I have a Voodoo2 PCI happily working with a Geforce FX5200 AGP.

It does make sense if the kind of games you'll play happen to run with the first UnrealEngine 😀 but they're also handy for early id Tech 2/Quake as well since there is gamma (done through the 3dfx MiniGL for teh convenience, but it was the only form of actual gamma id Tech 2 supported at the time).

Kurasiu wrote:

And one last thing - would a dual graphic card setup interfere with DOS games?

As far as DOS games are concerned, the Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 might as well not exist – unless you're actually running one of the relatively few DOS 3Dfx games.

I see Jorpho, thanks! Haha, yeah, now that you mention it I remember only one DOS game, that could use 3Dfx device (and it was a polish FPS, so not really known among the others). 😁

One last question to the experts, then! As I'm aware that V2 cannot be used as a stand-alone 2D graphics adapter, and several users have already reported some quality problems using pass-trough cable - will a VGA switcher like this be good enough for a setup of two graphic cards and one monitor?

Kurasiu wrote:

[...] will a VGA switcher like this be good enough for a setup of two graphic cards and one monitor?

Simple mechanical switches like the one you linked might actually be worse than a pass-through cable. Electronic switches (even cheap ones) offer far better signal quality.

Kurasiu wrote:

several users have already reported some quality problems using pass-trough cable - will a VGA switcher like this be good enough for a setup of two graphic cards and one monitor?

Don't believe everything you read. Another overhyped problem (along with alot of others here on Vogons and retro community in general) which has no practical difference as long as you don't use a very shitty VGA cable.

The two pictures below are captured with my Avermedia VGA HD capture card. I'm capturing from a Matrox Mystique card and a Orchid Voodoo Graphics card. Can you tell me which picture comes directly from the Matrox VGA output and which comes from the passthrough cable/Voodoo card?

I know there is a 50% chance of guessing correctly, but seriously, can you tell?

I can tell.

The second one is from the Matrox right?

The difference would be much less easier to spot on a Voodoo 2. Also, are these taken at 800x600?

And to answer your question kurasiu, it is worth it. However, Voodoo 1 and 2 cards work only as secondary cards. That means, they are PCI and they need a host card, like your GeForce, they only display 3D. As such, they can coexist happily with your GeForce.
But, a Voodoo 3 will not work that way, since it needs no other card to work, it implements a 2D chip. You can still get a PCI card and have it coexist with another AGP card, but it can get messy. First off, you will have to initialize the card you want to use each time through the BIOS. There is usually an option which is kinda like this : "PRIMARY VGA BIOS" and you will have to pick PCI or AGP.
A V3 and onwards will allow you to get higher resolutions and V4/5 allows for FSAA and 32Bit Rendering. Generally speaking, a V5 5500 PCI is considered a legend (I used to own one) and it is quite expensive.

A Voodoo 3 2000 is about as fast as a Voodoo 2 SLI setup, if not a bit faster. What's the rest of your system?

F2bnp wrote:

I can tell.

The second one is from the Matrox right?

The difference would be much less easier to spot on a Voodoo 2. Also, are these taken at 800x600?

I won't reveal the answer straight away. Curious to see what other people say. As I said, there is only two option, so chances are pretty high even by pure guess 😜

These are taken from a 640x480 desktop resolution, no editing have been done.

vetz wrote:

These are taken from a 640x480 desktop resolution, no editing have been done.

I think you have your answer right there. I usually do 1024x768 and especially on the Voodoo 1, it's not that pretty of a sight. I have also noticed quite a bit of color banding, even on Voodoo 2 cards.

vetz wrote:

Don't believe everything you read. Another overhyped problem (along with alot of others here on Vogons and retro community in general) which has no practical difference as long as you don't use a very shitty VGA cable.

