Peter.Mengel wrote on 2022-03-15, 17:30:

I always was thinking the high price tag cames from the part that 3dfx ads some Extras to the games like better visuals. And Glide Wrapper tend to be complicated for some compared to the original cards.
So they sold not as much and were not very loved back in the early 2000s so many were dumbed and ended in trash. Recycled and gone foreever, while nvidia/ati cards were sold with the PC you bought so plenty were saved and still on market.

I can only speak for the market here in The Netherlands.
From what I could gather, it was the cheaper OEM cards that tended to be the most widely used. Think cards like Virge, SiS6326, Trio64 and Trio32, lots of Ati cards, TNT2 M64 and Vanta.
Some other cards that were somewhat common were Diamond Rendition Verité 2100 cards, Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 cards, Matrox and TNT1 and TNT2 cards (AGP variants) and Voodoo 3 AGP (both 2000 and 3000) and even TNT2 M64 PCI was not too uncommon here in NL. Later the most common cards were the GF MX cards and to a lesser extend Ati Radeon 9600 and 9200.
Cirrus Logic and the like seemed to be mostly popular during the VLB era, I never seen many of those cards in PCI form while dumpsterdiving.

Voodoo 3 2000 and 3000 (AGP versions) were not too hard to find, it's the PCI versions and the 3500 that took more effort to get for me. Voodoo 5 5500 was always a hard find and Voodoo 4 4500 seemed like it was vaporware.

In NL we have a popular website for anything that has to do with smart electronics, tweakers.net. It's the defacto to-go-to site also for second hand stuff and I got some great deals from there.

Definitely a lot of old PCs got trashed, but I noticed that even then there was a lot of reselling going on but despite this I'm fairly sure a lot of 3DFX stuff (and TNT stuff just as much) got purged into the recycling abyss of no return.

Unknown_K wrote on 2022-03-15, 17:49:

No benchmark for the Voodoo 3500?

Tetrium wrote on 2022-03-15, 17:52:

Is the Voodoo 3 3500 missing from this table for some reason?

I think the reason it's missing is Anand was reviewing the TNT2 Ultra and didn't want to embarrass it too much or they wouldn't get review samples in future 🤣

Also they might not have been in receipt of one at that time, I seem to recall it released a few months after the 2000 and 3000 but might be remembering wrong. Maybe turned up later in a roundup of TV/Video capable cards.

3Dfx cards are very, very overpriced, the only ones that really make sense are Voodoo 1 and even less Voodoo 2, since a single Voodoo 2 doesn't add much to a TNT apart from Glide and has compatibility problems with the first games designed for Voodoo 1, only Voodoo 2 in SLI is interesting, but the price no longer makes any logical sense. Voodoo 3 doesn't make sense anymore, they came out late, and both nVidia and Ati were already several steps ahead. A silly detail that is not usually mentioned, is that while the TNT and even the Riva 128, or the Matrox Mystique were BGA, Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 and rush were not and that has shown several problems over the years, damaged pins , loose welds, etc... and also other problems that are not usually mentioned, such as the high temperature of the voodoo 2, probably a lot of the loose pin joints are because of the high temperature..
I'm not going to lie, this comment is due to the bad experience I've had with two Voodoo 1's that died from one day to the next on different computers and also a Voodoo rush that apart from the problem of having to reduce the 2D chip's default frequency, also died without notice.
I have two Voodoo 2 running in SLI and a Voodoo 3 3000 without problems and curiously they are the only ones that I have not bought, but they were given to me.
Of course, they have a very high historical and collecting value, but for real use other more robust and reliable options are more interesting.
I see 3Dfx as if they were a Picasso painting. Very expensive and just to look at them, because they are pretty.
Well, they almost have the value of a Picasso painting.......

Send me all your cards with loose pins plzkthx 😁

I am going to go against the crowd here and say that I understand why 3dfx cards are (to me) preferable over contemporary nvidia cards - however I do have to admit that the prices have soured the deal.

OG Voodoo is irreplacable in the niche it covers. I won't bother with a 1995-1997 PC that doesn't have one. Too many glide only games, even if the card is painfully limiting. Voodoo 2 and 3 are nice to have (and i do love my voodoo 3s, especially in the PCI variant) but can be ultimately replaced if you want to give up some things. Previously mentioned TNT doesn't have that "vintage retro" appeal to most but it is a dependable workhorse.

(And the TNT2 M64 is a cockroach of a gpu - it is absurd how common that card is, but it is a mistake to underestimate its utility. There is a reason the TNT2 M64 essentially turned nvidia into a 3D graphics king, practically overnight.)

Voodoo 5 is the one card i do not understand the appeal of, at all.

