I came across this review on Anandtechand it would seem there is no point in pairing a Voodoo 3 with anything beyond a Pentium II.. Is this really the case? I have always found myself upgrading Slot-1 systms to Katmai or Coppermine Slot-1 CPUs eventually, I never thought it didn't make much gaming sense.
Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.
Try Undreal/Unreal Tournament.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
Deus Ex should show some decent benefits. Even a mid-range Coppermine really only barely cuts it.
When someone does a Quake 2 crusher.dm2 1024x768 Voodoo3 3000 benchmark on a Threadripper, I'm sure we'll find the answer to that question. 🤣
wrote:Deus Ex should show some decent benefits. Even a mid-range Coppermine really only barely cuts it.
Well, is Deus Ex really a game you want to throw as a benchmark for a Voodoo 3? That game is like from (at least) 2 hardware generations in the future..
Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.
UnrealEngine1 games are all CPU hogs though, especially Deus Ex which no video card will help a Pentium II with. You'll even see "gains" on a PowerVR PCX2 in them going up P3 and the like
Depending on how much newer you go hardware wise, you might find a glide wrapper with a faster video card to work just as well as a voodoo 3. All depends on your hardware and what games you want to play.
DOS/w3.11/w98 | K6-III+ 400ATZ @ 550 | FIC PA2013 | 128mb SDram | Voodoo 3 3000 | Avancelogic ALS100 | Roland SC-55ST
DOS/w98/XP | Core 2 Duo E4600 | Asus P5PE-VM | 512mb DDR400 | Ti4800SE | ForteMedia FM801
wrote:wrote:Deus Ex should show some decent benefits. Even a mid-range Coppermine really only barely cuts it.
Well, is Deus Ex really a game you want to throw as a benchmark for a Voodoo 3? That game is like from (at least) 2 hardware generations in the future..
The game is from the generation Voodoo3 was made for.
I agree with Putas, Deus Ex runs decently on my V3 3000, paired with a P3 800. Thanks to Glide, of course.
Pentium III @ 1.28Ghz - Intel SE440xBX-2 - 384MB PC100 - ATi Radeon DDR 64MB @ 200/186 - SB Live! 5.1 - Windows ME
There are some gains on Liberty island (or similar locations) even with Athlon XP.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
I think I just messed up and mixed up Deus Ex and Max Payne in my head. Yeah, Deus Ex would run on a Voodoo 3. But does it really scale?
Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.
Voodoo3 at <= 1024x768 scales pretty far. And Serpent Rider isn't kidding about Deus Ex benefiting from an Athlon XP. If you want that game to approach 60 fps, forget anything less. Lots of games run better with a much faster CPU than what was available around release.
also don't use unrealengine games to compare performance against non-3dfx cards and go "yea 3dfx VooDoo The Beter Grafik!!! Geforce Is A Shit !" when the Direct3D backend isn't visually equivalent and more intensive, i.e. the additional detail texture layers, the precaching and the textures converted to a non-indexed format. It WOULD be possible to write a D3D6-7 backend to look exactly like the GlideDrv, Epic just didn't do it, and both D3D and OpenGLDrv were learning experiences for them.
Hell, even GlideDrv was in a similar state in the initial Unreal release and didn't use multitexturing at all for a couple months so those mighty Voodoo2s were held back (as well as rendering Unreal's lighting incorrectly for a few months after that was implemented)
V3-3000 AGP. Saw only a modest increase in performance going from a Katmai-550 to a Coppermine-850, and next to nothing going from the P3-850 to a Celeron-1400. Overclocking the V3 to 195 MHz gave it a much bigger boost. So yeah, it doesn’t take much to max out a Voodoo3.
94 MHz NEC VR4300 | SGI Reality CoPro | 8MB RDRAM | Each game gets its own SSD - nooice!
Try half life. IIRC it scaled pretty well with CPU performance
wrote:also don't use unrealengine games to compare performance against non-3dfx cards and go "yea 3dfx VooDoo The Beter Grafik!!! Geforce Is A Shit !" when the Direct3D backend isn't visually equivalent and more intensive, i.e. the additional detail texture layers, the precaching and the textures converted to a non-indexed format. It WOULD be possible to write a D3D6-7 backend to look exactly like the GlideDrv, Epic just didn't do it, and both D3D and OpenGLDrv were learning experiences for them.
Hell, even GlideDrv was in a similar state in the initial Unreal release and didn't use multitexturing at all for a couple months so those mighty Voodoo2s were held back (as well as rendering Unreal's lighting incorrectly for a few months after that was implemented)
Yeah it was strange how Epic released so many D3D updates. They couldn't get it right. I'm sure the fact that GPUs were so varied in quality yet didn't help.
I remember the Unreal update for Glide multitexturing coming about 6 months after the game's release. I had a friend back then who was very excited to try it on his Voodoo2 setup.
Yes, Unreal and UE engine games were pretty notorious for this. I remember someone here (maybe bushwack?) saying many years ago how they had a Riva TNT back then and the game would look and run a little bit better with every new patch 🤣 .
Deus Ex is just ridiculous, it's probably fine for the most part even with a Voodoo 3 at 800x600 (and maybe 1024x768), but it is insanely demanding on the CPU, otherwise it'd be hitting 60fps most of the time. We had a thread about this a while back, I even witnessed the horrors of running it on a K6-III+ 🤣 .
Deu EX Crysis for the 1999 computer