Haha, right, that's why I'm asking the experts here. 😀 It worried me a little bit, as many people kept saying this, and my monitor's native resolution is quite high (1280x1024), so I guess, as F2bnp said, if it was true, then it woulnd't be a pretty sight. And yes, for this I would actually use new, more expensive VGA cables.
And since it's questions time, and somebody mentioned V3 - I also heard some rumors about compatibility problems between V3 onwards and older games, using the Glide API, but never really found any straight answer (it was all like "yes there are!", "no there aren't!" x20). Mythbusters time!

It can be incompatible with certain early games. Not something to truly worry about though.
I'm guessing you're using a TFT monitor. 1280x1024 with V1 or V2 will look quite bad, at least to my eyes.

Again, please tell us what system you're using right now, besides a GeForce 2.

With a Geforce2, you have a blurry signal anyway, so all this VGA passthrough quality talk is moot 😀

Get a Matrox G400 (a MAX if possible) for the AGP card.

vetz wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

I can tell.

The second one is from the Matrox right?

The difference would be much less easier to spot on a Voodoo 2. Also, are these taken at 800x600?

I won't reveal the answer straight away. Curious to see what other people say.

I would say that the second one is from the Matrox (or "looks better"), but the differences are minimal.

F2bnp wrote:

Again, please tell us what system you're using right now, besides a GeForce 2.

Right, sorry! Forgot to post it earlier, haha. It's a Pentium III (Coppermine/1000MHz) machine, with 256 Megs of RAM, two HDDs (system and specifically for games, W98SE/DOS7 standard combo) and Yamaha OPL3-SAx soundcard. 😀

And thanks for all the feedback, guys - you made lots of things pretty clear to me!

As M. Leileilol alaready suggested, it all comes down to the games you want to play. If you're not going to play any 3DFX games, you could probably load that machine up with an AGP GeForce 4 Ti or ATI 9600XT and be perfectly happy.

So, the Voodoo 2 came in today, got pretty excited, mounted it, plugged the cables. And... disappointment.
I mean sure, the card was detected, the screen quality is quite nice (a bit of a blur is visible @1280x1024, but nothing eye-grinding or such), but after running a game it looks like this:

Colorful artifacts are running vertically, flashing all sorts of funky colours. In other words the card is busted and slowly dying, and nothing can be done, eh?

Well I definitely cannot tell a difference between these two images 😀

I got a few Matrox card on its way, want to check them out.

After a bit of snooping I found out that "Voodoo1 cards produce artifacts on the screen and do not play most DOS Glide games correctly when the FSB is higher than 100 MHz, even if the PCI bus runs at default clock speeds." The FSB on my board is set to default (133 MHz, the minimum value). Could this be also the case regarding the V2 artifacts?

My test PC for nGlide is Pentium4 3.0E with Voodoo2 12 MB. FSB is 800 MHz, bus speed is 200 MHz. WinXp Sp3, official Voodoo2 W2k driver 1.02.00. (Have set fxgpio and fxptl as kernel services).
All founded freezes are game/WinXp related.
To be more specific:
Hind - black screen in the simulation even with Voodoo2 patch. IIRC there was a custom patch to fix this...
Serious Sam: the 2nd Encounter - freezes sometimes. Long known trouble of the game engine itself.
Total Club Manager 2003 - freeze after the EA logo.
Ultimate Hunt Challenge - all 3 games are freezing before the simulation). Strange, but all is working ok after I run the game once with nGlide...
Uprising: Join or Die - freeze in in-game menu.
World Cup 98 - the included voodooa.dll is bugged.
Glide 2.1.1 games (Cyber Gladiators, Pandemonium!, Scorched Planet, Tigershark and glide.dll versions of Outlaws, Pod, Time Warriors) aren't working. It looks like glide.dll can't work in Xp at all...
All others glide titles (250 titles) are working perfectly. One small glitch - there is no sound sometimes... AFAIR this problem is Voodoo2 drivers related.
Dunno about Voodoo1, but Voodoo2 is working ok with a new hardware.