Today I've been benchmarking some AGP cards again. This is starting to feel like work. 😡 Well, after I'm finished with the Rage 128 GL that's currently doing them 3DMarks I'll have, at the very least, tried every card I have on at least one computer.

Some cards I will have to test on another computer, though, thanks to the picky motherboard on my P3 build that was in action today. Whether a card works at all seems basically a crapshoot with this piece of sh... uh, fine technology.

But I suppose that can wait.

Only declare an AGP card dead if it's not working in at least 10 different systems from a wide time range. 🙈

I recently managed to (separately) acquire two matching make and model Voodoo 2s and have been having pretty much no luck getting them working in SLI. They work independently just fine, but it won't detect SLI with both of them. I took them out and put them side by side and saw what I should have noticed from the start:

So hmm yeah, one has the old 3Dfx logo and the other has the new 3dfx logo. Oh look at that, the old one has a VER:2.0 label and the new one has a VER:2.1 label. Cool - so this apparently makes them mismatched enough to not work with the reference drivers. Unfortunately, I can't even get them to work with any of the hacked drivers (FastVoodoo2, etc) either. I think might be because this looks like a revision to the entire reference design, including all the ICs, not just some manufacturer differences to the same reference design that some driver hacks can sort out. Maybe?

Anyway, I'm starting to think these absolutely won't work in SLI, dammit! 😫

ubiq wrote on 2023-08-10, 01:03:

I recently managed to (separately) acquire two matching make and model Voodoo 2s and have been having pretty much no luck getting them working in SLI. They work independently just fine, but it won't detect SLI with both of them. I took them out and put them side by side and saw what I should have noticed from the start:IMG_5787.jpegIMG_5790.jpeg

So hmm yeah, one has the old 3Dfx logo and the other has the new 3dfx logo. Oh look at that, the old one has a VER:2.0 label and the new one has a VER:2.1 label. Cool - so this apparently makes them mismatched enough to not work with the reference drivers. Unfortunately, I can't even get them to work with any of the hacked drivers (FastVoodoo2, etc) either. I think might be because this looks like a revision to the entire reference design, including all the ICs, not just some manufacturer differences to the same reference design that some driver hacks can sort out. Maybe?

Anyway, I'm starting to think these absolutely won't work in SLI, dammit! 😫

I had a similar compatibility issue with two seemingly identical GeForce FX 5500s. Cosmetically they appeared to be identical, but only one of them would work in a particular motherboard.

Two FX 5500s but only one works in my 440EX

It's possible that your driver problems might go away in a different motherboard. I don't think this will fix the SLI issue though.

SLI could be failing for a number of different reasons, such as the card BIOS being different, chip revisions, and different speed or behavior of your memory chips.

shamino wrote on 2023-08-07, 09:08:

Several years ago I used Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy, the stuff that's totally permanent, to attach a Socket-7 heatsink to the n […]
Show full quote

Several years ago I used Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy, the stuff that's totally permanent, to attach a Socket-7 heatsink to the northbridge chip of an MSI 875P Neo.
I had big plans for this late P4 motherboard, but then I discovered I didn't like it, and aborted the project.

Anyway, yesterday I grabbed this board off the shelf. To my surprise the heatsink was loose in the bag.
IMG_20230806_162735493_HDR_shrunk.jpg
Huh. I guess it wasn't permanent after all.

I remember playing with the weight I put on it while the epoxy was curing, and I think the heatsink moved a little - but I thought it was solid. The 10 year test says otherwise.
It's an oversized heatsink and I guess it got pushed against.

Haven't tested the board but I think the chipset is undamaged. I just need to pick the epoxy off it now. Might use sandpaper if I have to.
It's a good thing it wasn't adhered strongly enough to rip the chip apart. Somebody had a picture of that happening recently.

Be careful with those exposed dies. The epoxy holding them onto the substrate can fail, given enough stress. Ask me how I know.

