I don't think I should say this was a "modern" system but...

I had no problems using a single Voodoo 2 (non SLI!!!) with a Geforce 4 Ti 4200. Worked fine for every glide game from the usual to the obscure. Unofficial (forgot which) drivers worked really well but obviously the framerate was poor compared to what you could push out of a competent glide wrapper.

Though I've had a question myself on this (not to hijack your thread or anything):

My motherboard has PCI slots so I can easily put a voodoo 2 card into my system but I'm more wondering can it actually interface with a modern DVI only GPU when you use the VGA->DVI plug?

Voodoo2 is 5V PCI card, so even PCI 2.3 motherboards may be incompatible (if manufacturer have chosen to drop 5V support). PCI 3.0 IS incompatible, but these slots have 3.3V key and the card just don't fit.
Use official W2k drivers. The last version is 1.02.02.
Plus use unofficial Voodoo2 display applet, the official one lacks V-Sync option.
With WinXp - you must set Voodoo2 services (fxgpio.sys, fxptl.sys) as kernel services (start=1).
And - it looks like there is no glide 2.1.1 support (glide.dll, sst1init.dll) in WinXp. Affected games are Cybergladiators, Mechwarrior 2: 31st Century Combat 3dfx, Pandemonium!, Scorched Earth. Use nGlide.
My test PC is P4 3.2E/Asus P4P800 SE/Radeon HD2600 Pro Agp. Almost all glide2x and glide3x games are working perfectly. There are freezes/glitches but they all are game related...

The most modern Voodoo I used was a V2 in a late P4 Northwood - with no cooling whatsoever. It was stable, but I got paranoid about frying and took it out, and I didn't want to attach some heat sink or fan to it. Clocked at 93mhz FYI.

No SLI either, but even then it's surprisingly fast to me.

DracoNihil wrote:

My motherboard has PCI slots so I can easily put a voodoo 2 card into my system but I'm more wondering can it actually interface with a modern DVI only GPU when you use the VGA->DVI plug?

"Interface"?

It simply acts as a passthrough for the VGA signal, which the DVI port does output as long as it's DVI-I. Running a 1920x1080 signal through there won't exactly benefit quality however.

@OP: Stating the obvious, the main pitfall here may be that you realize that you're suddenly limited to about 1024x768x16, with not as stable frame rates to boot, and may curse the old hardware for that and throw it out 🤣

Believe it or not I really would benefit from that bottleneck.

Gamecollector wrote:

Voodoo2 is 5V PCI card, so even PCI 2.3 motherboards may be incompatible (if manufacturer have chosen to drop 5V support). PCI 3.0 IS incompatible, but these slots have 3.3V key and the card just don't fit.

PCI 3.3v only slots are rare in PCs as I don't think anyone actually bothered to support PCI 3.0. The only machines I've seen with 3.3v keyed slots are PCI-X based, which was early Powermac G5s and a few PC server boards. All the consumer stuff is 5v. The PCI 2.3 standard removed 5v only keyed expansion cards, not support from the motherboard slots.

Interesting...
There are PCI 2.3 slots even on Z77 based motherboards. But I'm not sure Windows Xp is supporting this chipset...
Core I7 3770K + Voodoo2? 😀

DracoNihil wrote:

My motherboard has PCI slots so I can easily put a voodoo 2 card into my system but I'm more wondering can it actually interface with a modern DVI only GPU when you use the VGA->DVI plug?

DVI only, as in digital (DVI-D) only? That wouldn't work. It must be a DVI-I output (have the "analog cross") in order for the DVI->VGA plug to work (DVI-I carries both DVI digital and VGA on one physical connector - the adapter plug will not physically connect to digital only outputs; they're keyed to prevent it), but a lot of newer graphics adapters have gone to DVI-D (for some, if not all, of their DVI outputs). If your card has a DVI-I connector (like most of the earlier graphics cards to support DVI (e.g. GeForce 4, GeForce FX, Radeon 9800, etc), put the DVI->VGA adapter on there, and route that through the Voodoo 2. If your card lacks DVI-I or VGA, but has DisplayPort, you can get a DisplayPort to VGA device to put between the card and the Voodoo 2 for pass-through to work. I'm not aware of any all-digital card that doesn't have DP outputs.

To the original question: I'm not sure a Voodoo 2 in a PCIe to PCI adapter would fit into a standard case - the adapters I've seen are usually designed to connect to half-height expansion cards in order to fit right.

The card has the analog connector pins so a DVI to VGA adapter will work, I've never fully understood how the VooDoo2 card functioned with that whole cord thingy.

DracoNihil wrote:

The card has the analog connector pins so a DVI to VGA adapter will work, I've never fully understood how the VooDoo2 card functioned with that whole cord thingy.

It doesn't provide its own 2D/VGA - it's just a 3D accelerator. So it takes VGA in from another adapter that draws your desktop, terminal, etc and then when things switch into 3D it provides the 3D rendering. Voodoo 3 and later added in the remaining functionality for 2D/VGA output, so they don't rely on another card in the system.

If memory serves there are some variations on the Voodoo/Voodoo2 design that have a VGA controller built-in to the board (so they don't have to do pass-through), and there's also variations that have no VGA I/O that are designed just to be SLI slave cards.

In fact, you don't even have to connect the Voodoo/Voodoo2 to another graphics card if you don't mind switching your monitor's connection every time you start up a 3D-accelerated game. That would be especially useful if your monitor already has a VGA connector that you're not already using.

Jorpho wrote:

In fact, you don't even have to connect the Voodoo/Voodoo2 to another graphics card if you don't mind switching your monitor's connection every time you start up a 3D-accelerated game. That would be especially useful if your monitor already has a VGA connector that you're not already using.

I have VGA connectors to my monitor and a button to switch between analog and digital, but I thought the voodoo 1\2 needed a VGA card pass through in order to work properly?

You don't understand it indeed...

The cards send their own signal as soon as a 3D application is started. The 2D card is completely irrelevant at this point. The whole passthrough thing is just for people without two monitors/VGA inputs, so to speak.

Jorpho wrote:

In fact, you don't even have to connect the Voodoo/Voodoo2 to another graphics card if you don't mind switching your monitor's connection every time you start up a 3D-accelerated game. That would be especially useful if your monitor already has a VGA connector that you're not already using.

This too. I keep assuming folks are going to hook up their Voodoo2 to a CRT with a single VGA cable though, where this probably wouldn't be possible. 😊

No concrete answer was provided so I'm necroposting here with a test report.

Card: Diamond Monster 3D Rev.E 4MB
Board: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H Rev.1.1 (has ITE IT8892E PCIe to PCI bridge)
OS: XP SP3
Driver: voodoo1-win2k-winxp.zip

Game benchmarks:

1. Quake 2 ver.3.20 timedemo demo1
   • 320x240: 56.4fps.
   • 640x480: 21.6fps.
2. Quake 3 ver. 1.32 timedemo four
   • 512x384 low detail: 30.9fps.
   • 640x480 high detail: 20.5fps.
3. Unreal Gold ver. 227i timedemo flyby
   • 512x384 low detail: 29.0fps.
   • 640x480 high detail: 16.5fps.

Quake3 GL extensions page

A little bit of a surprise to me that it works OK and I haven't encountered the checkerboard pattern bug (1, 2) associated with running Voodoo 1 on fast systems.

Edit: for information, this XP driver only supports Glide and no Direct3D.
Edit: added HWiNFO screenshot.