I mentioned this before in other threads: (Super) Socket 7 systems will severely bottleneck a Voodoo 5. On the other hand, a Pentium 3 Tualatin is already deep into GeForce 3 / 4 territory.
The Voodoo 5 is a very strange card, which is why - in my case - it's been sitting on a shelf for the past 5 years. It's a great collector's item, but that's about it.

Interesting reply... I will think about... Would a voodoo 2 sli combo be a better choice? In cooperation with the K6 of course... I have a brand new geforce 2 gts also lying around here.

Just my few cents; I've also had K6-2's bottleneck Voodoo 3's. A Voodoo 2 SLI would probably be the limit of video card options for such a system. Glide can be CPU intensive, and I noticed night and day improvements comparing K6-2 builds to Pentium II builds.

Lazar81 wrote on 2020-12-11, 18:47:

Interesting reply... I will think about... Would a voodoo 2 sli combo be a better choice? In cooperation with the K6 of course... I have a brand new geforce 2 gts also lying around here.

Oh, definitely! Even though 2 x Voodoo 2 in SLI will scale well beyond what a K6 can do, it will still be a very good and (most of all) COOL combo 😁. I, myself, have 2 x Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo 2 12 MB in SLI on a Celeron 300A overclocked to 450 MHz.
To me, the Voodoo cards only make sense on less powerful platforms, because this was actually their main advantage back in the day - low CPU overhead, which resulted in mind-boggling performance even on modest hardware.
For example, try and play Need for Speed High Stakes on a K6-2/3(+) with any video card from ATI, nVIDIA, etc, and then try a Voodoo 2 SLI / Voodoo 3 - you'll see what I mean 😀

The Voodoo 5500 is mainly good for three things:
1: Looking good on a shelf.
2: Fastest way to play Glide games on real hardware.
3: (Re)Create your (dream)PC from back then.
For 1 you need either a flashy board like an ST6E-RAID or no system at all, for 2 you want to remove any bottleneck, for 3 you already know what you wanted.
This is why if you want to actually use a Voodoo 5500 I'd recommend to put it into a fast universal AGP system and not worry about when what part of the system released.

A K6-III+ will bottleneck a voodoo 3. A fast PIII is definitely ideal to get the most out of that card.

Yeah, but a fast P3 really shines with a GeForce 2 GTS / PRO / Ti or even a GeForce 3. Not to mention that you can also add a Voodoo 2, which would be more than enough for the older Glide only games.
I would not use a Voodoo 3 on anything faster than a P3 / Athlon 700... but that’s just me 😀

Another thing worth mentioning: bottlenecking the Voodoo cards is a good thing - they tend to get hot and are usually quite delicate (not to mention expensive), so it’s better to do some custom cooling and/or use them on slower platforms.

I tend to use the K6 with whateva. (At this point I realize that I have to edit the title a bit)... Done 😌
I really love the P3 in cooperation with my ti 4600.

How can I detect a bottleneck?

A CPU bottleneck is easy to detect - just run a test/benchmark at multiple resolutions (640x480 / 800x600 / 1024x768 / 1280x1024 / 1600x1200). If the FPS is more or less the same at most resolutions, then you are CPU bound.

And if you are wondering, yes, the P3 (even a Tualatin) will bottleneck a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 in most games, particularly at lower resolutions. In my experience, a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 scales up to a Core 2 Duo (at least with some games/tests).
That being said, if you are happy with the performance, that’s all that matters 😀

Agree to disagree on the feebleness of Voodoos. Give them decent airflow and they're fine, that's my opinion.
VSA100 cards have VRM circuitry that often needs some tending to by now, the main chips especially on the AGP cards seem pretty sturdy to me though.

On detecting bottlenecks: Like bloodem said if you increase graphics settings but the framerate stays consistent you're likely CPU limited.
Other than that look through benchmarks on different systems with the V5500 that people post here and see what framerates they get on their systems.
Or just go straight overkill, that's what I did. 😅

bloodem wrote on 2020-12-11, 20:37:

Another thing worth mentioning: bottlenecking the Voodoo cards is a good thing - they tend to get hot and are usually quite delicate (not to mention expensive), so it’s better to do some custom cooling and/or use them on slower platforms.

