Cause a 5500 is an utter POS that's why! It's got the durability of wet tissue paper. Personally, for Glide gaming I don't see the need to hold back on CPU power for any particular reason. My Glide rig has a 1.6ghz Tualatin with Voodoo 2s in SLI. Anything that might overwhelm the V2s gets run on the primary Geforce 3 Ti 200.

sgt76 wrote:

Cause a 5500 is an utter POS that's why! It's got the durability of wet tissue paper. Personally, for Glide gaming I don't see the need to hold back on CPU power for any particular reason. My Glide rig has a 1.6ghz Tualatin with Voodoo 2s in SLI. Anything that might overwhelm the V2s gets run on the primary Geforce 3 Ti 200.

That comes off as a pretty retarded remark. In 10 years I have yet to come across a single DOA Voodoo 5, and I have owned quite a few of them. You have to be pretty mean to the cards, using them in ways other then they were intended, for them toget damaged. And two Voodoo 2 cards in SLI just cant compete with a Voodoo 4 or 5. The image quality is of a much higher calibre, and you get solid FSAA support.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

That comes off as a pretty retarded remark. In 10 years I have yet to come across a single DOA Voodoo 5, and I have owned quite a few of them. You have to be pretty mean to the cards, using them in ways other then they were intended, for them toget damaged. And two Voodoo 2 cards in SLI just cant compete with a Voodoo 4 or 5. The image quality is of a much higher calibre, and you get solid FSAA support.

Good for you! And thanks for stating the obvious performance "data" which everyone knows. I can only share my own experience- which is these cards have utterly hopeless build quality. Shitty build quality + 12 years, good luck!

sgt76 wrote:

Good for you! And thanks for stating the obvious performance "data" which everyone knows. I can only share my own experience- which is these cards have utterly hopeless build quality. Shitty build quality + 12 years, good luck!

Sorry you had such a bad experience, however, a little bit of bad luck on your end doesn't justify submitting this thread to hyperbole and extreme bitterness towards the card. It's borderline thread crapping\flamebait as is.

My first Voodoo 5 was DOA... 😜

It's the usual "ymmv".

A lot of us are buying secondhand hand gear, and you never know how that's been treated [or whether the owner has managed to temporarily cover up a problem].

Personally I've found geforce 6 and 7 series to have poor longevity - I had these in regular use at different times:

6600agp
7950gx2 pci-e [two, in different boxes]
7900gs+ agp
6800gt agp
6600gt pci-e

and half of them developed problems with artefacting of various kinds. None of the cards were mistreated, overclocked etc whilst in my possession. I only bought 2 of them new and those were 2 of the 3 that didn't fail.

With earlier nvidia cards I never had a failure, nor with the 20-30 voodoo cards I've had at various times, and all but a few were secondhand. But a lot of those old cards didn't and/or don't get much use and the feeling they are more reliable is a bit superficial. That said, I have had a voodoo 5 in semi-regular use for 5 years now.

sgt76 wrote:

Cause a 5500 is an utter POS that's why! It's got the durability of wet tissue paper. Personally, for Glide gaming I don't see the need to hold back on CPU power for any particular reason. My Glide rig has a 1.6ghz Tualatin with Voodoo 2s in SLI. Anything that might overwhelm the V2s gets run on the primary Geforce 3 Ti 200.

The 5500 isn't a hard card to work with at least for me but when it comes to quality there are a lot worse cards. Off hand when it comes the latest the gtx670 and the 680 are even worse when one factors in the cheap components used in the power vrm phases such as the weak inductors. The 5500 does a lot better once the stock coolers have been replaced and good thermal compound has been used. I got a video of mine still on youtube, all that I did was get a pair of matching chipset coolers, two thermal shield fans, four bolts and matching nuts to mount, and then I drilled the coolers so that they would mount easily. On the back I slapped on two Zalman vram coolers for an added improvement. At that point thermals are not an issue and power becomes the limiting factor in overclocking. Since I don't have spares I won't do any vrm mods but a modded 5500 can achieve anywhere between 225-250mhz on both cores however a small bump on the volts is needed.

As for the v2 I liked them for the fact that they can be used in practically any system even macs 😎

sgt76 wrote:

Cause a 5500 is an utter POS that's why! It's got the durability of wet tissue paper. Personally, for Glide gaming I don't see the need to hold back on CPU power for any particular reason. My Glide rig has a 1.6ghz Tualatin with Voodoo 2s in SLI. Anything that might overwhelm the V2s gets run on the primary Geforce 3 Ti 200.

My voodoo 5500 was in rough condition when I got it (I had no choice but to wash it because it had mud on it), foolishly I plugged it in too hastily... but amazingly it started to work after a few tries even though there was probably still some water in a few tight spots. So, that's pretty durable... I don't even want to think where it was before I got it...

The card design is super complex with many, many layers (can easily rival some PCBs made today). The chip process is even 250nm! None of the other graphics card companies had fabrication that small yet. In fact, you should give 3dfx credit for all the hard work they had to devise up quickly to postpone spectre...

