Yes, a TNT2 or Voodoo3 are worth it. People here like Voodoo3 a lot. Personally I'd prefer a G200 + Voodoo2 SLI combo, but that's a matter of taste. However, if you are low on PCI slots (or you have an Asus P2-99B motherboard), definitely go for Voodoo3. A Voodoo3 2000 matches Voodoo2 SLI performance. A Voodoo3 3000 outperforms Voodoo2 SLI.

About that Sound Blaster 64, is it an AWE 64, or a 64 PCI? The former is a nice card to have, the latter is not, specially if you want to play DOS games.

I would also consider upgrading your CPU with the fastest Slot 1, FSB100 Pentium III you can find. Unreal Tournament will absolutely need it for smooth gameplay. Quake 3 will also benefit from a HW T&L GPU - a GF2 MX at least, a GF4 Ti at most. That's why I prefer a Voodoo2 SLI combo: you can change the primary graphics card anytime for a GeForce, a Radeon or whatever, and still run your Glide games natively, without a Glide wrapper.

While we're discussing 3dfx cards, what do you think of the Voodoo5 5500 AGP?

No HT&L is a problem, and so is incompatibility with very early Glide titles (MechWarrior 2: 31stCC Glide OEM comes to mind), but I want to know if any games support the VSA-100's T-buffer for certain effects that can't be done on any GeForce or Radeon card for whatever reason.

I'm planning a similar build myself, but considering whether it's a better option to go Radeon 8500 + Voodoo2 (not SLI, I only have one) or Voodoo5.

If you ask me, for those games (especially Unreal Tournament), you'd do far better with a Sound Blaster Live! instead. Sound Blaster AWE64 doesn't have EAX, while Sound Blaster Live! does (don't know about PCI64, but if it does, it's likely software-driven, not hardware).

Also, I don't pretend to be a moderator, but shouldn't this thread (and the many others like it) be in Marvin?

I agree with batracio that the cpu on this machine is a bit on the weak side for a w98 rig, it will be ok but frame rate will not be optimal in the more demanding 3d games like ut, q3, blood2 etc...

It would make a cool dos/w95 rig though. mobo has 3 isa slots, my dos machine is very similiar to this.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

While we're discussing 3dfx cards, what do you think of the Voodoo5 5500 AGP?

No HT&L is a problem, and so is incompatibility with very early Glide titles (MechWarrior 2: 31stCC Glide OEM comes to mind), but I want to know if any games support the VSA-100's T-buffer for certain effects that can't be done on any GeForce or Radeon card for whatever reason.

I'm planning a similar build myself, but considering whether it's a better option to go Radeon 8500 + Voodoo2 (not SLI, I only have one) or Voodoo5.

Yes, Voodoo5 is another option, but I'd never consider it as my first option for anything other than Unreal engine games. Here are my gaming preferences:

- old Glide games: Voodoo2
- Unreal engine games: Voodoo5
- old 16-bit only DX6 games: Kyro II
- OpenGL and DX7+ games: GeForce
- One single card for everything: Voodoo3

There is a Quake 3 motion blur demo, almost useless because the effect can't be applied to retail game, and some Serious Sam console variables that enable T-Buffer effects, also useless because they never worked as intended.

Radeon + Voodoo2 can suffer a serious compatibility problem if you don't use a special ATI-compatible V2 driver (sorry, I can't provide a link right now).

Ok , so do the Voodoo3 and the TNT2 have specific quirks and what are the pro's and con's of the cards ?

It's a sound blaster 64 pci , i already feared that it was not that good of a card .
So what is a nice sound card for this rig ? The AWE 64 has good dos support but the Live! has EAX , decisions decisions ...

I will have a look if i can find a faster CPU

memsys wrote:

Ok , so do the Voodoo3 and the TNT2 have specific quirks and what are the pro's and con's of the cards ? […]
Show full quote

Ok , so do the Voodoo3 and the TNT2 have specific quirks and what are the pro's and con's of the cards ?

It's a sound blaster 64 pci , i already feared that it was not that good of a card .
So what is a nice sound card for this rig ? The AWE 64 has good dos support but the Live! has EAX , decisions decisions ...

I will have a look if i can find a faster CPU

- TNT2 Pros: none really. You can find a GF2 or GF4 MX that is cheaper, faster and better than TNT2 Ultra.

- TNT2 Cons: DX6 only. No Glide support. No HW T&L. No texture compression.

- Voodoo3 Pros: Very good performance and quality at DOS, GUI and 3D. Native Glide support. VIA AGP compatibility. Best all-around retro card.

- Voodoo3 Cons: DX6 only. No HW T&L. No AGP 4x. No AGP texturing. No texture compression. No textures larger than 256x256. No 32-bit rendering.

And you can have both AWE64 and Live! together in the same system. There's no single sound card that supports every feature you'll ever need.

memsys,

if you do not want to play DOS games and listen to retro FM/MIDI music
then you can forget about ISA soundcards. With games of '99 they are just a hinderance.
But if you need one in your PC, look at threads about the "best" ISA soundcard and the likes.

The SB Live! supports EAX 2.0 which, with all of its bugs and glitches at driver level, can still sound nice with the games that support it. It also has decent SN/R ratio and Directsound acceleration (that is the most important feature IMO as the CPU utilization is much lower). If you are not interested in surround SFX whatsoever then almost all PCI soundcards released after '99 will be sufficient.

