kolderman wrote on 2020-01-13, 03:29:

IIRC it was occasionally faster than a 2000, slightly slower than a 3000, and not that far behind a 3500. I don't think there was a huge difference in v3 performance - the only difference was clock speed after all, and they were just a v2sli on a single card.

I think it's just a version of the single Voodoo2 with double the clock speed. 90Mhz To 183mhz

Not V2 sli.just one Voodoo2 card

athlon-power wrote on 2020-01-13, 01:53:

From what I'm seeing, Voodoo 2 SLI only holds up against a Voodoo 3 2000, anything higher than that, and it starts falling behin […]
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From what I'm seeing, Voodoo 2 SLI only holds up against a Voodoo 3 2000, anything higher than that, and it starts falling behind. I can't imagine what a 3500 would do to it, but it couldn't be pretty for the Voodoo 2's.

I think the moment 3DFX no longer had the market lead on 3D acceleration, they were doomed. A big reason why they used to kick ass so much in the Voodoo and early Voodoo 2 eras is because there was nobody else that could hold a candle to their performance, image quality, etc. (Voodoo v. Riva 128, for example).

When nVidia got wise and started with the TNT line, and ATi started gaining traction with the Rage 128, 3DFX was essentially having to deal with 3D accelerators that were gaining on their performance rapidly, then started showing superior image quality, etc. This isn't considering S3, which eventually got slightly wise, or Matrox, or the tonnes of video cards released, all of them kicking Voodoo and eventually Voodoo 2 ass, all while using non-propietary API's (or at least being compatible with non-proprietary API's).

However, Glide still manages to squeeze out more performance with less VRAM than a TNT2 32MB, albeit with higher core and memory speeds. I'm not sure what would happen if a Voodoo 3 3500 went up against a TNT2 Ultra.

Like I've said before, however, even the mid-range TNT2 32MB I have can move, and it's the most powerful "'90s" video card I've ever owned. Of course it has a '90s architecture, but was made in 2000, like every single TNT2 I own, except the M64 which was made in 2001- bleh.

Ultimately, it came down to the fact that 3dfx had alienated all the manufacturers—including ASUS, Gigabyte, and others—at the time, forcing them to band together to freeze 3dfx out. I believe that was the real reason for 3dfx's collapse. On top of that, STB's production capacity was simply insufficient.

weilun777 wrote on 2026-08-27, 05:37:

athlon-power wrote on 2020-01-13, 01:53:

From what I'm seeing, Voodoo 2 SLI only holds up against a Voodoo 3 2000, anything higher than that, and it starts falling behin […]
Show full quote

From what I'm seeing, Voodoo 2 SLI only holds up against a Voodoo 3 2000, anything higher than that, and it starts falling behind. I can't imagine what a 3500 would do to it, but it couldn't be pretty for the Voodoo 2's.

I think the moment 3DFX no longer had the market lead on 3D acceleration, they were doomed. A big reason why they used to kick ass so much in the Voodoo and early Voodoo 2 eras is because there was nobody else that could hold a candle to their performance, image quality, etc. (Voodoo v. Riva 128, for example).

When nVidia got wise and started with the TNT line, and ATi started gaining traction with the Rage 128, 3DFX was essentially having to deal with 3D accelerators that were gaining on their performance rapidly, then started showing superior image quality, etc. This isn't considering S3, which eventually got slightly wise, or Matrox, or the tonnes of video cards released, all of them kicking Voodoo and eventually Voodoo 2 ass, all while using non-propietary API's (or at least being compatible with non-proprietary API's).

However, Glide still manages to squeeze out more performance with less VRAM than a TNT2 32MB, albeit with higher core and memory speeds. I'm not sure what would happen if a Voodoo 3 3500 went up against a TNT2 Ultra.

Like I've said before, however, even the mid-range TNT2 32MB I have can move, and it's the most powerful "'90s" video card I've ever owned. Of course it has a '90s architecture, but was made in 2000, like every single TNT2 I own, except the M64 which was made in 2001- bleh.

Ultimately, it came down to the fact that 3dfx had alienated all the manufacturers—including ASUS, Gigabyte, and others—at the time, forcing them to band together to freeze 3dfx out. I believe that was the real reason for 3dfx's collapse. On top of that, STB's production capacity was simply insufficient.

I believe this has been discussed several times before but I do not buy the OEMs being the decisive factor in this; It's probably more likely that buying STB drew way too much resource from 3dfx and they mismanaged the production due to not being hardware producers themselves. The other issue I can see is, as a chip designer if you stumble for one generation worst that can happen is you can't sell chips, but as a card manufacturer if you stumble for a generation that means you can't sell chips AND you have a factory sitting idle. This is what happened during the Voodoo 4-5 era. That means you bleed out of cash and go bankrupt maybe 10x faster that you otherwise would..

weilun777 wrote on 2026-08-27, 05:34:

kolderman wrote on 2020-01-13, 03:29:

IIRC it was occasionally faster than a 2000, slightly slower than a 3000, and not that far behind a 3500. I don't think there was a huge difference in v3 performance - the only difference was clock speed after all, and they were just a v2sli on a single card.

I think it's just a version of the single Voodoo2 with double the clock speed. 90Mhz To 183mhz

Not V2 sli.just one Voodoo2 card

Really the V3 was a Banshee 2:

• Built in 2D
• Extra TMU added over Banshee
• 22bit filter
• Unified texture and frame buffer memory
• Higher memory clock

If 3dfx was excuting correctly the V3 should have been Banshee 2 and Voodoo 4 should have been Voodoo 3.

Even that is not 100% correct, the V4/V5 VSA chip was a stopgap because they were behind, I think the rampage project was actually started after v2 and should have been in place of the V3, but it got pushed back and back until it was never released.

The VSA100 chip is good, but really it is feature wise very similar to the TNT2.