If i were to pick one retro video card, i would have taken the Voodoo 3 any time. I had good experiences with that card when it comes to stability and performance across many systems - especially in its PCI variant. The AGP variant is not that useful because you cannot use it in more modern boards. If you limit yourself to 640x480 or 800x600 (period correct resolutions, and look good on a CRT - different conversation if we are talking about LCDs), you have access to the lions share of early win32 era 3d games. Many early 3d games either support glide or force you to use software, and these games tend not to be easy to get running on modern systems. The performance of a voodoo3 rivals the TNT2 fairly well, and it is not as problematic in some other rather questionable motherboards. To me it is a workhorse of the Win9x era of gaming - things will run, and they will look good. And the fact that the PCi variant can be used in many systems, often years newer than the card itself, allows to have an excellent Win9x fallback. Then again, i am not the person to chase that perfectly stable 60 fps. I understand the appeal of overpowered retro rigs, i just cannot say that I am into it and i will take authenticity even if i gain practically nothing from it. Its fast enough, its versatile, it supports glide, outputs a good image, and withstood the competition of its time. "It just works". And nostalgia. Its just a great allarounder in my opinion and one cant go wrong with it.

The Voodoo5 is the one card i completely do not get. By the time of its release, glide was dead and D3D was king. Sure you can argue it does everything voodoo3 does and better, but its just a big, clunky beast that in the end wasn't all that great even when it came out. Do not get me started at the pricing of it. I wouldn't mind having one, but I would probably get tired of it and go back to a GF256 any day.

Then again, i am quite fixated on that 1994 - 1998 era of gaming, where I absolutely must have an authentic, capable and compatible machine. Games released later? I can play on a modern system for all I care - i am not afraid of spending hours on compatibility fixes. I guess this might explain my "fascination" with 3dfx and the era where they were at the peak.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-03-15, 18:42:

Send me all your cards with loose pins plzkthx 😁

I think shipping costs are quite important from Spain to the United States. 😉

The original Voodoo and Voodoo 2 were very important in those early 3D years, especially when it comes to speed, back then it was incredible seeing games running that fast. At least to me they were much more impressive than the competitors of its day like the Rendition Verite and such. Nostalgia is always there, but it was a noticeable impact back then and the historical significance cannot be denied.

However by the time the V3 came out it all went downhill very quickly, that card and its successors were not very impressive in terms of performance. I still have the V3 I bought back then, but it's almost like new, never used it much and got replaced quickly, I remember everyone from friends to magazines being very lukewarm about it.

Regarding current prices: as with almost everything else these days, absolutely over-inflated, everyone wants to make their sweet bucks with nostalgia. I have an original Voodoo, my Voodoo2 from back in the day and a matched SLI set. Got lots of enjoyment from those, but I wouldn't pay more than $30 or $40 for one of these cards. None of these justify the prices you see out there unless we're talking about collector grade stuff, i.e. new in box, or rare high-end stuff such as Quantum. But seeing those cards all beaten up, scratched, probably half-dead going for hundreds of dollars makes me roll my eyes, and people still buy them! Anyways...

xpladv570 wrote on 2022-03-15, 18:55:

Voodoo 5 is the one card i do not understand the appeal of, at all.

Simple... V5 in its 2 incernations, is... the fastest 3dfx card you can get. Can v3 do something that v5 cant? No. V2? No... Can v5 do something that other voodoos cant? Yes

Dolenc wrote on 2022-03-15, 19:15:

xpladv570 wrote on 2022-03-15, 18:55:

Voodoo 5 is the one card i do not understand the appeal of, at all.

Simple... V5 in its 2 incernations, is... the fastest 3dfx card you can get. Can v3 do something that v5 cant? No. V2? No... Can v5 do something that other voodoos cant? Yes

32bit color and better performance is hardly what i would call an earth shattering difference, especially when 32bit color didn't really become fully viable until... geforce 2? And even a gf2 had a hefty performance loss over using 16bit color. Its not really worth using in 90s games without extra power to waste.
Different strokes and tastes i suppose, but if i want to chase performance, i will go with a wrapper. I have no nostalgia for one, its physical size is a big limitation for the kind of builds i make. You can experience the essence of what 3dfx had to offer with previous iterations, without going all the way to getting a halo-product like the voodoo 5. I can't blame people going for the last and the greatest of its kind, but considering how video game industry developed, i cannot share the fascination with that card. Its a bit like the FX series - cards that became retroactively good and popular rather than being something I truly desired when that product was new.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-03-14, 22:15:

Hunting through listings for retro graphic cards, I'm a little surprised that Voodoo-series cards are so pricey in comparison to […]
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Hunting through listings for retro graphic cards, I'm a little surprised that Voodoo-series cards are so pricey in comparison to TNT/TNT2/GeForce based cards.

From what I remember of the era of these cards, at the time the TNT through GeForce cards were considered the top end of 3D performance. I did a quick scan through old issues of CGW just to confirm, and sure enough the nVidia-based cards were generally at the top of their 3D card roundups.

I get that Voodoo cards do have native Glide support, but by '98-00, pretty much everything was Direct3D/OpenGL by that point.

So why the demand for older Voodoo cards but not for the TNT or early GeForce cards? Seeing older Voodoo cards going for hundreds of dollars, but TNT/TNT2/GeForce cards at under 50 bucks, I feel like I'm missing something.

