With proper drivers I see no reason why would Voodoo3 work/feel slow.

Your cpu is most likly holdng you back. Also try few other drivers and see is any are better.

CPU bottleneck. V3 would be better paired with something like a K6-3 or Pentium II.

As said, V3 is rather fast for its era even in 2D.

So, an older gpu would be actually better for this cpu? (I already tested the ATI Radeon 7200 and Geforce FX5500, the fx I never figure out how to make it stable, and the radeon 7200 worked, but it was cpu hungry 😖, while the Voodoo 3 performed better, maybe some gpu from 1997 or 1998 will fix that)
I know the voodoo 3 is a monster, but it was what I found at the time, idk if a voodoo 2 would perform better on this system compared to V3.
I'm using the original V1.03 driver, I already tested the V1.07 one, I'll test the V1.02.11 , V1.01.00 and V1.00.00 latter

About the performance
-38fps in quake 2 at 233MHz cpu / 45fps in quake 2 at 250MHz cpu
-15fps in MDK2 at 233MHz cpu / 18.8fps in MDK2 at 250MHz cpu
3D mark99 score processor score Rasterizer score
- 1298 1596 2097
- 1542 1810 2119

ibm5155 wrote:

About the performance -38fps in quake 2 at 233MHz cpu / 45fps in quake 2 at 250MHz cpu -15fps in MDK2 at 233MHz cpu / 18.8fps […]
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About the performance
-38fps in quake 2 at 233MHz cpu / 45fps in quake 2 at 250MHz cpu
-15fps in MDK2 at 233MHz cpu / 18.8fps in MDK2 at 250MHz cpu
3D mark99 score processor score Rasterizer score
- 1298 1596 2097
- 1542 1810 2119

These sound about right.

It's not the graphics card. You are entirely CPU bound. And older graphics card will not help anything.

I would like to agree with Swaaye, but I honestly can't see how Starcraft and Heroes III can be this slow on an MMX 233. 😵

I haven't played either in ages. I don't remember. PMMX 233 is pretty slow though and both games came long after its release. Especially Heroes 3. I am sure you don't want to be on that CPU in a larger scenario for either game.

It's like how Total Annihilation (1997) requires a Pentium MMX. That is simply crazy slow for that game unless you only play little baby scenarios.

its the CPU or bad drivers/OS installation , the Voodoo 3 is actually a really nice 2D card for those kinds of games, decent speed and sharp output, with good compatibility too.

Heroes III
Minimum system requirements
Processor: Pentium-133 or equivalent
RAM: 32 MB
Video Card: 2 MB
Hard Drive Space: 200 MB

Recommended system requirements
Processor: Pentium-166 or equivalent

Actually, I think the mp3 music from the game helps to slow it down even more, maybe that would be actually fine using some A3D sound card with hardware mp3 decoder :p

But I think using an older gpu may could fix the problem, as an example: My ati radeon 7200 got 21fps while the voodoo 3 3000 got 38fps over that same machine running quake 2, so I just think if I put some voodoo 2 on it I may get like 43 or 45fps

ibm5155 wrote:

Actually, I think the mp3 music from the game helps to slow it down even more, maybe that would be actually fine using some A3D sound card with hardware mp3 decoder :p

But I think using an older gpu may could fix the problem, as an example: My ati radeon 7200 got 21fps while the voodoo 3 3000 got 38fps over that same machine running quake 2, so I just think if I put some voodoo 2 on it I may get like 43 or 45fps

Are you sure it's MP3 audio? I don't know how likely that is. It may be another format. But yeah MP3 is heavy for a Pentium MMX.

MP3 acceleration didn't really happen. It is supported by Crystal CS46xx chips (ie Turtle Beach Santa Cruz) but it didn't work well, wasn't supported well, and only worked in some programs. When these chips came in around 2001, CPUs had no problem with MP3 so the interest in hardware acceleration was gone.

I don't know about that Voodoo2 assumption. Radeon cards aren't a good choice for old games because of lack of support for some old Direct3D features and questionable OpenGL support overall.

The Voodoo2 is useless in 2D games... and unless you get two and put them in SLI, it should be considerably slower than the Voodoo3 3000.

If you want to play old OpenGL games (like Quake), and you're not satisfied with the V3 performance, you should try an nVidia card (TNT2+).

swaaye wrote:

I don't know about that Voodoo2 assumption. Radeon cards aren't a good choice for old games because of lack of support for some old Direct3D features and questionable OpenGL support overall.

...And bad support for some DOS modes.

Given the experiences of others here with Voodoo3, I think OP's problem is not the card. If drivers are known to be good, I'd check for TSRs or something similar.

The only issue I can think off the top of my head with a V3 on 2D is some 15bpp DOS games, and there's so few of those. XMEN Children of the Atom? Battlespire? No big loss really.

also i've never seen Starcraft run slow on a V3. Ever. infact I still think it could be your cache or some other non-videocard factor like before, like disk access with the 22khz 16bit audio stream/tiny smacker files going on

Yeah I've ran a V3 in my Pentium 233, it operated at the same speed as a garden S3 Virge or savage (or even the older Matrox Mystique). If anything the V3 improved 2D games (especially DOS).
Starcraft 1 and Heroes 3 do not lag on my 233, so something else is up with the system. I do know that certain types of 2D accelerators / drivers affect the performance of games-- not well documented and people rarely bring it up. ATI Rages are some of the worst for 2D performance, whereas I had the best performance with an S3 Trio / Virge.

Check to make sure your system has cache and also has the latest BIOS update. And also make sure you're not over 64 MB of RAM.

hmm, what's the driver that you're using?
Also, are you using an isa sound card or a pci sound card?
and finally, what's your fps in the quake 2 demo1.dm2? (if you have it?)

Acording to the via mvp3 with 1mb l2 cache, it should cache 128mb of ram and that's what I have, I also have 64mb of edo ram, but they must be slower (not in use)

With L2 cache disabled:
Quake 2 fps droped from 38 to 31
Heroes 3 before was playable and now take a long time to render the screen if you move the screen position.

About bios settings I actually have some questions:
Should i set gate a20 to Normal or Fast?
PCI/VGA Palette Snoop Disabled or Enabled?
OS Select for DRAM > 64mb: Non-OS2 or OS2?
Video Bios Shadow: Enabled or Disabled?
Video Bios Cacheable:Enabled or Disabled?
Memory Hole at 15mb Addr: 15 - 16mb or Disabled?
AGP Aperture Size: 2,4,8,16 or 32mb?
Spread Spectrum: Disabled, 1,5%(CNTR) or 1,5%(DOWN) ?
DRAM Read Pipeline: ON/OFF?

I'm playing with the bios configs to see what will happen with stability and performance