I can see 5500s being more temperamental (you have to be gentle and give them good cooling! But they won't spontaneously fail), the 4500 I have on AGP 4x is perfectly solid. It can run games that are way after its time with ease: warcraft 3, half life 2, age of empires 3 etc.

Also, if I want an alternative to ATI or nVidia (for modern computing), only a 5500 can push high resolutions and offer dual output with VGA and DVI... Who wants to run a boring geforce that can desolder itself??

Voodoo2s can be fragile: ever observed those TINY little legs on the 3dfx chips? I bought a diamond monster V2 at a thrift store, and saw that some of the legs were bent. Trying to straighten them out, I made it worse and short circuited them. So I took out a fine blade and managed to separate them and straighten them out as good as they'll ever be. It works again, but scared me quite a bit. I like those cards a whole lot.

raymangold22 wrote:

the 4500 I have on AGP 4x is perfectly solid. It can run games that are way after its time with ease: warcraft 3, half life 2, age of empires 3 etc.

Also, if I want an alternative to ATI or nVidia (for modern computing), only a 5500 can push high resolutions and offer dual output with VGA and DVI... Who wants to run a boring geforce that can desolder itself??

3dfx fanatics never cease to amaze me.
Half-Life 2 on a Voodoo 4.

Laughing - Out - Loud

F2bnp wrote:

3dfx fanatics never cease to amaze me. Half-Life 2 on a Voodoo 4. […]
Show full quote

raymangold22 wrote:

the 4500 I have on AGP 4x is perfectly solid. It can run games that are way after its time with ease: warcraft 3, half life 2, age of empires 3 etc.

Also, if I want an alternative to ATI or nVidia (for modern computing), only a 5500 can push high resolutions and offer dual output with VGA and DVI... Who wants to run a boring geforce that can desolder itself??

3dfx fanatics never cease to amaze me.
Half-Life 2 on a Voodoo 4.

Laughing - Out - Loud

No, it runs just fine (although this was done on a PCI card, giving it a go on AGP 4x with a few tweaks to the drivers could provide better results):

Hey Rayman, where are you from? I see Portuguese options on that snapshot...

sprcorreia wrote:

Hey Rayman, where are you from? I see Portuguese options on that snapshot...

It's not my screenshot, sorry!
The computer I have the 4500 is currently going under repairs (so I can't get any screenshots from it at the moment).

sprcorreia wrote:

Hey Rayman, where are you from? I see Portuguese options on that snapshot...

3dfx can run a lot more than most realize but it won't look very good. Right now there is some new drivers and script mods that are allowing some newer dx9 titles to run on 3dfx cards.

Yes I know that it runs. This shot is from 3dfxzone.it, the people there are downright crazy.

I also like to try and make newer games run on old hardware just for fun. I like to see the hardware pushed to the limits.
However there are two things to take into serious account here.
A) Image Quality
Sure, the Voodoo 4 can run HL2, but look at it. This is running on the DX6 option most probably.

B) Speed/Framerate
This shot was taken at 1024x768. Have fun playing HL2 on that resolution on a Voodoo 4.

Of course some 3dfx cards can run games that were released years after the company died. The fan(atic)s have been developing drivers and using hacks to make them run those games. And it made sense at a time like say, when GTA 3 came out or Morrowind perhaps. You had bought a potentially expensive graphics card which had no support after a few months. Morrowind came out not even two years after the Voodoo 5 and it ran like shit on them if at all.

There was even this one dude that ran Doom 3 on a pair of Voodoo 2 SLI and an Athlon XP 2800+. Sure, impressive as fuck for like an hour or so. Would you want to play Doom 3 like that though?

So my point is why run games on inferior hardware when you can afford newer hardware? In fact newer hardware is often cheaper, you paid what for the Voodoo 4, 40,50 bucks?
A 6600GT AGP will cost you 10-15 bucks and you can ramp up the resolution, graphic settings and AA. Hey you can even use a Glide Wrapper to run all your favorite GLide games on your monitor's native resolution!!!!
NFS II SE at 1080p HOLY SHITTTTTTT

I hope you don't take this too seriously, in all honesty you can have all the fun you want with your 3dfx cards I couldn't care less if this gives enjoyment 😀

Half Life 2 isnt exactly a technical marvel anyway. Running it in DX7 mode won't affect it nearly as much as say Doom3 on the NV10 path.

Iam now busy with this machine, because it doesnt take a lot of time to build this system. Most of the parts i had already..

In the mean time i have changed from systeem case. ( to an older version of the paradigit (dutch computer store who sold them in 1997 - 1999)

I have also changed the abit be6 motherboard. Because i dont like it at all..
because of the HPT366 controller.. It using a IRQ from the PCI slot. (so if i put a card in i cant install the drivers for it. And i dont want to use the HPT366, because it isnt a very good one.. Disable isnt possible so have remove the board for a very better ASUS P3B-F (one ISA slot only)

And i put a promise SATA 150 TX2PLUS instead on the new motherboard.
The system having a WD WBB800 IDE 80GB harddisk.

