As a previous user of voodoo 3 3000 and now of a velocity 3 1000 i can say that the voodoo 3 has to be paired with a powerful pentium 3 to get decent results and even then it can be pushed only so far, the V3 struggles with the usual good looking games of its time and a lot of people expect too much from the 3dfx brand.

drianov wrote on 2023-09-06, 11:10:

Yes, because I’m testing with default Quake 2.... but this way I am unable to compare the result to the result of other cards / motherboards / cpus that I have.

I dont quite understand the argument, you would get same numbers in 1999 when v3 3000 was released https://www.anandtech.com/show/272/12

drianov wrote on 2023-09-06, 11:10:

If I run your version (Quake2 v3.20 (with 3DFX miniGL driver v1.49)) I get 85.0/84.0/76.9

this is still much too low, celeron 300@450 gets >100 fps with Voodoo3 in q2 800x600

Kordanor wrote on 2023-06-21, 15:10:

Any suggestions on what I could do here?

enjoy period correct socket 7 experience

Just to give an update here:

I went the additional step and bought a K6 2+ 570Mhz which I got for cheap (60€+Shipping). This widens my range of 167Mhz-500Mhz to 133Mhz-600Mhz.
Regarding the performance: In 3D mark its from 2675->3485 3DMarks and 6645->8151 CPU Mark. in GL Quake it's a 20% boost and in Half Life I would also estimate about + 5-10 fps on 1024x768

The crackling noise was still there though. Now in addition to the ESS ISA Card I had, I also added in a PCI Soundblaster Live.
In Wizardry 8 its still quite bad, but while you cannot get rid of it, chosing a different sound setting in the game makes it sound less harsh.
In Jagged Alliance 2 it is still rather bad.
In Might and Magic 7 (Intro) It's completely gone.

So I am going to use the ISA Card in DOS now and the PCI Card in Windows 98.

Something’s definitely not right here. Maybe a problem with the hardware involved. Possibly a software problem either drivers or something running in the background in windows. Or maybe a bios or hardware config issue. I’d try a new motherboard, maybe a different graphics card too in the process. Also maybe a clean install of windows.

midicollector wrote on 2023-10-10, 17:43:

Something’s definitely not right here. Maybe a problem with the hardware involved. Possibly a software problem either drivers or something running in the background in windows. Or maybe a bios or hardware config issue. I’d try a new motherboard, maybe a different graphics card too in the process. Also maybe a clean install of windows.

I just recorded some examples from Wizardry 8 and Jagged Alliance 2.
The stutter itself isn't the bad thing. Its the "broken" sound which comes with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC5MFEqyiIo

As mentioned I had it similarly in the Might and Magic 7 intro. That completely vanished with the PCI Soundcard. But the other stuff stayed.
Maybe any idea about configs which could cause it?

Is DMA enabled?
Have you tried using an HDD instead of an SD card?

Keep in mind Wizardry 8 is a bit too much for the K6-2+ and Voodoo 3. You'd ideally want a much faster system than this, despite it being graphically somewhat behind the times for when it came out.

Garrett W wrote on 2023-10-10, 22:10:

Is DMA enabled?
Have you tried using an HDD instead of an SD card?

Keep in mind Wizardry 8 is a bit too much for the K6-2+ and Voodoo 3. You'd ideally want a much faster system than this, despite it being graphically somewhat behind the times for when it came out.

Regarding DMA: In BIOS everything was set to auto. I now enabled DMA for the harddrive as shown here: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/windows-98-dma-mode.html
It actually doesnt save it in the Device Manager. After reboot its off again.

I mostly picked Wizardry as its most apparent there. As you can also see in the clip, the problem also happens with Jagged Alliance, and even in the starting screen. Also in Might and Magic 7 it happened while the intro played.

I haven't tried it with a conventional HDD yet.

I also found this thread with a similar issue: Garbled sound in Windows 98
However no solution was found and the thread starter gave up on the board.

I will show you my windows Reports and BIOS Settings:

And here is the BIOS:

>everything stored on a SD Card

Windows refusing to enable DMA means motherboard doesnt like you SD to IDE converter. CDROM is on separate IDE channel/cable, right?

Yeah, they are both master on different connections, there is no slave.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-10, 22:58:

>everything stored on a SD Card

Windows refusing to enable DMA means motherboard doesnt like you SD to IDE converter. CDROM is on separate IDE channel/cable, right?

That was definitely the right track though.
I just tested a hard drive. One which I had already lying around and which had some Windows ME installation on it. I probably messed up tons of stuff there, but I just wanted to check if the same issues occur, installed graphics and sound drivers, but everything works fine - no crackling. JA2 runs perfectly.

So it's either:
-The Adapter, or the SD Concept itself which breaks something
-The OS (I was using Windows 98SE before)
-The partition size (was using 128GB)
-Some screwed up installation

If you have any more leads and ideas let me know. I will do some follow up tests tomorrow.

picture or link to the SD converter?

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-11, 00:25:

picture or link to the SD converter?

Its this one, probably the most common one:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33004696515.html

ah, so no potential jumpers to try. It does have eeprom so maybe there are different firmwares/updates available

It seems like it was not the Adapters fault, neither the 128GB SD Card, but some messed up drivers.

I completely reinstalled it. This time I kept the ISA Soundcard disabled (after it was initially detected and got some standard drivers), and only manually installed the PCI Soundcard.
I dont know if that was the issue or something else, which I did before to get the ALI Board or some Graphics card running.

So for now it seems to be solved. Thank you for all your help!

If the root of the issue shows up over time, I will update the thread.