Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-28, 13:07:

If you end up pairing with Athlon with a 3DFX card, check if you have the "Geometry Assist" option in the driver control panel: […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-28, 12:59:

Going with a GeForce 2 Ultra and a pair of Voodoo2s since the cards are not in use atm, also have a Voodoo 4 4500 on the display shelf I could throw in it for extra tests.

If you end up pairing with Athlon with a 3DFX card, check if you have the "Geometry Assist" option in the driver control panel:

The latest official Voodoo 3 drivers have this, and turning it on can provide a slight boost to performance. Also, it's fun to benchmark Quake 2 vanilla vs. the 3DNow! optimized version on such a setup.

heh thats part of what i want to do, I have a P3 Slot 1 already setup and working and its a great rig will be fun to see how the Athlon with 3DNow! compares.

Only the latest 3dfx Voodoo3/4/5 Win 9X/ME drivers have support for the "Geometry Assist "option and you need a Athlon (XP) or Pentium III CPU. You can't active this option on a AMD K6-II/III (+) based PC, because the Athlon has the new better Extended/Enhanced 3DNow! feature, which are needed for this feature and a K6-II/III only has the normal 3DNow! feature. Here are more infos about the Enhanced 3DNow!: https://www.anandtech.com/show/355/9

The die shrink K6-II+/III+ has the Enhanced 3DNow! feature, but still no option available in the 3dfx driver. I have tested it. After activating on Athlon/PIII systems: All Direct3D games now listing the Hardware T&L option like a GeForce card, also the 3DMark 2000 now has the Hardware T&L option in the drop down menu, emulated via SSE/extended 3DNow! But not all games are working fine with the emulated Hardware T&L option, also because this option was in a beta status?

The latest Banshee/Voodoo 1+2 drivers have no support for this option and the Voodoo3/4/5 drivers for Windows 2000/XP also has no support for Geometry Assist.

Maybe there are people here, which knows more details about this option and why 3dfx only released Geometry Assist for their 9x/ME drivers.

NostalgicAslinger wrote:

K6-II+/III+ has the Enhanced 3DNow! feature

Only partial support.

Maybe there are people here, which knows more details about this option and why 3dfx only released Geometry Assist for their 9x/ME drivers.

Probably horrible state of late 3dfx. They had to prioritize their limited resources to what worked for games at that time.

Does that geometry assist feature actually have any value? Just giving the gamers the impression the cards have DirectX 7 capabilities? DirectX's software T&L already uses SIMD.

Maybe a driver trick from 3dfx to get out more performance of the cards, but in a beta status, like the Software HSR with the latest Beta driver, before 3dfx was gone... More infos about HSR are here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/683/12

So an update to this. I got the 700Mhz CPU and had nothing but issues getting it to work on this board, even got the Ebay seller to send me another one (which never even posted). And while dealing with this I stumbled onto an ASUS K7V motherboard (the version without onboard audio) and 750Mhz Athlon and I bought and have switched out the Biostar board with this one and decided to keep the Voodoo3 for now.

Quake 2 runs buttery smooth on this setup, I don't have a frame counter, but @800x600 it looks like it's in the 60FPS ball park with no slow downs at all.

So my next question is for recommendation on what to run on this thing? What are some gems that I can run on this thing?

My next step is to find a decent case for this thing.

lutiana wrote on 2022-08-14, 20:29:

So an update to this. I got the 700Mhz CPU and had nothing but issues getting it to work on this board, even got the Ebay seller […]
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So an update to this. I got the 700Mhz CPU and had nothing but issues getting it to work on this board, even got the Ebay seller to send me another one (which never even posted). And while dealing with this I stumbled onto an ASUS K7V motherboard (the version without onboard audio) and 750Mhz Athlon and I bought and have switched out the Biostar board with this one and decided to keep the Voodoo3 for now.

Quake 2 runs buttery smooth on this setup, I don't have a frame counter, but @800x600 it looks like it's in the 60FPS ball park with no slow downs at all.

So my next question is for recommendation on what to run on this thing? What are some gems that I can run on this thing?

My next step is to find a decent case for this thing.

Well u got alot of advices, but one another can help too. If was me, id go with the ASUS board (yes i hate that brand), but it should be ALOT more stable and well build then the shitty BIOstar. I prefer GIGAbyte boards, but i dont own one of them in my Slot A collection.. For Audio u want for sure Aureal VorteX II card, for the A3D, it is insane everyone will tell u that much. But their price is usually high AF ofc, so if u cant find one for good price just get some compatible non OEM Creative Live 5.1 they work very nice for 98 games as well... For the GPU stick with the 3Dfx Voodoo III, as the card and brand is pure classic, while nVIDIa is not as interesting, no matter is similar in performance.

Another advice if, u are using some garbage chinese cheap power supply, replace that crap, with some brand like Seasonic, Delta, EnermaX whatever, otherwise it may blow up and kill most parts... For even more retro effect, you can find and use Quantum Fireball HDD, but they are load AF keep that in mind.. For case depends, what u are looking for, there are expensive Cooler Master aluminium cases, there is also the non named white chinese cases, or the OEM ones.. My advice here will be, find some cheap OEM case like Compaq or IBM one, and look ofc to be compatible, as they like to do crap stuff. And yes u can find such a case and use the PSU from it as well, they are usually very high quality... You better replace that x2 64mb, as it may cause problems, specially if all 3 sticks are different brands, and specially different chips on them... Better to find x2 128MB some quality OEM memory like Infineon, Micron, HyniX, Samsung...

Here some pictures, as u may not know what i mean.. These OEM cases are fine, only the compaq did have BS with the PSU mounting, but most of them are just fine... It is the best choice, since they are cheap, idiot proof, and they have also high quality PSUs, and also i like very much how they look both of them, so it is a win-win-win with OEM cases... They even have quality fans as well, that is a bonus too...