It's definitely worth it for 1024x768 for next to no framerate loss in most cases, however it has its own weird quirks and artifacts. Also, it's a lot less useful with 8MB cards.

That said, for any system with an AGP 2x port I'd rather go with a Voodoo 3 2000/3000 than a Voodoo 2 SLI for convenience and image quality's sake.

TSG wrote on 2021-09-21, 06:02:

Errius wrote on 2021-09-21, 04:50:

Faulty IDE controller?

I don't know. Speedsys and the BIOS pick them up, but DOS and Win 98 Setup can't find them.

I have had some issues with certain IDE cables on some boards.
Is the IDE cable you are using a 40 or 80 pin?
I read it shouldn't matter which one you use (well, only for speed) but in my experience I did run in some compatibility issues in a few cases.

Also, which motherboard is in the system?
Sometimes a bios upgrade can fix certain IDE issues.

Also, check how much settings you can configure in the BIOS for your HDD.
I had issues on some older boards with the auto-config of harddisks which ran flawless when I configured the disks manually.

Man I'm just about ready to strip it down and toss the rest. I'll buy another one and try again.

I guess I could try a IDE controller card.

What about a different IDE cable?

How are the jumpers on the drives set?

Try hooking up the HDD on a separate cable from the CD. Sometimes there are compatibility issues.

I'll try different cables when I get home. Jumpers are set right. Only one drive per cable.

In the current market it's hard to justify the going rate for Voodoo 2 boards. If it's something you REALLY want for nostalgic purposes, by all means go for it. I have 5 of them (3 STB and 2 Diamond), among other Voodoo boards, but I also have quite a few retro PCs, so I don't need one PC configured to span a lot of years. For me, having a SLI box is worth it simply for the authenticity, and only running a handful of games on a P II 400 MHz fits the bill nicely. If you are thinking about a second one, you may as well just pony up for one now. They're only getting harder to find and more expensive.

IT LIVES!

New ribbon cables is all it needed.

Brawndo wrote on 2021-09-22, 01:05:

In the current market it's hard to justify the going rate for Voodoo 2 boards.

Personally playing through the Unreal campaign using a TNT2 M64 was just as enjoyable to me as playing through the Unreal campaign using a single Voodoo2. My Voodoo2 was a 12MB variant though, never tried one of the 8MB ones.

swaaye wrote on 2021-09-20, 18:48:

I feel that Voodoo2 SLI is only really useful for <= 1998 games. But Unreal seems to suffer from some stuttering with it so there are exceptions. It doesn't have enough texture memory.

Stuttering in Unreal for both 8MB and 12MB Voodoo2 models? The 12MB V2 has 8MB texture memory, should be enough for Unreal and the 8MB has only 4MB for textures, so I think this could give more problems in bigger maps. I have played Unreal with my V2 SLI 12MB system and it runs perfectly fine in 1024x768 resolution. Never seen any issues. The castle flyby demo runs with the same average fps on the 8 and 12mb Voodoo2 in 800x600 (non SLI).

I have seen a big memory bottleneck with a Voodoo 3 3000 16MB in the Quake 3 map Q3TOURNEY6: The Very End of You. With 1024x768 and the highest quality texture settings, it will sometimes go down to ~10 fps with a large range of vision. Going back to 800x600 solves this problem with 30-40 fps on a PIII 500 Katmai. The smaller maps are running fine on a 16MB V3 (1024x768, high quality) without any issues. A Voodoo 4 4500 with 32MB and texture compression support is much better for Quake 3.

I got a second STB Voodoo2 finally and the cable. Give me a rundown on how to set up SLI please.

Edit: Nevermind it was much easier than expected.