(only i have to change);

PSU (is a crappy one, i want to buy a more power efficient one)
Maybe changing the case (liked the old one better)
(i think of changing the creative SB live to the Diamond monster sound MX300) and put the SB live in the faster win98 build iam going to make.

Then this build is finished

Iam `already`done with this build...

Last changes are:

Swapped the Abit BE6 motherboard for the ASUS P3B-F Slot 1
Swapped the Intel Pentium II 400Mhz to Intel Pentium III 550Mhz one to get more power out of the voodoo 2 SLI setup.

My configuration is:

PROCESSOR
-------------------------
Intel Pentium III 550Mhz 512KB cache SECC2 SLOT 1 ( i dont want to make this system to speedy, because i have a faster system to playing the faster games, it was only pretended to playing games in the
pentium II 400mhz area)
Placed new Coolermaster TS2-5020D2 SECC 2 cooler on the processor, removed the old green TIM ( Before cpu was about 65 / 66 degrees IDLE, NOW with decent TIM 44 to 46 degrees stock)

MOTHERBOARD
-------------------------
Asus P3B-F motherboard (having one ISA slot at the bottom) installed latest 1008 beta bios.. SLOT1

MEMORY
-------------------------
3x 128MB PC100 SD-RAM KINGSTON KT6611/128 3.3V memory = 384MB total

GRAPHICS
-------------------------
Diamond VIPER V770 32MB AGP

GLIDE
-------------------------
2x Creative Voodoo 2 12MB SLI ( i did it for higher resolution 1024x768)

NETWORK
-------------------------
3COM PCI (just for the sake)

SOUND
-------------------------
Creative SB LIVE! CT4620 with the PCI bracket expension CT4660

HDD CONTROLLER
-------------------------
Because the motherboard doesnt support UDMA66 i installed a promise fasttrak S150 TX2 PLUS (using the IDE port only)

OPTICAL DRIVES
-------------------------
Primary Master : Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1502
Primary Slave : LG CD-ROM CRD-8521B

HARD DRIVE
-------------------------

WDC WD800BB-55JKA0 80 MB Ultra DMA 5 / IDE BUS master enabled

I have also bad voodoo 2 cards suddently. Yeah..

I tested 3 used cards, and one new one, but still having the problem.. Also changed the link cable.. Ik think maybe the drivers could give some problems here.

Seems to have succes now.. Earlier i used the first driver package of the creative labs version.. Those seems to give artifacts in mortyr i tested so far.

That is a very nice sound blaster live card. Would be interesting to measure the snr. Personally my favorite PCI soundcard (using 09-2001 WDM driver with Live Value ct4780). Can load 1.6+GB soundfonts in 64bit Linux with DMA patch; WDM drivers up to 09-2001 in 98SE give digital CD audio without cable, and most compatible sbpro emulation I've seen with soundfonts inside 98SE dosbox (crystal clear audio in DOS games). Live! card is a classic just like the original sound blaster, if not, more so.

Speaking of voodoo 4 4500, that card did me a lot of good migrating from k6 2 400 to 1.3ghz AMD thunderbird. Made k6 feel like a new computer, and ran MOHAA (medal of honor allied assault) great on the Thunderbird @ 1024x768 16bit color (maybe even 32bit. Can't remember). TnL got more than enough from tbird CPU, dx7 support, glide support, and lasted until shaders became common. I think a lot of reviews were CPU bottlenecked with voodoo 4 from lack of TnL. Someone with a 1ghz+ tbird should benchmark the voodoo 4500. I swear that card wasn't that slow on my tbird (Quake 2 hovered around 60+fps @ 1024x768 with 2x antialiasing). Best $75.00 I ever spent back in the day, until I bought my favorite video card ever; Hercules Geforce 3 ti200 (blue pcb with blue ramsinks and cool skull on box 😀!). Also used Diamond Monster MX300 in those days (no pci bus problems whatsoever with Voodoo 4 pci). Was pissed 3dfx was gone along with glide 😠 ...

EDIT:

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

You have to be pretty mean to the cards, using them in ways other then they were intended, for them toget damaged

I've seen quite a few people lay cards on carpets, pillows, blankets and all kinds of material that makes static and lint. No offense to them, but that is stupid! Should always touch earth-ground with one hand (or keep anti-static wrist straps on you always), and lay cards on anti-static bags. If you have a dead motherboard (without power of course 😀), you can wire a ground-earth to it, and install the cards into it; this actually can remove accumulated static without damaging cards, since cards get grounded from slot, instead of components or positive solder point which you don't want.

Can anyone tell if its worth to upgrade from Diamond Viper V770 32 to Geforce 2 GTS or ultra?

I know these last ones are faster any way, and having a GPU instead of video processor.. But if i look at features, can a geforce 2 GTS recommended over the Viper V770 32mb AGP.. Or is the viper more richer on features?
I think an Geforce 256 DDR wouldnt work. because those are much harder to find..