Fastest card you can put on an AGP 2x board is either GeForce FX 5950 or Radeon 9800. Newer cards require 1.5v signaling instead of 3.3v/1.5v. There are even some newer cards with wrongly keyed AGP connectors meaning you could fry something. I think I've seen some GeForce 6200s like that.

With the old AGP 2x Intel 440BX chipset, you can get most AGP cards to work fine as long as they are ok with 3.3v AGP 2x. There are some exceptions (GFFX 5600) but it is much less of a hair puller overall than Super 7.

Super 7 is just a nightmare when it comes to AGP. Even with cards from 1997-9. You really need to stick with cards that don't use much in the way of AGP features. That means a Voodoo 3, 4, or 5 basically. Anything else will most likely not be entirely stable. Some cards won't work at all (can't even install drivers). Other cards may work for an hour and then lock your system up. I'm sure that there are cards that work fine, but they are in the minority with those boards.

Frankly, even a K6-III+ @ 620 MHz won't max out a Voodoo5 so there's little if anything to be lost by not being able to run faster cards anyway. Hell a Voodoo3 is probably waiting on the K6-III+ most of the time.

I think an easy way to put it, bottom line, is that you shouldn't expect anything past DirectX 7 on a (Super)Socket 7. Otherwise, you would do much better with an Athlon or higher end Pentium 3.

other after market version may exist on agp???

Searches on ss7 chipsets and boards is telling me I'm mistaken on 4x agp on ss7. Though maxing out the video cards capability is desirable, the point being made is about minimizing cpu load. Though underutilized, a newer card will offload more. Between a v5500 and 9800, I'd be conflicted, whether to go with v5500's glide or radeon's performance.

ih8registrations wrote:

Searches on ss7 chipsets and boards is telling me I'm mistaken on 4x agp on ss7. Though maxing out the video cards capability is desirable, the point being made is about minimizing cpu load. Though underutilized, a newer card will offload more. Between a v5500 and 9800, I'd be conflicted, whether to go with v5500's glide or radeon's performance.

I suppose you would want to ask yourself what your going to be playing with it.

I shoved a pci card in there cause all the agp stuff these days is 4/8x while they still make pci cards.

swaaye wrote:

Frankly, even a K6-III+ @ 620 MHz won't max out a Voodoo5 so there's little if anything to be lost by not being able to run faster cards anyway. Hell a Voodoo3 is probably waiting on the K6-III+ most of the time.

True. The only thing Voodoo 5 5500 brings to this system compared with V3 3000/3500 is ability to run the same games, in same resolution and same frame rate - only with FSAA 2x or single chip. In FSAA 4x mode it starts getting slower (if only a bit).

Even 2XAA on a Voodoo5 causes a big hit at moderate resolution. So, unless your CPU is really slow and the V5 is already waiting on it or you're running 640x480, it has a big impact.

Older games are ok with 4X AA though. I ran 4X AA with SW Jedi Knight and it was fine.

This is off of a P3-750.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/v55500/page8.asp

Just did a few fast 3DMark2k benches with my K6-3 (500 MHz), Voodoo5, 1024x768x16.

I got almost the same results with the following settings:
- one VSA core enabled (Voodoo 4 mode 😉)
- both VSA cores enabled (fastest performance)
- 2x FSAA

4x FSAA was about 20% slower. Disabling 3DNow lost about 10%.

In my opinion putting a V5 into a SS7 machine is a very good solution, because you can exploit the strenghts of the card (FSAA, nice 16bit rendering quality and Glide support) and ignore the weaknesses (no T&L). Plus, you don't have to worry about AGP issues.

I agree, 5u3. Voodoo 5 is more GPU than any Socket 7 CPU needs and it works great with the platform's AGP problems.

5u3 wrote:

Just did a few fast 3DMark2k benches with my K6-3 (500 MHz), Voodoo5, 1024x768x16.

I got almost the same results with the following settings.

Wow your K6 matched up to a PIII 750? That is impressive. You should fire up some UT99 and tell me what kind of FPS you get there.

prophase_j wrote:

Wow your K6 matched up to a PIII 750? That is impressive. You should fire up some UT99 and tell me what kind of FPS you get there.

Nope, not by a long shot. A P3@750 MHz is about twice as fast in 3D games as a K6-3@500 MHz.

Just wanted to show that the K6 is slow enough to get "free" 2x FSAA out of a V5 at 1024x768x16.

5u3 wrote:

prophase_j wrote:

Just wanted to show that the K6 is slow enough to get "free" 2x FSAA out of a V5 at 1024x768x16.

... and thats exactly what I said. On a K6-2/3 system voodoo 3 3000/3500/4500 and 5500 have the same CPU limitation problems and perform almost the same so the only benefit of plugging in a V5 5500 gives u a free FSAA 2x. FSAA 4x lowers the score a bit.

