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.

P3 866, V3, SB Audigy2
P2 400, TNT, V2, SB Audigy2 ZS
P233 MMX, Mystique220, V1, AWE64
P166, S3 Virge DX, SB32, PicoGus
486DX4 100, CL-GD5424, SB32, SC55
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SC386SX 25, TVGA8900D, Audician32
286 10, ATI VGA Basic, Forte16

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 Audigy2
P2 400, TNT, V2, SB Audigy2 ZS
P233 MMX, Mystique220, V1, AWE64
P166, S3 Virge DX, SB32, PicoGus
486DX4 100, CL-GD5424, SB32, SC55
Prolinea 4/50, ET4000, SB16
SC386SX 25, TVGA8900D, Audician32
286 10, ATI VGA Basic, Forte16

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 Audigy2
P2 400, TNT, V2, SB Audigy2 ZS
P233 MMX, Mystique220, V1, AWE64
P166, S3 Virge DX, SB32, PicoGus
486DX4 100, CL-GD5424, SB32, SC55
Prolinea 4/50, ET4000, SB16
SC386SX 25, TVGA8900D, Audician32
286 10, ATI VGA Basic, Forte16