Yes there is! Don't use the pass-through, but a dedicated VGA switching box.

Either I'm not very good at perceiving the video passthrough quality or I'm ignorant, but I never realized how much the degradation is when using a Voodoo 1 or 2. For me, connecting directly with the Riva128 or S3 Virge that I use, and, passing the same through a Voodoo 1 or 2 or 2 SLI, makes no difference. Or I don't realize the difference. Perhaps it's because of the short VGA pass-through cable that came originally with the Voodoo(s)?

I do remember that it was quite an issue. Magazines would report about the quality of the pass-through and also comment on the quality of the supplied pass-through cable. Certain brands came with very thick pass-through cables which was recommended for higher resolutions.

Once you go 1600 x 1200, you should easily see the quality difference.

My Orchid Righteous 3D (V1) blurs even at only 1024x768. Voodoo2 has less impact than that at least.

Malik wrote:

Either I'm not very good at perceiving the video passthrough quality or I'm ignorant, but I never realized how much the degradation is when using a Voodoo 1 or 2. For me, connecting directly with the Riva128 or S3 Virge that I use, and, passing the same through a Voodoo 1 or 2 or 2 SLI, makes no difference. Or I don't realize the difference. Perhaps it's because of the short VGA pass-through cable that came originally with the Voodoo(s)?

Same here, and for me the interference/wobbliness I get through my belkin kvm cable makes much more difference, though only when my phenom box - which isn't on th kvm - is turned on.

However I would say that using a voodoo3 the other day I was really impressed with the clarity so maybe I'm just used to the effect of v2 passthrough...

Voodoo 3 is superb. It is considerably sharper than my overrated Millennium G200 that gets fuzzy around 1280x960. G400 is on par though.

Thanks for the answers 😀
I am using a 3rd party vga passthrough cable , it is a quality one to my knowledge... I do get blurriness even at 1024*768 , it is not much but I do notice it. Plus I am using a 1280*1024 lcd monitor so it is even more noticeable to me...
The voodoo3 is a nice card but I do not want to replace my creative riva128zx card because it is actually better in DOS...
I might try building my own passthrough cable using ide-like cabling , I did that on my amiga computers that also had passthrough cables between the chipset gfx and external gfx and I never noticed any kind of quality degration...

swaaye wrote:

Voodoo 3 is superb.

A Voodoo3 3500 TV is even better. 😀

For you voodoo gurus 🤣 :

Just wondering, what is the difference between a regular V3 3000 or 2000 and a seemingly similar '3000 LC' or '2000 LC' model ?

As googling does not seem to give me much, so... 😒

bestemor wrote:

For you voodoo gurus 🤣 :

Just wondering, what is the difference between a regular V3 3000 or 2000 and a seemingly similar '3000 LC' or '2000 LC' model ?

As googling does not seem to give me much, so... 😒

Haven't heard of the LC models?

As for the regular V3's

The Voodoo3 2000, 3000 and 3500 differed mainly in clock frequencies (memory and core were synchronous). The clock rates were 143 MHz, 166 MHz and 183 MHz respectively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo3

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

As for the regular V3's

The Voodoo3 2000, 3000 and 3500 differed mainly in clock frequencies (memory and core were synchronous). The clock rates were 143 MHz, 166 MHz and 183 MHz respectively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo3

Voodoo3 3000 AGP came with TV-Out as well, and 3500 came in VIVO variant with a breakout box I believe. Not sure about the PCI versions.

I think the LC models use SGRAM instead of SDRAM.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I do remember that it was quite an issue. Magazines would report about the quality of the pass-through and also comment on the quality of the supplied pass-through cable. Certain brands came with very thick pass-through cables which was recommended for higher resolutions.

Once you go 1600 x 1200, you should easily see the quality difference.

How do you go 1600 x 1200 with Voodoo 1 or 2? V2 Sli is only good for 1024 x 768 normally.

swaaye wrote:

My Orchid Righteous 3D (V1) blurs even at only 1024x768. Voodoo2 has less impact than that at least.

How are you doing 1024 resolution with a single V1 when 2 V2's are normally required for that?

I think they mean the desktop resolution/2D resolution. The higher it goes, the worse the signal gets.

We're talking about the pass-through cable. So lets say you have a Matrox card and are driving a large CRT at 1600 x 1200. With a V1 or V2 that 2D signal gets passed through the Voodoo and degrades the image quality.

So my suggestion was to bypass this all-together and simply use a VGA switching box. That way you get the signal directly from the Matrox and the Voodoo.

Or a monitor with 2 VGA inputs

to be honest neither the external switch or a dual input monitor are acceptable solutions for me 🤣 , that's why I asked for improvement on existing passthrough cabling/switching relays...
Thanks for the suggestions though 😁

leileilol wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Voodoo 3 is superb.

A Voodoo3 3500 TV is even better. 😀

Well, when the TV out works, that is. I can't get the damn TV out working on my Voodoo3 3500 TV no matter what I do.

As for quality issues with the Voodoo and Voodoo2, I haven't noticed quality issues with the graphics card being passed into the Voodoo2(and I'm using a fairly long passthrough cable, a 6ft. VGA extension cable), but the quality out of the Voodoo2 itself isn't very good. The colors are dull(it's like if you put a gray film over everything) and while this isn't that apparent on a VGA monitor, when using a VGA to S-Video converter, there are vertical lines in the video signal. That might just be the converter, but I find that doubtful as no other graphics card passed into that converter has those lines.