VOGONS


First post, by Intel486dx33

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Are there any advantages to using a Voodoo 5 AGP card as opposed to a regular Voodoo 3 3000 AGP for game playing ?
Or is the Voodoo 3 good enough ?

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Reply 2 of 33, by mothergoose729

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Voodoo 5 is about twice as fast, supports 32 bit colors, and has AA with minimal performance loss. It is the ultimate Voodoo card, other than the Voodoo 6000, which is unobtainium.

The voodoo 3 is more compatible with old glide games. I think the dithered "24 bit" color gives more of that retro, iconic voodoo look. A voodoo 3 is also way cheaper in the used market.

When it comes to games that run too slow on the voodoo 3, the voodoo 5 is not that much faster IMO, and later nvidia and ati cards beat it in performance, price, features, and image quality.

Reply 4 of 33, by matze79

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Voodoo 5 just sucks,

you can clearly see that they had no other chance then using multiple gpus to compete against the geforce 2 which came at the same time out.
if it really had hit the market in 1999 it would be the killer card but due to several problems it had to compete against more modern cards and offers also the disadvantage of having no t&l at all, there is nothing special only glide support and the coolness factor of having a "3DFX Card".

i rather would opt for using a GeForce 2 or later and combine that with a V2 Card for Optimum compatibility.
So you get Proper Glide support. And also proper 3D Speed in Direct3D.

Its not worth the Money just a ancient Relict where you can spend tons of $$$ and if you are happy you get the VSA Dead Feature too.
Broken BGA Joints, Thermalproblems and so on.

It also has no proper 32bit Support at all which was already common on all videocards in 2000..

Just keep your V3.

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Reply 5 of 33, by cyclone3d

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matze79 wrote:
Voodoo 5 just sucks, […]
Show full quote

Voodoo 5 just sucks,

you can clearly see that they had no other chance then using multiple gpus to compete against the geforce 2 which came at the same time out.
if it really had hit the market in 1999 it would be the killer card but due to several problems it had to compete against more modern cards and offers also the disadvantage of having no t&l at all, there is nothing special only glide support and the coolness factor of having a "3DFX Card".

i rather would opt for using a GeForce 2 or later and combine that with a V2 Card for Optimum compatibility.
So you get Proper Glide support. And also proper 3D Speed in Direct3D.

Its not worth the Money just a ancient Relict where you can spend tons of $$$ and if you are happy you get the VSA Dead Feature too.
Broken BGA Joints, Thermalproblems and so on.

It also has no proper 32bit Support at all which was already common on all videocards in 2000..

Just keep your V3.

Hmmm.. I've still got the Voodoo 5 5500 AGP card I bought new in the store. I've also got another working Voodoo 5 5500 AGP card I bought a while back to have as a spare.

Fastest retail 3dfx card. 2d output quality is great AND it plays games a whole lot better than a Voodoo 3.

Sure it has its limitations, but for Glide games it rocks. And some early D3D/Glide games look a lot better with Glide than with D3D.

The Geforce 2 color output is also not as good as the Voodoo 3/5 cards.

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Reply 6 of 33, by matze79

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As said only if you use Glide its worth the money 😀

And for GeForce 2.. it hardly depends on the Model, there one`s with HQ Video Out and some that suck a lot..

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Reply 7 of 33, by The Serpent Rider

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and has AA with minimal performance loss

Ha ha... no.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 9 of 33, by duga3

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I will sneak in a question of my own here, does the Voodoo 5500 suffer from microstuttering or interlaced line tearing or similar problems as the later NVIDIA SLI graphics cards do? It does have 2 chips after all... I am really picky about those things so would like to hear an answer from someone like-minded who has actually used it.

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Reply 10 of 33, by cyclone3d

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3dfx SLI renders ever other line which is completely different from how nVidia and ATI do multiple GPU rendering.

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Reply 11 of 33, by duga3

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Thanks, so if the lines are alternated like that and lets say there is "screen tearing" going on then I would expect the image would look a bit like this if you know what I mean:

distortion3.jpg

Can you or anyone else confirm this issue does exist on V5? If yes, is there anything else apart from VSYNC that can be done about it?

And if you use 4xAA does that change things in regards to rendering and/or line alternating?

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Reply 12 of 33, by cyclone3d

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I've never seen anything that horrible although there can be a bit of a shimmer if the GPUs aren't synced perfectly.

You really don't notice it unless you are looking for it though.. or at least I rarely did and I can see the separate frames in movies unless I specifically make myself not focus on it and 60fps is about the minimum I feel comfortable playing games at.. and if I try to I can see the separate frames at 60fps.

I never had V2 SLI though so I am not sure if a V2 SLI is more prone to it than a V5-5500 is.

See here:
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/3dfx

A disadvantage of 3dfx's SLI multi-GPU solution (V2 SLI/V5 for consumer cards) is that it is somewhat prone to slight horizontal artifacts somewhat akin to screen tearing, which results from the multiple chips not fully working synchronously. This can be prevented by activating VSync in the drivers or in the games, a solution which itself has the problem of causing mouse lag in many cases.

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Reply 14 of 33, by Doornkaat

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

[...]is the Voodoo 3 good enough ?

Do you have one?
Are you satisfied with its performance?
If you are it's good enough. 😉
If you aren't, with a Voodoo 5 5500 you'll get anywhere from 1.5x to 3x the performance @ 1024x768 on a fast CPU - depending on games.

matze79 wrote:

i rather would opt for using a GeForce 2 or later and combine that with a V2 Card for Optimum compatibility.
So you get Proper Glide support. And also proper 3D Speed in Direct3D.

I definitely agree. The Voodoo 5 5500 is not a bad card but it's not that fast either. If you can get one for cheap do it. But don't fall for the hype. The greatest performance advantage will be in late Win98 games where Glide doesn't matter that much anyway.
Maybe instead of a GeForce 2 get a Geforce 4 Ti 4200 as a 2D/3D card - those are readily avaliable (at least over here), already overkill for Win98, have great compatibility and they will run circles around any Voodoo.
Or simply run nGlide on a DX9 card. 🤣

Reply 15 of 33, by RaverX

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

Are there any advantages to using a Voodoo 5 AGP card as opposed to a regular Voodoo 3 3000 AGP for game playing ?
Or is the Voodoo 3 good enough ?

Depends. For late glide games (UT99) V5 can be much better, for example you can play UT99 at a good framerate in 1600x1200. But, at the same time, most of those games can also run under OpenGL or Direct3D, you can build a much faster machine and cheaper.

So, I'd say that for game playing V5 is not worth it (because it costs a lot right now).

If you are a collector, then it's a different story 😀

Reply 16 of 33, by Marmes

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Voodoo5 for me at least is like a collectors item, like voodoo4 4500. For 32bit colour, there are a lot more better options. Like geforce, kyroII etc.
Voodoo3 for retro is very good. I would stick with voodoo3.

Reply 17 of 33, by Jasin Natael

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Voodoo 5 is great card, but not for the price.

If you have a Voodoo 3 I would stick with that, for Win9x stuff it's pretty hard to beat for price/compatibility.