Did you plug the extra molex power connector in?

Is the cooling fan operating properly?

squiggly wrote:

Did you plug the extra molex power connector in?

Yup.

skv400 wrote:

Is the cooling fan operating properly?

Both fans are working just fine.

Is 3DMARK running the V5-5500 in SLI mode or just single GPU mode?

Do you even have SLI enabled for the V5-5500?

cyclone3d wrote:

Is 3DMARK running the V5-5500 in SLI mode or just single GPU mode?

Do you even have SLI enabled for the V5-5500?

I'm not sure. Just did a quick Google search, and there doesn't seem to be any mention of having to enable it -- that the 5500 just works with it by default. How would one go about enabling it?

It is in the 3dfx control panel somewhere. I don't have a system set up with a V5 5500 at the moment so can't tell you exactly where.

See the Anandtech review where they specifically state that they are dissbling one GPU to emulate having a Voodoo 4 4500.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/580

And the 5500 only runs at AGP 1x (PCI66) while the single chip cards can do AGP 2x.
http://helppage.3dfx.sk/

For 3DMark99 make sure you have vsync disabled. Also PIII 933 is not exactly fast CPU for V5... but definitely should be able to do more that 4300 points.

Personally I don't have a good experience with those win98 unofficial patches, always gave me nothing but trouble. So maybe it is worth trying to do a clean install of 98SE on a spare HDD, keep just 512MB RAM and see if the performance improves.

cyclone3d wrote:

It is in the 3dfx control panel somewhere. I don't have a system set up with a V5 5500 at the moment so can't tell you exactly w […]
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It is in the 3dfx control panel somewhere. I don't have a system set up with a V5 5500 at the moment so can't tell you exactly where.

See the Anandtech review where they specifically state that they are dissbling one GPU to emulate having a Voodoo 4 4500.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/580

And the 5500 only runs at AGP 1x (PCI66) while the single chip cards can do AGP 2x.
http://helppage.3dfx.sk/

Couldn't find SLI, dual GPUs, or mention anything of the sort in the control panel; checked both advanced features and info, to no avail. It does read it as a V5 5500 though, so not an issue there. I do at least have it running at AGP 1x in the BIOS, and 3dfx Info / Everest confirms as much.

havli wrote:

For 3DMark99 make sure you have vsync disabled. Also PIII 933 is not exactly fast CPU for V5... but definitely should be able to do more that 4300 points.

Personally I don't have a good experience with those win98 unofficial patches, always gave me nothing but trouble. So maybe it is worth trying to do a clean install of 98SE on a spare HDD, keep just 512MB RAM and see if the performance improves.

Vsync was disabled. And when I built the rig over a decade ago, I did so with keeping it era-appropriate in mind. I don't play any games made after Dec 31, 1999 on it anyway, so no need for anything faster. I do agree though, the CPU shouldn't be the bottleneck here. I'll give a clean, unmodified Win98 install a try if no other input comes around over the weekend, as well as taking some RAM out -- though the MaxFileCache fix should remedy any issues there by default.

I have a PIII-933 setup I can test my V5-5500 in to see if I get different results with 3DMARK 99... yay, now I have something else to do this evening.

I can also test with a V3-1000.

I'm almost 100% sure there is somewhere to enable/disable dual GPU mode for the 5500. Maybe it has to be a specific version of the 3DFX Tools. I'll try to figure that out as well.

It's in the Anti-Aliasing tab which is kind of silly, but essentially you can pick between Single VSA100, Max Performance (2xVSA100, no FSAA), 2xFSAA, 4xFSAA.
You can configure this both for D3D and OpenGL separately, but it might also be on the general tweaking tab in which you can pick individual options for D3D and OpenGL, I can't remember at the moment as it has been a while since I tweaked these settings on my V5 powered PC.

cyclone3d wrote:

I have a PIII-933 setup I can test my V5-5500 in to see if I get different results with 3DMARK 99... yay, now I have something else to do this evening.

I can also test with a V3-1000.

I'm almost 100% sure there is somewhere to enable/disable dual GPU mode for the 5500. Maybe it has to be a specific version of the 3DFX Tools. I'll try to figure that out as well.

That would definitely be appreciated if you get around to doing it, or if someone else chimes in with previous results of their own! And you were right:

F2bnp wrote:

It's in the Anti-Aliasing tab which is kind of silly, but essentially you can pick between Single VSA100, Max Performance (2xVSA100, no FSAA), 2xFSAA, 4xFSAA.
You can configure this both for D3D and OpenGL separately, but it might also be on the general tweaking tab in which you can pick individual options for D3D and OpenGL, I can't remember at the moment as it has been a while since I tweaked these settings on my V5 powered PC.

Just confirmed that it was set correctly by default both under D3D and OpenGL/Glide: it is using both chips / fastest performance with no anti-aliasing. So no impact on results there.

I seem to remember that even if SLI is enabled, some games and programs still only utilize one GPU.

Now I am super curious to test stuff with my V5 again.

