An easy way is to run a 3DFX Glide-only title, so it will either use the Voodoo card or not run at all.

There's the 3dfx version of GTA for instance. Or Tomb Raider. And possibly the few more

3dfx Voodoo2 drivers for 2000/XP can't provide 3D for Direct3D, which the 3DMarks use. You'll have to stick to Win9x for that.

3dfx Voodoo2 (or any other 3d accelerator) can't work with a bare default VGA driver on 16 colors, so that's not the V2's fault. Prior to making judgments on hardware defects, always have your video drivers installed, as well as DirectX. (The last Voodoo2 drivers depend on DirectX 7, a commonly neglected installation step)

leileilol wrote on 2022-09-24, 00:04:

3dfx Voodoo2 drivers for 2000/XP can't provide 3D for Direct3D, which the 3DMarks use. You'll have to stick to Win9x for that.

3dfx Voodoo2 (or any other 3d accelerator) can't work with a bare default VGA driver on 16 colors, so that's not the V2's fault. Prior to making judgments on hardware defects, always have your video drivers installed, as well as DirectX. (The last Voodoo2 drivers depend on DirectX 7, a commonly neglected installation step)

That is good information about XP. I didn't know that. Thank you.

I did some more testing, and I'm not convinced that card is working properly.

It hard locks in 3Dmark 2000 on the "adventure" benchmark with a Athlon XP 3200+. I have tried different chipset drivers and different Voodoo II drivers. It passes 3Dmark 99 on the same CPU but with a score of 2800 which compared to other scores I have on file for other Voodoo II cards is abysmally low.

There are some more platforms I can try, but I'm pretty confident it isn't behaving correctly.

Until you try a glide game, preferably a DOS one to rule out windows/software/drivers issues, you won't know. I don't understand why you are still trying to deduce things from 3dmark.

pico1180 wrote on 2022-09-23, 16:39:

Greetings All, […]
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Greetings All,

I recently purchased a Monster 3D II off eBay. The seller claimed it may or may not work.

So fair, my experience with the card has been positive but non the less troubling. Let me explain.

Pass through works fine, drivers install fine under windows 98. I can go to video properties and see the little spinning 3dfx logo.

But this is where things start getting weird and my confidence in this card working starts to become shakey.

I installed the drivers for the Voodoo II card, but not for the 2D card. In this case it was a Matrox G450. When I tried to start 3Dmark99 or 3Dmark 2000 it said no 3Dcard was detected.

When I installed the drivers for the G450 3Dmark 99 and 2000 loaded.

In the settings of said benchmarks I can select the Monster 3D II as an available video card to test. I run the benchmark and it completes without error.

But here is where my confidence in this card is shaken again. The results for the Voodoo II and the G450 are virtually identical in both 99 and 2000. I compared to previous results I gathered a few years ago from an STB Black Magic and the same exact G450 on the same exact system; but from a few years back. They should not share nearly identical numbers.

I didn't have any other video cards that have windows 98 drivers so I moved to XP. In XP I appeared to be able to install the Voodoo II but when I loaded 99 or 2000 it didn't see the Voodoo II. But it appeared to be installed correctly in Device Manager.

There are a few things I want to try, but honestly I didn't want to continue down this road until I heard some feedback.

Does anyone have a simple and straightforward way to see if a Voodoo card is working properly?

Ah yes a Diamond Monster II, I have a pair of these ornery beasts and thus far the only way I have found to get them 100% working is to first install the official Diamond Monster 3d II drivers first, then you can go ahead and install whatever flavor of driver you want over them. You can then test with any Glide aware game you have ...like Unreal Tournament 99.

Diamond did some funky shit with their drivers and there is some configuration setting in there that the other 3dfx driver dont have, other people will tell you this isn't the case and they should work perfectly with any drivers but I have never not once been able to get them working 100% perfectly with 3rd party drivers unless the official ones have been installed first.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-25, 09:20:

Ah yes a Diamond Monster II, I have a pair of these ornery beasts and thus far the only way I have found to get them 100% working is to first install the official Diamond Monster 3d II drivers first, then you can go ahead and install whatever flavor of driver you want over them. You can then test with any Glide aware game you have ...like Unreal Tournament 99.

Diamond did some funky shit with their drivers and there is some configuration setting in there that the other 3dfx driver dont have, other people will tell you this isn't the case and they should work perfectly with any drivers but I have never not once been able to get them working 100% perfectly with 3rd party drivers unless the official ones have been installed first.

Hey, "other people" here! 😁
The Diamond Monster II cards work perfectly with the latest 3dfx reference drivers (V3.02.02) or even older - like V3.01.01, and you don't need to install anything else besides Direct X 7.0 (and the drivers for the other "2D" card).
I'm actually interested to know what issues you've had and on which platform(s) you've encountered them, because I've tested Diamond Voodoo 2, Creative Voodoo 2, Gainward Voodoo 2, and some "no-name" Voodoo 2 cards on all sorts of platforms ranging from Socket 7, Socket 8 and up to Athlon 64... and their behavior is identical (i.e.: they've always worked perfectly, unless there's a hardware issue at play) 😀

bloodem wrote on 2022-09-25, 10:05:

Hey, "other people" here! :-D The Diamond Monster II cards work perfectly with the latest 3dfx reference drivers (V3.02.02) or e […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-25, 09:20:

Ah yes a Diamond Monster II, I have a pair of these ornery beasts and thus far the only way I have found to get them 100% working is to first install the official Diamond Monster 3d II drivers first, then you can go ahead and install whatever flavor of driver you want over them. You can then test with any Glide aware game you have ...like Unreal Tournament 99.

Diamond did some funky shit with their drivers and there is some configuration setting in there that the other 3dfx driver dont have, other people will tell you this isn't the case and they should work perfectly with any drivers but I have never not once been able to get them working 100% perfectly with 3rd party drivers unless the official ones have been installed first.

Hey, "other people" here! 😁
The Diamond Monster II cards work perfectly with the latest 3dfx reference drivers (V3.02.02) or even older - like V3.01.01, and you don't need to install anything else besides Direct X 7.0 (and the drivers for the other "2D" card).
I'm actually interested to know what issues you've had and on which platform(s) you've encountered them, because I've tested Diamond Voodoo 2, Creative Voodoo 2, Gainward Voodoo 2, and some "no-name" Voodoo 2 cards on all sorts of platforms ranging from Socket 7, Socket 8 and up to Athlon 64... and their behavior is identical (i.e.: they've always worked perfectly, unless there's a hardware issue at play) 😀

The card itself is fine .. the control panel becomes the issue . .every single time, install the official drivers and boom issue resolves itself and I can then use what ever driver I wish.

Main issue is the control panel crashing the PC upon trying to use it with 3rd party drivers, have never had the issue if I install the official ones first.

I dont understand it myself as it should be exactly as you say .. but I know my Monster3d II cards work in this manner.

My two Monster 3D II cards work fine with FastVoodoo drivers out of the box.

I only used the v2oc tool to revert the overclocking this driver is doing by default.

I never had the issues mentioned here. However, there are multiple revisions of that card. I have the A and B revisions in SLI. It's possible certain revisions could be more problematic. Or maybe it depends on the chipset and drivers, too. Mine run on an Abit VH6T with the VIA drivers recommended by philscomputerlab for Windows 9x and they run everything...except Archimedian Dynasty, which makes me very sad. 🥲

You were a 100% correct. It was the FastVoodoo drivers. Problem solved. I went back to Diamond MM Monster II drivers and no issue at all.