-f with Intel i440BXwith 128mb pc100 and a pentium 2 450mhz. The system is rock stable and the OS is fresh ( win 98 se on mechanical hdd without bad sectors or problems ).

What drivers are you using and what DirectX version do you have installed?

Are there any of those unofficial Service Packs installed?

Also, what sound card are you using?

DirectX 7 - SB Live! sound card , Voodoo 3 3500 1.04.02 drivers WHQL and no service packs whatsoever. Motherboard have the latest BIOS.

Hey mate , Im using my voodoo 3 with P3 900mhz it gives good performance with nfs 4 , 5 . So if you have something more powerfull why dont use it ? It will give you more stable frametimes and give extra fps.

_StIwY_ wrote on 2023-01-01, 14:34:

DirectX 7 - SB Live! sound card , Voodoo 3 3500 1.04.02 drivers WHQL and no service packs whatsoever. Motherboard have the latest BIOS.

I would try to use another driver for V3 first.

Also make sure that L2 cache is enabled and CPU runs at 4.5 x 100 MHz (but that's probably set, as TnT2 gives you more or less expected results).

I would also try earlier BIOS. P3B is rather late BX board and it should support all PII even with very early BIOS-es. Maybe they messed up something in the latest BIOS? Who knows...

I would actually suggest trying the latest stable Voodoo 3 first. You can get it here.

I installed these drivers ( which are not natively made for v3 3500 but are for the v3 3000 ) and kinda messed up the operating system. Windows 98 freezes right after the boot completation, with the wallpaper loaded and the mouse pointer only.

It only boots on Safe mode, so i uninstalled the drivers with driver cleaner pro, but nothing changed......same freeze. I also disabled all the applications enabled at startup but same.... I ended up formatting

EDIT: Formatted again, same score...1600

Changed the P2 450mhz with a P3 450mhz, and the score is now 2300