Curious! Never had a Voodoo 1/2 die or misbehave from heat. Just get some stick on heatsinks and you'l be fine.

I have had a Voodoo 1 card get upset the second it was OC'd tho. Which I understand was apperently a very common practice back in the day. I guess time took its toll on this one?

That being said, a few Voodoo cards did come pre packaged with a fan. Although they only cooled one chip?

Why only one fan though? It's cooling only the TMU. I thought all those big chips would get toasty.

A nice cooling option for a Voodoo card is to add one of these brackets to the PCI slot below it:

Put two 120mm Noctua fans in there and you have a solid, quiet solution which cools the entire area of the card.

I tested Voodoo2 on Athlon64, and didn't notice any excessive temperature on the card. If you have a semi-modern case with good airflow, I wouldn't worry about overheating.

IMO a v5 needs a fast athlon xp driving it.

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-12-11, 22:01:

Agree to disagree on the feebleness of Voodoos. Give them decent airflow and they're fine, that's my opinion.
VSA100 cards have VRM circuitry that often needs some tending to by now, the main chips especially on the AGP cards seem pretty sturdy to me though.

Yeah, who knows, I might have been very unlucky, but I had three Voodoo cards die on me (one on the shelf in an antistatic bag - VRAM gone bad, and two inside computers with more than enough airflow). I was able to fix two of them, the third one (a Voodoo 3 PCI) is probably gone forever. At the time, I had failed to realize that the power MOSFET on Voodoo 3 PCI cards gets extremely hot, even hotter than the actual chip... so it basically exploded, destroying a good chunk of the PCB. Since then, I always stick a heatsink on that MOSFET and ensure that multiple fans are blowing on the whole card.

kolderman wrote on 2020-12-12, 06:57:

IMO a v5 needs a fast athlon xp driving it.

To each his own, I guess. But it's strange to me to pair a mediocre card from 2000 (yeah, I said it!), with a pretty powerful CPU from 2002/2003 😀
Then again, I pair 2003/2004 cards with 2010 CPUs... so who am I to talk? 😁

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-12-12, 02:47:

A nice cooling option for a Voodoo card is to add one of these brackets to the PCI slot below it:
Put two 120mm Noctua fans in there and you have a solid, quiet solution which cools the entire area of the card.

Ha, I thought I was the only one crazy enough to use those (although, sorry, no Noctua fans - too expensive) 😀 Also, my bracket only supports 80 and probably 90mm fans.
Here are some pics of the PC I'm currently playing with - Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo Banshee PCI / Pentium MMX 233 MHz OC @ 266 MHz (and this card doesn't even get that hot, compared to others, so talk about overkill cooling 😁 ):

bloodem wrote on 2020-12-12, 06:58:

Ha, I thought I was the only one crazy enough to use those (although, sorry, no Noctua fans - too expensive) 😀 Also, my bracket only supports 80 and probably 90mm fans.
Here are some pics of the PC I'm currently playing with - Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo Banshee PCI / Pentium MMX 233 MHz OC @ 266 MHz (and this card doesn't even get that hot, compared to others, so talk about overkill cooling 😁 ):

Nice!

I'm always in favor of using big, quiet fans instead of the tiny yet obnoxiously loud ones that were commonly used on late '90s and early 2000s graphics cards and motherboards. The smaller the fan the more annoying the noise that it produces, especially after several years of use. I prefer all my rigs to be as quiet as possible.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-12-12, 07:32:

bloodem wrote on 2020-12-12, 06:58:

Ha, I thought I was the only one crazy enough to use those (although, sorry, no Noctua fans - too expensive) 😀 Also, my bracket only supports 80 and probably 90mm fans.
Here are some pics of the PC I'm currently playing with - Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo Banshee PCI / Pentium MMX 233 MHz OC @ 266 MHz (and this card doesn't even get that hot, compared to others, so talk about overkill cooling 😁 ):

Nice!

I'm always in favor of using big, quiet fans instead of the tiny yet obnoxiously loud ones that were commonly used on late '90s and early 2000s graphics cards and motherboards. The smaller the fan the more annoying the noise that it produces, especially after several years of use. I prefer all my rigs to be as quiet as possible.

Gonna be grabbing myself one of those brackets for my Voodoo rig.

