Reply 60 of 120, by tincup
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- Oldbie
Voodoo 2 with a P3/800? Yes. After mulling this over further I think a strong argument can be made that the V2 is the ideal Voodoo card if you're only getting one Glide card - especially a mid range P3....
- V2 has superior IQ, resolution and pixel pushing power than a V1.
- even if a V2 is CPU bottlenecked (P166) it produces superior performance/IQ than a V1 and you have the satisfaction of knowing you've maxing out the CPU.
- Like V1 it's an add-on 3D card so system/GPU configurations are wide open compared to later 2D/3D Voodoo cards.
- most (but not all) V1-only games can run on a v2 (and later) with the proper environmental variables in the config.sys/autoexec.bat.
- V2 is well paired with most period systems capable of running most Glide games of the era .
- While V3 is much more powerfull than V2 and has even better IQ (superior to V2-SLI as well), V3 is a one-card 2D/3D solution limiting build scenarios.
- Pretty much the same goes for V4.
- Same for V5 with the added consideration that the higher end sorts of systems that pair well with the V5 will generally run Glide Wrappers fairly well. This calls into question how essential a dedicated Glide card is in that scenario.
- *IF* additional performance is necessary V2s can be combined in SLI - thoughquite likely the target system specs and game requirements will not specifically demand it, and even if they should (perhaps a late era Glide game in high res with AA), the powerfull base system suited for this setup should be able to run a Glide Wrapper in the first place.
So go V2 with a plain Pentium system - all the way up to CPU saturation in the P3/500 to P3/800 range (assuming 800 or 640 res). Much above P3/750 performance return is flat unless resolution without reducing resolution below 640. For V2-SLI this point is reach around P3/1000.
GLQuake is super playable on a P166 with V2 @ 800 res (60 fps +/-), so the poster child of the "Dawn Of Glide" can be experienced in all it's flaming glory. And all the solid entries of the Glide era will be more than playable too - though perhaps dipping to 640 res for the occasional game in the late Glide/D3D transitional era
Go the Wrapper route on a more powerfull system where high res/high AA is deisred.