Hello Everyone,
I have found my way here a few times in the past but didn't ever make out exactly what this forum was before. Reading through this post I decided to go ahead and make an account.
I might be one of the youngest people to have a retro gaming system of this age. I was only 10 at oldest when the Voodoo3 came out, so I don't remember it, but I just wanted to support the idea of getting one if you are putting together a retro system for gaming. I have a Voodoo3 at current, and a big part of that is because of the price of other Voodoo cards. I never owned one until this year, but with everything always being Nvidia, ATI, AMD, and Intel I love finding parts from other companies. 3dfx Voodoo I think might be the most highly held graphics cards of all time as far as nostalgia goes, because they were so revolutionary at first, and so expensive it was like really huge if you had one. I always wanted a Voodoo2 SLI pair, but they are really hard to find and expensive if you do. Still, from playing Monkey Island I couldn't pass on having a graphics card that was actually named "Voodoo", so I bought a Voodoo3 3000.
It is stuck in 16-bit color, with a kind of fake 20-bit like color in all truth. The card is pretty much just the two TMU's off of a Voodoo2 but clocked higher and with a 2D graphics accelerator onboard. From my understanding the Voodoo3 2000 is closest in 3D performance to a single Voodoo2 but still surpasses it as a result of having 1.5 times faster clock speed, faster RAM, and better architecture. Considering that, it makes sense a Voodoo3 would be roughly the same as two Voodoo2 cards in SLI.
Has excellent 3rd party drivers out for it on a dedicated webpage all about 3dfx cards. Mine also manages to overclock really well, without touching the voltage I raised it a minor 175Mhz, and after installing RAM heat syncs I plan to one day when I start playing with it to try to push it up to Voodoo3 3500 level. The Voodoo3 3500 has better quality RAM, but with good cooling the Voodoo3 3000 can possible match the stock 3500 settings.
I actually built this for playing games like from 1990, and I don't know what I was thinking because its so overpowered for what I use it for. I didn't realize the original Diablo was so old, but I was amazed I could play it and with ease. If you are deciding on buying one, it is a really cheap way to get an excellent system for older games, but I would just say think what you want to play. It plays everything I have tried really well, but with the exception of Monkey Island 4, which functions terrible. I suspect because of the lack of true 32-bit Color support.