It's Friday so I can stay up all night if I want. 😈

What motherboard are you using and what chipset does it have?

cyclone3d wrote:

I seem to remember that even if SLI is enabled, some games and programs still only utilize one GPU. […]
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I seem to remember that even if SLI is enabled, some games and programs still only utilize one GPU.

Now I am super curious to test stuff with my V5 again.

It's Friday so I can stay up all night if I want. 😈

What motherboard are you using and what chipset does it have?

Sounds good! I'm using an AOpen AX63 Pro with a VIA chipset. Full specs can be found here.

Ok, I'll be using a TYAN S1854 motherboard and S370 PIII-933 for testing as I don't have any Slot-1 CPUs near that speed.

found some old scores from my systems. The closest i could find was 4400 3dmarks for a v3 3000 agp and 7408 3dmarks for a v5 5500 PCI. This was 3dmark99 1024x768 on a Celeron Tualatin 1000mhz (100fsb, 256kb cache) on an Asus Tusl2-c with 256mb ram.

The same Celeron cpu at 66mhz fsb and 667mhz did 3300 3dmarks for the voodoo3 (already maxxed out here at this resolution) and 5524 3dmarks for the Voodoo5 5500 PCI.

What i would do: Clean install normal 98se, some good late 3rth party drivers for the V5. Make sure the voodoo is working with 2 gpu's (try upping resolution and try FSAA modes) and make sure your cpu is running full speed. Also check agp settings or test the V5 in another system.

Good luck!

So I did a couple different runs at the default 800x600 on my system.

Tyan S1854 motherboard
Pentium III 933 - Socket 370
256MB PC133 RAM
Windows 98SE
Voodoo 5 5500 AGP

Driver - Raziel 64's Evolution Driver v1.01.16
DirectX 9.0b
Updates - Feb 2004 Microsoft Update CD - The unofficial service packs, especially the newer ones, cause all sorts of trouble with Win98SE.

Default settings in the 3DFX control panel:
5597 3DMarks
13450 CPU 3DMarks

Tweaked settings in 3DFX control panel - not necessarily the fastest possible:
Changed:
AGP - 2x
Geometry Assist - Enable
Maximum Buffered Frames - 2
Trilinear Texture Filtering - Enable
Triple Buffering - Enable
Vertical Sync - Disable

6549 3DMarks
13433 CPU 3DMarks

meljor wrote:

found some old scores from my systems. The closest i could find was 4400 3dmarks for a v3 3000 agp and 7408 3dmarks for a v5 550 […]
Show full quote

found some old scores from my systems. The closest i could find was 4400 3dmarks for a v3 3000 agp and 7408 3dmarks for a v5 5500 PCI. This was 3dmark99 1024x768 on a Celeron Tualatin 1000mhz (100fsb, 256kb cache) on an Asus Tusl2-c with 256mb ram.

The same Celeron cpu at 66mhz fsb and 667mhz did 3300 3dmarks for the voodoo3 (already maxxed out here at this resolution) and 5524 3dmarks for the Voodoo5 5500 PCI.

What i would do: Clean install normal 98se, some good late 3rth party drivers for the V5. Make sure the voodoo is working with 2 gpu's (try upping resolution and try FSAA modes) and make sure your cpu is running full speed. Also check agp settings or test the V5 in another system.

Good luck!

cyclone3d wrote:

So I did a couple different runs at the default 800x600 on my system. […]
Show full quote

So I did a couple different runs at the default 800x600 on my system.

Tyan S1854 motherboard
Pentium III 933 - Socket 370
256MB PC133 RAM
Windows 98SE
Voodoo 5 5500 AGP

Driver - Raziel 64's Evolution Driver v1.01.16
DirectX 9.0b
Updates - Feb 2004 Microsoft Update CD - The unofficial service packs, especially the newer ones, cause all sorts of trouble with Win98SE.

Default settings in the 3DFX control panel:
5597 3DMarks
13450 CPU 3DMarks

Tweaked settings in 3DFX control panel - not necessarily the fastest possible:
Changed:
AGP - 2x
Geometry Assist - Enable
Maximum Buffered Frames - 2
Trilinear Texture Filtering - Enable
Triple Buffering - Enable
Vertical Sync - Disable

6549 3DMarks
13433 CPU 3DMarks

Thanks everyone for the input, and cyclone3d for running those tests! 😀

I'll start by downgrading the RAM to 512mb -- that will be just one stick of SDRAM, so I'll have to see how the system likes dealing with that -- then give it another clean install of Win98SE without any updates (I don't have any official Microsoft updates for the OS, just the unofficial SP3), and begin again with the Reference drivers and see what happens. I'll play around with a third-party driver set or two afterward to see if I can tweak the performance any if I don't get a sufficient score back, and perhaps get out the V3 again to compare. Should be able to do this over the week, and if anyone comes up with any further input, I'll definitely take that into consideration.

You can download the Feb 2004 Microsoft update CD image from vogonsdrivers.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … =873&menustate=

cyclone3d wrote:

You can download the Feb 2004 Microsoft update CD image from vogonsdrivers.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … =873&menustate=

I don't know why I didn't think to check there since that's where I've got some of my stuff. 😅 Thanks!