Its also indicative that you get (almost) the same 3Dmark 2000 results on 640x480 as well as on 1024x768. => CPU sucks 😉

So V5 5500 PCI would be best suited in a shiny new Intel C2Q, crazy-overclocked with a soft shader program (swiftshader). In a combination like this, its even possible to run DOOM 3 and similar games (its crappy, but possible).

Ugh. Newer cards offload Tnl from the CPU and anti-aliasing is a function of video card memory bandwidth, which newer cards also have more of, aka newer card > than 5500 on a ss7 system.

T&L acceleration doesn't do jack for a K6 system. Trust me I've tried it all. It will still be too slow with those games. Quake 3 with a K6-III+ 600 and a GeForce FX 5600 is still laughable (and unstable). Most of the HW T&L-supporting games are from 2000 or later, and those games just are too much for even K6-III+. They are usually intended for Athlon or P3.

Why Voodoo5? Lets list this yet again

• Its antialiasing is superior to all cards until you get to a GeForce 8 or Radeon based on R300 or newer. Maybe Voodoo5's AA isn't super fast, but it is more than adequate for the games that actually run well on a K6-III+ system.
• Voodoo5 gets you Glide support. This is extremely worthwhile.
• It works fine in Super 7 AGP slots unlike most other AGP cards
• 16-bit color quality is superb
• drivers tuned for games that will run on Super 7 CPUs (1997-2000) and have good 3DNow optimizations
• Analog signal quality is razor sharp unlike crap GeForce cards

V5 2XAA is indeed going to be free because the CPU can't keep up anyway. Maybe if you're playing a low-complexity DirectX 5 game at 1600x1200 might the CPU catch up with the Voodoo5. 😀

I agree. And an idea for all of you out there - try running old glide games optimized for 640x480 with V5 5500 FSAA 4x. It looks just like on good old SEGA arcades! Its just awesome! 😀 For example, try playing Need for Speed 3/4 @ 640480 w/ FSAA 4x. Guaranteed better experience then with 1024x768 w/o FSAA.

5u3 wrote:

prophase_j wrote:

Wow your K6 matched up to a PIII 750? That is impressive. You should fire up some UT99 and tell me what kind of FPS you get there.

Nope, not by a long shot. A P3@750 MHz is about twice as fast in 3D games as a K6-3@500 MHz.

Just wanted to show that the K6 is slow enough to get "free" 2x FSAA out of a V5 at 1024x768x16.

My bad.. I interpreted that to mean it got the same results as was posted on the graph.

swaaye wrote:

T&L acceleration doesn't do jack for a K6 system. Trust me I've tried it all. It will still be too slow with those games. Quake 3 with a K6-III+ 600 and a GeForce FX 5600 is still laughable (and unstable).

Q3A doesn't use HW T&L though, games must have explicit support for it to use it. It's not enabled on everything.
HW t&l games showed up more frequently since late 2001 or mid 2002, NOLF2 and BF1942 were two of the first huge games that depended on T&L
some supported it as an afterthought (Operation Flashpoint)

And it will do jack. The difference is like night and day between a TNL supporting Geforce2 and a TNL-less Voodoo5. Try it on Call of Duty.

Q3A does use HW T&L. You can even tweak a few vars in-game to up triangle subdivisions if you have a T&L card and want more curvy, less polygonal. HW T&L and Q3-engines worked right off the bat, as I recall.

These settings were suggested by John Carmack in order to make the best use of the GeForce - type them in the console: […]
Show full quote

These settings were suggested by John Carmack in order to make the best use of the GeForce - type them in the console:

/r_lodBias -2 // don't use lower detail models.
/r_subdivisions 1 // lots more triangles in curves.
/r_lodCurveError 10000 // don't drop curve rows for a long time.
/vid_restart
If you want to undo these settings, just select a geometry detail level inside the game.

/r_stencilbits 8 // enable the 8 bit stencil buffer.
/vid_restart
/cg_shadows 2 // enable stencil shadows.
If you want to undo these settings, set cg_shadows back to 1.

There's even a special map made for Quake 3 to show off NV15 (GeForce 2 GTS). Gobs of geometry. Apparently this hits the CPU pretty hard too though.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/tom,184-8.html

Anyway, a Voodoo5 on a mid-range P3 will be a better experience than any HW T&L card on a K6-III+. Unless we're talking experiences with 3Dmark's synthetic lighting/geometry tests. Just consider how bad some games without any T&L support run, such as UT. A P3-450 runs UT better than a 600 MHz K6-III+, both with a Voodoo5 running Glide. I ran this myself a while back when I had the two systems set up.

Well it looks like i'm about ready to kick this project around, I have a SS7 motherboard on the way, plenty of ram and graphics cards around. At the end of the week I'm picking up a caes and powers supply, now I just need to get a processor and heatsink.

Are the Pentium MMX processors multiplier locked at all? Basicly I want to make sure that if I get a 233mhz that I will be able to use the 3x setting instead of the 3.5. I'm also planning on getting a really small copper heatsink with 60mm, It didn't sound like it would throw off a lot of heat even over-volted so I figured it should be enough.