Shponglefan wrote on 2024-02-19, 23:49:

VivienM wrote on 2024-02-19, 23:44:

Yup, and somehow in retroland, it's the other way around. FX5900s and FX5200s are highly regarded...

Same thing happened with various 3DFX Voodoo cards. I remember they were considered inferior to nVidia cards at the time, but now they've achieved an almost cult status in the retro community.

Can confirm, I was shocked at the image quality and speed of the voodoo 3 when I got one semi-recently. It’s now one of my favorite cards.

I think a lot of people never got to try them side by side. You’re right at the time the nvidia cards were considered superior, but in retrospect even in the benchmarks the voodoo series is superior in many ways. Kinda crazy that they didn’t succeed.

midicollector wrote on 2024-02-20, 00:57:

Can confirm, I was shocked at the image quality and speed of the voodoo 3 when I got one semi-recently. It’s now one of my favorite cards.

I think a lot of people never got to try them side by side. You’re right at the time the nvidia cards were considered superior, but in retrospect even in the benchmarks the voodoo series is superior in many ways. Kinda crazy that they didn’t succeed.

From what I remember at the time, 3Dfx always seemed behind the feature curve compared to competitors.

The Voodoo3 lacked 32-bit color rendering and all of the Voodoo cards lacked hardware T&L. Compared to the nVidia lineup, buying a Voodoo card felt like buying a less "feature complete" card regardless of performance.

From what I remember at the time, 3Dfx always seemed behind the feature curve compared to competitors.

Original Voodoo had very decent feature set, compared to competitors. But it only went downhill from there.

The Voodoo3 lacked 32-bit color rendering and all of the Voodoo cards lacked hardware T&L

They also sold 16 Mb cards with prices dangerously close to 32 Mb.

Guys I finally received all items for my first retro build.
I will start with Pentium III-S Tualatin and Windows 98 SE(on first SSD, on second SSD XP, and third disk as data).

My parts
* Pentium III-S Tualatin 1400/512/133/1.45 SL5XL tA1
* Pentium III-S Tualatin 1400/512/133/1.45 SL6BY tB1
* V2 SLI with NV GF 4 Ti 4200 8x/FX 5900/6800 GT, I owned all these cards.
* Or only one gpu V5 5500 (AGP or PCI, I own both variants).
(plus I thinking that I will buy one piece 3dfx from Anthony Zxclxiv, maybe PCI for better compatibility than AGP)
* Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
* Intel Pro 1000 GT
* Promise SATA300 TX4
* Intel DC S3510 120GB

As motherboard I bought two pieces.
I would like to ask your advice, which of the two motherboards should I keep and which should I re-sell?
* EPoX EP-3VSA
* Gigabyte GA-6VTXE-A

Because as second motherboard I want find some with SIS635 or 266T, so I not need in home two motherboards with same chipset 133T.

Is it correct when I say that it is better to keep in my home "EPoX EP-3VSA" because it has UniversalAGP port?
But! if I will want using original Voodoo 5 5500 what is 3.3V AGP so I must using with this card only my Gigabyte motherboard? I read many threads where is wrote that V5 kill motherboard with UniversalAGP. Is it right? Or I missing some information?

Are you wanting to do DOS gaming with that same system, it are you sticking exclusively to Win98 and above?

If you want to do DOS gaming outside of Windows, then it's far too fast and you will likely struggle with sound support. There are exceptions, but essentially DOS gaming == ISA sound cards.

@JosefHrib

Good choice for your Win98 Rig.
I have a similiar system for that.

A little hint maybe.
To be able to use both A3D 2.0 + EAX 2.0 depending what each game supports I have both an Aureal Vortex 2 + SB Audigy 2 ZS in same system without problems.
You can achieve this with 2 hardware profiles. In each profile the unsused sound card is deactivated so it doesn't conflict with the active sound card.