Unreal Tournament with all possible bells and whistles (high res compressed textures, the best user made maps, mods etc) will require a more powerful system, like an Athlon 64 or Pentium IV. If you play the vanilla UT only, a later gen. Pentium III system is good enough.

batracio wrote:

Yes, Voodoo5 is another option, but I'd never consider it as my first option for anything other than Unreal engine games. Here a […]
Show full quote

Yes, Voodoo5 is another option, but I'd never consider it as my first option for anything other than Unreal engine games. Here are my gaming preferences:

- old Glide games: Voodoo2
- Unreal engine games: Voodoo5
- old 16-bit only DX6 games: Kyro II
- OpenGL and DX7+ games: GeForce
- One single card for everything: Voodoo3

There is a Quake 3 motion blur demo, almost useless because the effect can't be applied to retail game, and some Serious Sam console variables that enable T-Buffer effects, also useless because they never worked as intended.

Radeon + Voodoo2 can suffer a serious compatibility problem if you don't use a special ATI-compatible V2 driver (sorry, I can't provide a link right now).

Why V5 for UnrealEngine1 games? Is that because they were initially designed around Glide or something? I thought the current OpenGL, Direct3D9 and Direct3D10 renderers had surpassed the Glide renderer by this point.

Too bad about the T-buffer motion blur. If that can't work as intended, then there's not much incentive to use the Voodoo5 over the Radeon 8500, especially if I get TRUFORM, HT&L, and Shader Model 1.4 with the latter.

I wasn't aware of any nasty Radeon + Voodoo2 incompatibilities without specific drivers, though...but how am I gonna know if a specific driver is the right one? (From the way you mentioned it, it seems like the problem is on the V2 driver's side.)

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Why V5 for UnrealEngine1 games? Is that because they were initially designed around Glide or something? I thought the current OpenGL, Direct3D9 and Direct3D10 renderers had surpassed the Glide renderer by this point.

Too bad about the T-buffer motion blur. If that can't work as intended, then there's not much incentive to use the Voodoo5 over the Radeon 8500, especially if I get TRUFORM, HT&L, and Shader Model 1.4 with the latter.

I wasn't aware of any nasty Radeon + Voodoo2 incompatibilities without specific drivers, though...but how am I gonna know if a specific driver is the right one? (From the way you mentioned it, it seems like the problem is on the V2 driver's side.)

Well, that's right, new GL and D3D renderers are better than old Glide renderer, but I was talking about my preferred retro hardware for retro rigs. Some Glide wrappers have also surpassed native Glide quality and speed, but I still prefer a Voodoo2 for old Glide games. Call me old timer.

You will notice the Radeon + Voodoo2 incompatibility issue as soon as you reboot into Windows after driver setup. Mouse pointer, desktop icons and other GUI bitmaps will be completely corrupted. I can't remember any specific driver that solves the problem. It's just trial and error.

Ever consider a Matrox G400?
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/g400/default.asp

I was drooling with the thought of running Dungeon Keeper 2 with environmental bump mapping, even if it was only the lava. I originally played the game with a Voodoo3, so no fancy lava for me. The Voodoo3 does play DK2 well enough though, as would a TNT2.

The Kyro2 supports EBM but i have neverevereverever tried DK2 on it.

leileilol wrote:

The Kyro2 supports EBM but i have neverevereverever tried DK2 on it.

Didn't the Kyro 2 come out on 2001? I figure all chips were supporting EBM by then, even SiS. 🤣

bushwack wrote:

Ever consider a Matrox G400?
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/g400/default.asp

I was drooling with the thought of running Dungeon Keeper 2 with environmental bump mapping, even if it was only the lava. I originally played the game with a Voodoo3, so no fancy lava for me. The Voodoo3 does play DK2 well enough though, as would a TNT2.

I've played DK2 with a V3 and a GF256, the latter was faster and better looking. Thanks for the info, will try out a G400 to see those EBM enhanced fancy lava effects...

I wonder if using 3DAnalyze to fake the card as a G400 in the ID stuff would help

I think your rig is well balanced for what it is, though I could recommend a V3 also. TNT2 is a pretty good card in it's own right, it's kinda like a GeForce 0 and comes with 32MB memory.
Of course you could upgrade to a Coppermine/Tualatin, throw in a V5 and a Live! and all that, but you might as well build a new rig for that 😜
I'm not sure though you can play all the games on that rig, but Unreal (non-tournament) runs fine on my K6-III/400 with single V2 and Windows ME 😉

Thanks for the help everyone

So the g200 is going to be replaced with a v3 for sure .
Perhaps i'll replace the sb64pci and the CPU depending on the performance of the system but i doubt it , like Tetrium said may as well build a new rig then

memsys wrote:

Thanks for the help everyone

So the g200 is going to be replaced with a v3 for sure .
Perhaps i'll replace the sb64pci and the CPU depending on the performance of the system but i doubt it , like Tetrium said may as well build a new rig then

Yeah there is no reason not to have a pre-99 AND a post-99 rig. 🤣

memsys wrote:

Thanks for the help everyone

So the g200 is going to be replaced with a v3 for sure .
Perhaps i'll replace the sb64pci and the CPU depending on the performance of the system but i doubt it , like Tetrium said may as well build a new rig then

Hmm...another option (also the easiest option) would be to keep the G200 and simply add a Voodoo 2 to it (and build another rig for faster games). SLI is an option but not necessary I guess...

bushwack wrote:

Yeah there is no reason not to have a pre-99 AND a post-99 rig. 🤣

Yup! 😁

Also 1Ghz Coppermines and it's parts are cheap these days, though I am noticing it seems to become easier to find P4 boards these days. P3 is going the way of the dodo, but very slowly.

You can find them cheap, but you'll have less choice.