VOGONS


First post, by Linoleum

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Strangely enough, I have a problem where I got my hands on a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP gpu, but have no machine to put around it... While I was looking for another Pentium 3 machine, I stumbled on a "meh" looking Dell Precision 530 workstation with dual Xeon 1.7ghz, AGP Pro slot and 1GB of RAM. An overkill, but probably worthy of a Voodoo 3 3000... and it is somewhat period accurate-ish since it a 2001 cpu.

From what I can remember, Windows 2000 was a decent OS for gaming at this time... But any one as recent experience to share with a 3DFX card?

I don't believe any game can take advantage of a dual CPU around that time... But should I expect running into problems when playing games?

Thanks!

Last edited by Linoleum on 2024-01-24, 04:35. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 1 of 5, by DosFreak

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The extremely few games that had issues you could just set affinity to one cpu. It's really not a concern that would prevent you from playing them. You'll run into old DOS games (Just use DOSBox) and a few Windows games having issues due to cpu speed more than having an issue with dual processors.

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Reply 2 of 5, by Linoleum

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I just noticed it’s a 1.5v AGP slot even though it’s an AGP pro one. So it’s a no go with a Voodoo! I don’t remember the early 2000s being such an AGP nightmare.

P3 866, V3, SB Audigy 2
P2 300, TNT, V2, Audigy 2 ZS
P233 MMX, Mystique 220, V1, AWE64
P100, S3 Virge GX, AWE64, WavetablePi & PicoGus
Prolinea 4/50, ET4000, SB 16, WavetablePi
486DX2 66, CL-GD5424, SB 32, SC55
SC386SX 25, TVGA8900, Audician32+

Reply 3 of 5, by PcBytes

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If you wanna pair a V3 with a dual CPU board and Xeon isn't a must, something w/ a AGP4x universal interface should work. VIA chipsets were the most popular in that regard - 694D (aka 694X w/SMP support) is one of them.

There's the 815 chipset as well but apart from one Acorp board, I don't think I've seen any other 815 based dualCPU board. 694D however, there's quite a few boards with it - ABIT VP6 and MSI 694D Pro-AR are a few I seem to recall being popular, and I even own the latter w/ 2x Coppermine 1000EB.

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Reply 4 of 5, by VivienM

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Linoleum wrote on 2024-01-24, 11:06:

I don’t remember the early 2000s being such an AGP nightmare.

I think graphic cards and systems were evolving so quickly that it... didn't really matter. No one was thinking of reusing a 3 year old graphics card... this is an era when a $50 GF4 MX was better or equivalent to a GeForce 2 GTS from... less than two years before.

Reply 5 of 5, by Linoleum

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VivienM wrote on 2024-01-24, 22:53:
Linoleum wrote on 2024-01-24, 11:06:

I don’t remember the early 2000s being such an AGP nightmare.

I think graphic cards and systems were evolving so quickly that it... didn't really matter. No one was thinking of reusing a 3 year old graphics card... this is an era when a $50 GF4 MX was better or equivalent to a GeForce 2 GTS from... less than two years before.

You're right.. I now remember swapping GPUs every 10 months or so during that period. GPUs were so much cheaper back then, but they were obsolete so quickly!

P3 866, V3, SB Audigy 2
P2 300, TNT, V2, Audigy 2 ZS
P233 MMX, Mystique 220, V1, AWE64
P100, S3 Virge GX, AWE64, WavetablePi & PicoGus
Prolinea 4/50, ET4000, SB 16, WavetablePi
486DX2 66, CL-GD5424, SB 32, SC55
SC386SX 25, TVGA8900, Audician32+