VOGONS

Help complete my 3Dfx rig

Topic actions

First post, by Blinky

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Hello guys. I am 32 years old and back in 1998 I purchased my Voodoo2 (creative labs 12mb). I was so happy at the time , a 15 year old with 3d accelerator), so I have lived the golden years first hand.

Now in 2016 I am trying to build a retro rig that can play glide games and I am faced with a few problems and also need your advice.
I am not after extreme performance, as this ERA was all about compatibility and not the last FPS to be squeezed out of the system. I mean, if you had a 3Dfx card allowing you to enable Glide then you were already set, I dont remember being unable to play any game or low performance at the time even with a single voodoo2.

So the basis for this rig is a 440BX system with an Abit BF6 and a Pentium III slot1 450mhz and 256mb PC133. That's the best I got available for agp2x and I dont intend to upgrade it since I think its adequate.
About the 3Dfx card I got a Voodoo5 5500 agp already as well as a few Voodoo2s and a Voodoo3 3000. I would like to use the Voodoo5 (even if it is bottlenecked by the cpu, I suppose it is still better than the others) but I am open to your opinion here as I have faced many problems getting older games to enable glide with it. Maybe Voodoo2 SLI would just be more compatible?

So I want your opinion on the 3dfx card of choice, and then 2 more things :
1) What sound card to search for?
2) I dont have a case available in good shape and I dont want to use a new-age case for such a retro rig, do you have any suggestion on which case to look for?

Reply 1 of 2, by MrEWhite

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

If you have an ISA slot, get an AWE64 or something along those lines. If you don't, get a Vortex 2 based card such as the Diamond MX300.

Reply 2 of 2, by ratfink

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

You can always run the V2 alongside the V5 if you are worried about compatibility, you just have to make sure the appropriate glide files are put into the game folder [there are other threads on vogons about doing this].

Only other thing I'd say on graphics is that if you want DX7 or DX8 compatibility you would do better with something else as the main card. So you might want to consider something like a GF2 + V2 combination.

Regarding sound cards - if you are just running Windows games then probably a PCI card like an SB Live [for early EAX], Aureal Vortex-based card [for A3D] or a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz [does both, perhaps in software, but it have great sound quality].

If you are running DOS games then you may want to use ISA sound cards - something like an SB16 or AWE32 gives good all round compatibility and does fine in Windows too. But there are also the exotics like Gravis Ultrasounds for particular games or sound/music. The ISA cards generally don't do 3D sound [A3D, EAX, whatever] in Windows, for that you are better off with the PCI cards.

Having said that, the Yamaha PCI cards [based on YMF 724 chips] are pretty cheap and give good Windows and DOS capability, with a built-in MIDI synth [effectively a slightly cut-down version of a DB50XG]. They also have FM Synth close to a true Sound Blaster [if that matters] and SB Pro compatibilty in DOS. They work in DOS with an SB-Link cable - your motherboard may have the header for that.

Go to top of page Go to top of page
Back to General Old Hardware
Close window
Close window