Before I went for the V3 I used a Riva 128. It was a good card. Image quality was good (V3 is still better).
Some Dosdemos did not work (they work with a V3). Win3x Drivers are OK, sometimes I had problems
with the Fonts (they looked not so nice, but I was told that this could be patched.)

I stared with the same configuration as you: K6-III+/400-550/Riva128/MVP3
But I changed it to: PII-333/V3+V1/440LX

because:

- The PII is way better when it comes to Win9x/3d(fx).
- The V3 is overall the better card because most games around 2000 work much better and look better (or have less issues) with a Voodoo3.

I understand your point. I tried many 1998/99 cards lately and surely the Voodoo3 is overally the most compatible and good quality card I would use but as you said I expected the K6-3 to be a bit better than it is in 3D application. It's way better than the K6-2 but not enough. In fact I found the Voodoo2 12Mb to be probably the most correct card or the Savage4 to be pushed by this cpu.

The Riva 128 I remember from that newspapers era, is quiet fast and incredibly compatible if we consider 2000 titles should be far from it.

The Riva128 was really nice because it combined 2D with decent 3D acceleration and the cards often had TV-Out and even TV-In.
It is very fast in DOS and has there a good compatibility and VBE 3.0. All the early games run at playable frame rates (e.g. forsaken).
The release of Unreal started to make the card obsolete and also Q3 was quite demanding where you can achieve only barely playable frame rates. The OpenGL implementation is however quite good for such an old card. The Riva128 PCI features also a AGP like feature where textures can be put to system RAM. The ZX adds mainly a higher clocked DAC and the option for antialiasing.
Considering feature set and performance the card was a really good choice at its time.

If you already owned a System with e.g. S3 Virge then of course the investment in a 3dfx Voodoo was the better option.

The Intel i740 appeared a bit later, PowerVR PCX2 had more compatibility problems with D3D stuff (and was just an add-on card as well).

elianda wrote:

The Riva128 was really nice because it combined 2D with decent 3D acceleration and the cards often had TV-Out and even TV-In. It […]
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The Riva128 was really nice because it combined 2D with decent 3D acceleration and the cards often had TV-Out and even TV-In.
It is very fast in DOS and has there a good compatibility and VBE 3.0. All the early games run at playable frame rates (e.g. forsaken).
The release of Unreal started to make the card obsolete and also Q3 was quite demanding where you can achieve only barely playable frame rates. The OpenGL implementation is however quite good for such an old card. The Riva128 PCI features also a AGP like feature where textures can be put to system RAM. The ZX adds mainly a higher clocked DAC and the option for antialiasing.
Considering feature set and performance the card was a really good choice at its time.

If you already owned a System with e.g. S3 Virge then of course the investment in a 3dfx Voodoo was the better option.

The Intel i740 appeared a bit later, PowerVR PCX2 had more compatibility problems with D3D stuff (and was just an add-on card as well).

In terms of 2D quality it really shine too. Desktop, refresh and colors are great on this card. I find that the PCI version even if can go to the system ram, actully suffer from the bus quiet a bit. I tried a ZX Agp and definetely was unleashed compared to this one.
I tried both Voodoo1 and Riva 128 with an heavy game like Thief2 and maybe the rendering quality is a bit less smooth with filtering than the V1 but in terms of speed it's not bad at all.

386SX wrote:

[...] it would really need an heatsink on it cause it runs probably too hot.
Bye

It runs hot, yes. But far away from too hat. It has a design that allows the heat. I remember playing in the hot summer in a P2 350MHz rig along with a Voodoo2. It was hot like hell but never crashed. Although I agree that a little heatsink mounted with adhesive tape won't hurt.

386SX wrote:

In terms of 2D quality it really shine too. Desktop, refresh and colors are great on this card.[...]

The Riva128 was a good card but I never was happy with its 2D quality. As elianda stated, the compatibility and speed was great, yes. But the signal quality was not that great. It never ever reached the level matrox introduced years earlier. Not a few people rememeber the Riva128 for its blurry signal output.

Matrox 1996-98 cards had impressive (for its time) 2D signal quality, and still today very good even with an LCD VGA input. But considering all the other alternative 95-96 cheap 2D cards plus passtrough cables of the add-in ones that you could find those days...

I've used STB Velocity 128 with Riva 128 and the Riva 128ZX version. The 2D isn't all that bad on these. I've certainly seen much worse. But yeah it's not ATI / Matrox / 3dfx (V3-V5) / #9 quality.

The 3D is pretty nasty. I'm surprised to see people remember that fondly. 😁 It is so grainy, the textures often don't align correctly because of some subpixel flaw, the per poly filtering is a big weakness compared to Voodoo, the blending can ruin a game's looks too. But for 1997 it was acceptable I guess. The interesting thing is NV tried to fake per pixel mip mapping in their drivers. It's all bright and cheery in the control panel. It doesn't work. A little scam there.

TNT is so incredibly improved. Night and day.

The riva128 and the v3-3000 are the only two cards that have real smooth scrolling in jazz2 in 640x400! 8Bit mode,
no stuttering, really smooth. no other card that I have tested produce stutterfree scrolling on my PII-333.

Doc

I am testing the Riva 128 with 3DNow enabled Quake2 demo patch at 800x600 OGL. It's amazing running smooth at 27fps timedemo with its own unique quality but impressive anyway. Drivers are amazing considering it runs many games/bench of 2000's.

riva128 was always a cult card for me. despite its slightly inferior image quality and some effects artifacts, its speed is simply devastating, especially in opengl games. its the first and only integrated 2d/3d card that can smoke the voodoo in term of speed at that time.

the i740 is another good card that i liked, it has comparable speed(opengl is a bit slower) and much better image quality over the riva128 but not without a few drawbacks: late to market, and agp compatibility issues on via boards.

I bought the riva128 right after using 3dfx cards in 199x. I was not happy with it,
the 3dfx-Cards were more usefull these days.

Never had a Riva 128. A friend had one and was quite happy.
Since this hasn't been mentioned yet: http://www.vintage3d.org/riva128.php
IIRC the Riva 128 was somewhat overpowered at release, no CPU could fully utilize it.
OpenGL drivers weren't so good for a while, only the latest drivers were as good as they could be (see Putas again).
The most important advantage of the 128 ZX was that it supports 8MB RAM. I don't know if that makes it faster in 640x480, in higher resolutions the RAM is probably more useful (and the cards are fast enough to use eg. 800x600).
Rendering quality is certainly its most important weakness.

I use Riva128(zx) cards for DOS/2D in ss7+ builds, never failed me and it's actually my gpu of choice for this purpose. Never bothered with the 3D part.

idspispopd wrote:

Never had a Riva 128. A friend had one and was quite happy. Since this hasn't been mentioned yet: http://www.vintage3d.org/riva1 […]
Show full quote

Never had a Riva 128. A friend had one and was quite happy.
Since this hasn't been mentioned yet: http://www.vintage3d.org/riva128.php
IIRC the Riva 128 was somewhat overpowered at release, no CPU could fully utilize it.
OpenGL drivers weren't so good for a while, only the latest drivers were as good as they could be (see Putas again).
The most important advantage of the 128 ZX was that it supports 8MB RAM. I don't know if that makes it faster in 640x480, in higher resolutions the RAM is probably more useful (and the cards are fast enough to use eg. 800x600).
Rendering quality is certainly its most important weakness.

The ZX had higher RAMDAC freq if I remember, right? And maybe higher core clock frequency too?

I tried one ZX before and certainly was faster than the basic Riva 128 but mine was a cheap brandless one... so it didnt last long.