3Dfx made a splash. The Voodoo and Voodoo2 were to many people the ticket to real 3D-gaming for the first time - and you know your first love is always a little different. 😉

In practical terms, the title of "3D-accelerator" could also really only be given to the Voodoo-series, as in the beginning humble Pentium MMX machines went from can't-do to does-incredibly well! You didn't have anything else that would actually accelerate the graphics on systems like that. Not really. It was like magic.

By the time the first Celeron and Pentium II rolled around, the Voodoo could still scale and the V3 traded punches with the TNT2 (the real one, not that M64-crap). At that point I had to diverge though. While comparable, the TNT2 was technically superior to the Voodoo3. You could get away with having either - and no - you usually couldn't tell the difference between 16-bit and 32-bit color modes, other than the horrible drop in frame rate.

After the GeForce series launched, the game was up for 3Dfx, but you could still get away with a Voodoo3 because most games couldn't utilize the new tech yet. The writing was on the wall though, and I don't know anyone who had a V4/V5 back when those launched. Their high price is explained by a lot of people going the what-if route now just for the fun of it. The V1/V2/V3s are overpriced, no way around it.

If you have at least a Pentium II or a Celeron, just get the TNT2. It's just as period correct. For those first-gen Pentiums though, nothing else will quite do what the Voodoos do.

Hoping wrote on 2022-03-15, 18:58:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-03-15, 18:42:

Send me all your cards with loose pins plzkthx 😁

I think shipping costs are quite important from Spain to the United States. 😉

Well ill take it....iam from Germany...and wouldnt care much about shipping cost and taxes as EU Free....

It seems to me the value is something being created mostly by Touyube and Fleabay in recent years. Nostalgia overload courtesy of all that Touyube watchin'! These cards enjoyed a fairly lengthy period of near worthlessness too.

It is kinda hard to come up with a good reason to choose a TNT/TNT2, and early Geforce cards have some rendering quality problems that nobody talks about or remembers aside from the frequently blurry VGA output. And they are very touchy with respect to AGP stability. Like they only work rock solidly with Intel AGP. TNT is better in that respect.

xpladv570 wrote on 2022-03-15, 19:35:

Dolenc wrote on 2022-03-15, 19:15:

xpladv570 wrote on 2022-03-15, 18:55:

Voodoo 5 is the one card i do not understand the appeal of, at all.

Simple... V5 in its 2 incernations, is... the fastest 3dfx card you can get. Can v3 do something that v5 cant? No. V2? No... Can v5 do something that other voodoos cant? Yes

32bit color and better performance is hardly what i would call an earth shattering difference...

It kinda is earth shattering, I can play games from around 97-00 era, that interest me, with other goodies that an old system brings(a3d), at semi-normal pixelcount at 60fps(if the game even supports it, but most do), cant do that on anything less, even v5 is barely there. Its not like I spent 20y in a cave and missed what happened with games and visuals and can just go back to 14 inch crt and whooping 800x600 at cinematic 24fps , cus nostalgia! 😀 So for me, v5 is the bare minimum I can live with. Ive seen v2 in action and was quite suprised what it does, for what it is. But actually playing games on it, is just not something I would do, so - useless card for me.

Gameplay with frame counter. With v3(or similar), I would rather leave the game in memory, or play on win10 machine.
https://youtu.be/_FUYKh29qaQ

I too occasionally enjoy the Voodoo5. It really is the prime choice for your DOS Carmageddon needs. Voodoo3 is almost there but Voodoo5 really gets it into the buttery smooth territory when also combined with a PIII 1400 or so. 😉

But in general, for me the Voodoo 1 and 2 are interesting because of the look of their output. The different filter they use on the RAMDAC compared to other cards including later Voodoos. Seeing how all the old 3D cards try to make 16-bit rendering look good is one of the more interesting aspects to old game/hardware nonsense for me.

I was one of the people who snagged a Voodoo 5500 when it was new and paired it with a P3-750 if I remember correctly. It was a decent card for its time but after a couple years I went with something different and put it back in its box. It was purchased at BestBuy and I can't remember if the 4500's were on sale there at the time, but I never seen anybody using one.

Voodoo 2 SLI was the GOAT for years. I still have my SLI setup I used to play Diablo 2 on back in the day (but I think I put it in a P3-500 system later on).

TNT1's were decent cards once the drivers got figured out (sucks being an early adopter). I tried to collect all the TNT1/2 cards years ago.

.

Everyone who thinks 32-bit's a sham, please defend those bad 256-max RGBA4444 textures (especially as many games in 2000 used them in conjunction with environment mapping or just being opaque). Also defend that dithering overdraw, and the very ugly discoloration the Voodoos did for years (despite that "22-bit" BS which nullifies the VGA output quality benefits). Thanks.

Also TNT can play PSO. Voodoos can't 😀

TheMobRules wrote on 2022-03-15, 19:09:

The original Voodoo and Voodoo 2 were very important in those early 3D years, especially when it comes to speed, back then it was incredible seeing games running that fast.

Not just speed, but resolution as well. I still remember being blown away seeing GL Quake running at 640x480 on an original Voodoo card. Compared to software rendering, it looked incredible. One of my defining game memories of the era.

No doubt about it, the early Voodoos were definitely an important part of 3D history.