Allways glad to see more silent PC enthusiasts 😄
I use Noctua anytime I can. The amount of air they push to the noise they make is worth every penny. For computers new and old

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-12-12, 07:32:

Nice!

I'm always in favor of using big, quiet fans instead of the tiny yet obnoxiously loud ones that were commonly used on late '90s and early 2000s graphics cards and motherboards. The smaller the fan the more annoying the noise that it produces, especially after several years of use. I prefer all my rigs to be as quiet as possible.

Yeah, me too! Fortunately, in my country I was able to find new, modern coolers/fans for most retro video cards, CPUs, so all my PCs are very quiet as well. 😀

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-12-12, 07:40:

Gonna be grabbing myself one of those brackets for my Voodoo rig.

Allways glad to see more silent PC enthusiasts 😄
I use Noctua anytime I can. The amount of air they push to the noise they make is worth every penny. For computers new and old

Awesome! Yeah, I also use Noctua fans on my modern rigs, but for the retro rigs (especially because I have so many), I find them to be way too expensive/exceedingly overkill. 😀

bloodem wrote on 2020-12-12, 06:58:

Yeah, who knows, I might have been very unlucky, but I had three Voodoo cards die on me (one on the shelf in an antistatic bag - VRAM gone bad, and two inside computers with more than enough airflow). I was able to fix two of them, the third one (a Voodoo 3 PCI) is probably gone forever. At the time, I had failed to realize that the power MOSFET on Voodoo 3 PCI cards gets extremely hot, even hotter than the actual chip... so it basically exploded, destroying a good chunk of the PCB. Since then, I always stick a heatsink on that MOSFET and ensure that multiple fans are blowing on the whole card.

Sorry to hear that. Sounds like very bad luck to me. I have more than twenty 3dfx cards and only two have (had) problems, both contact issues due to mechanical damage. One is already repaired, the other is still waiting for reflowing.
The transistor on PCI V3s gets scorchingly hot though. In my experience even a slight bit of turbulence over the transistor's heatsink is enough to keep temperatures well within spec though.
Btw: You said the transistor damaged a chunk of the pcb when exploding - the heatsink between the transistor and PCB should have been enough to protect the PCB from an exploding transistor. The thermal mass of that heatsink and its dissipation capabilities should also be sufficient to protect the pcb from the heat generated during a typical transistor burn out. Is it possible your card was missing the heatsink? That could have caused the transistor to overheat in the first place. That heatsink is absolutely necessary!

To each his own, I guess. But it's strange to me to pair a mediocre card from 2000 (yeah, I said it!), with a pretty powerful CPU from 2002/2003 😀
Then again, I pair 2003/2004 cards with 2010 CPUs... so who am I to talk? 😁

No, you're right: The Voodoo 5500 isn't that great of a card, especially considering a GF 4200 Ti runs circles around it and is still widely avaliable for reasonable prices. OpenGL or Direct3D games? Forget about Voodoo 5500.
But if you want to play Glide games at maximum frame rates on real hardware there isn't really anything better avaliable. (apart from unobtanium) So if you're aiming for maximum fps why limit yourself to a slower CPU than necessary? Especially if you can run a low voltage Athlon XP-M in many KT333 boards, giving you a powerful Win9x system at low TDP.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-12-11, 23:38:

Curious! Never had a Voodoo 1/2 die or misbehave from heat. Just get some stick on heatsinks and you'l be fine. […]
Show full quote

Curious! Never had a Voodoo 1/2 die or misbehave from heat. Just get some stick on heatsinks and you'l be fine.

I have had a Voodoo 1 card get upset the second it was OC'd tho. Which I understand was apperently a very common practice back in the day. I guess time took its toll on this one?

That being said, a few Voodoo cards did come pre packaged with a fan. Although they only cooled one chip?

s-l640.jpg

Why only one fan though? It's cooling only the TMU. I thought all those big chips would get toasty.

Both chips get about equally hot imho but that fan is probably mostly meant to create air turbulence over the components. The fan is large enough to have sufficient air leaking over to the FBI chip and since most Voodoo 1/2 designs don't come with any form of heatsink or fan it's probably more of a gimmick than an actual attempt at countering thermal issues.