ciornyi wrote on 2022-08-10, 18:24:

Hello to all retro community .

Recently i managed to find voodoo 3 2000 , so there is no question to build machine based on such a retro iconic card , question is what other parts better fit this build.
According past reviews when it was actual card , it was tested on P-II 450/P-III 450 based hardware . I have various components able to build from ss7 to socket a. And im planning to fit voodoo in asus P3B-F slot 1 with P-III 500mhz. Also what best drivers would be for win9x. Any help would be much appreciated .

A P3B-F and a P3 @ 500 MHz seems like a really good fit to go with the V3. Maybe a bit on the higher end for this card, but at least you'll see what it could do in all the games you'd want to play on it.

I've never had an issue running anything but the latest 3Dfx drivers, but maybe someone here has a comment.

I recently added a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP to my Super Socket 7 build and can give some info. The CPU seems to be the bottleneck in this system.

Mobo: Shuttle HOT-591p, MVP3 512K L3
CPU/RAM: 600MHz (6x100) AMD K6-3+, 512MB SDRAM
OS: Windows 98 SE, DirectX 7
Driver: Voodoo3 Windows(r) 9x/ME Driver Kit 1.07.00-WHQL

The Voodoo3 was the only AGP card I tried that worked flawlessly in this system. It treats the early MVP3 AGP implementation as a fast PCI bus and doesn't use any AGP features, so it's an ideal choice for this chipset.

Half-Life 1 was very playable. Unreal 99 gets about 25-40 FPS average but it runs pretty smoothly on the right maps, very playable. Sims 1 was about 20-30 FPS. GTA 2 runs perfectly, 60 FPS.

I have a 440BX system I'm testing which has much better AGP support but I haven't tried the Voodoo 3 on it yet. I suspect a Slot 1 / S370 system would let you take better advantage of your card.

A couple 3DMark benchmarks attached. I need to do more testing at different resolutions and different cards, but hopefully it gives an idea of performance on this system.

Personally I think SS7 / early P2 / early celerons are perfect for a Voodoo3. Im sure you can get some better performance by going faster but I also don’t like holding a system back and P3’s will always do better with something like a GeForce1/2/2mx class card.

As 3DFx has the best 3DNow! Support within it‘s drivers it would be a good match with a nice SS7 and a 500+ MHz K6-2(+)/III(+). On the other hand a PIII or Athlon 500+ would perform even better than the best SS7 with same clock. Finally it depends on your personal preferences:

• a wide clockable, flexible and high DOS campatible SS7 with 3DNow! K6 CPU (>=500MHz)
• a rock stable, easy to setup and fast i440BX Slot1 with Katmai or Coppermine CPU (< 1GHz) or
• an rarer, more „interesting“ and fast SlotA (or cheaper SocketA) Athlon CPU (< 1GHz)

As the FPU raw power of the Athlon CPU is superior, it’s 3DNow! support doesn‘t matter, like for K6 CPUs. In all three cases i would take care of an ISA slot at the mainboard.

Voodoos scale decently with CPU speed. I recommend an Athlon.

On my AMD K6-III+ Builds I installed Win98se.
But should also work for Intel Pentium Builds.

Then install these

1a) Install your Voodoo 3 drivers from OEM Install CDROM
reboot
1b) Install your sound card drivers
reboot

Then from the SP3 package I installed
1) basic files update
reboot
2) then install DirectX driver from SP3.
reboot.
3) You may need to install USB driver update ? ( Check and see if your USB is working first )
reboot

4) Finished. All should work.

U98sesp3.exe Link:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/windows-service-packs.html

I have used U98sesp3.exe before with success. I can't speak for the other Service packs.

Its Very Stable.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-08-11, 01:29:

I have used U98sesp3.exe before with success. I can't speak for the other Service packs.

The key word here is unofficial service pack. For the sake of new users, it's always best to point out that this isn't a Microsoft product. It's a compilation of "fixes" and driver updates put together by fans.

The word "fixes" is in quotation marks because their validity is questionable and they often cause various problems. Notably, some files from WinME get backported to Win98 resulting in a Frankenstein-style system with lower overall stability.

To the OP, install the Windows Installer Update, DirectX 7.0a and the latest official Voodoo3 driver 1.07.00. That's all you need for gaming on a Voodoo3 under Win98.

Thanks for your replies . For SS7 im only have k6-2 400mhz which too slow to run nfs 5 . As for socket A , i do have 2 KT133 boards with isa slot presented on one of them plus 700 and 1000 mhz athlons in there. Seems like good option but there is issue with sb live so slot 1 is only reasonable option at the moment.

I'm my mind, Voodoo 1 pairs with Pentium 1. Voodoo 2 with P2. Voodoo 3 with P3. Rock it with your P3!