Thermal tape ripped CPU die off of package substrate

ubiq wrote on 2023-08-10, 01:03:

I recently managed to (separately) acquire two matching make and model Voodoo 2s and have been having pretty much no luck getting them working in SLI. They work independently just fine, but it won't detect SLI with both of them. I took them out and put them side by side and saw what I should have noticed from the start:IMG_5787.jpegIMG_5790.jpeg

So hmm yeah, one has the old 3Dfx logo and the other has the new 3dfx logo. Oh look at that, the old one has a VER:2.0 label and the new one has a VER:2.1 label. Cool - so this apparently makes them mismatched enough to not work with the reference drivers. Unfortunately, I can't even get them to work with any of the hacked drivers (FastVoodoo2, etc) either. I think might be because this looks like a revision to the entire reference design, including all the ICs, not just some manufacturer differences to the same reference design that some driver hacks can sort out. Maybe?

Anyway, I'm starting to think these absolutely won't work in SLI, dammit! 😫

What era are these from?
I mean what games are they best for?

I know for instance that CnC Tiberium Sun can use the Glide API, I think Unreal Torurnament can also use it too.
Can I get a couple of these cards run them through a Geforce 6200 and ....?
Or would they be more like Resident Evil era, which is as far as I know Windows 95 not 98.

Phils computerlab did a video about them a while ago and showed it in Tomb Raider but is there a wider use case?

Did the later Voodoo cards still use the Glide API but were better at it... Or what, whats the deal with them and why are they so expensive?

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-08-10, 02:33:

shamino wrote on 2023-08-07, 09:08:

Several years ago I used Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy, the stuff that's totally permanent, to attach a Socket-7 heatsink to the n […]
Show full quote

Several years ago I used Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy, the stuff that's totally permanent, to attach a Socket-7 heatsink to the northbridge chip of an MSI 875P Neo.
I had big plans for this late P4 motherboard, but then I discovered I didn't like it, and aborted the project.

Anyway, yesterday I grabbed this board off the shelf. To my surprise the heatsink was loose in the bag.
IMG_20230806_162735493_HDR_shrunk.jpg
Huh. I guess it wasn't permanent after all.

I remember playing with the weight I put on it while the epoxy was curing, and I think the heatsink moved a little - but I thought it was solid. The 10 year test says otherwise.
It's an oversized heatsink and I guess it got pushed against.

Haven't tested the board but I think the chipset is undamaged. I just need to pick the epoxy off it now. Might use sandpaper if I have to.
It's a good thing it wasn't adhered strongly enough to rip the chip apart. Somebody had a picture of that happening recently.

Be careful with those exposed dies. The epoxy holding them onto the substrate can fail, given enough stress. Ask me how I know.

Thermal tape ripped CPU die off of package substrate

Wow, I had no idea tape could do that.
I don't know if the heatsink got pulled really hard or it just "fell off". But my motherboard storage might be to blame. It needs improvement.
One of those ring hooks is missing from the board, which is why I epoxied the heatsink originally.
I might replace that hook sometime, if I come across one on a junk board.

ubiq wrote on 2023-08-10, 01:03:

I recently managed to (separately) acquire two matching make and model Voodoo 2s and have been having pretty much no luck getting them working in SLI. They work independently just fine, but it won't detect SLI with both of them. I took them out and put them side by side and saw what I should have noticed from the start:IMG_5787.jpegIMG_5790.jpeg

So hmm yeah, one has the old 3Dfx logo and the other has the new 3dfx logo. Oh look at that, the old one has a VER:2.0 label and the new one has a VER:2.1 label. Cool - so this apparently makes them mismatched enough to not work with the reference drivers. Unfortunately, I can't even get them to work with any of the hacked drivers (FastVoodoo2, etc) either. I think might be because this looks like a revision to the entire reference design, including all the ICs, not just some manufacturer differences to the same reference design that some driver hacks can sort out. Maybe?

Anyway, I'm starting to think these absolutely won't work in SLI, dammit! 😫

I'm amazed that 3Dfx sold people on the idea of SLI when they couldn't even guarantee that 2 cards would work together.
Your pair of cards is a very realistic scenario. You buy a card, then a year later you buy another one, and obviously it will be a little different.

What did people do back then? Keep returning cards to the store until they got lucky? Retailers must have loved that.

ubiq wrote on 2023-08-10, 01:03:

I recently managed to (separately) acquire two matching make and model Voodoo 2s and have been having pretty much no luck getting them working in SLI. They work independently just fine, but it won't detect SLI with both of them. I took them out and put them side by side and saw what I should have noticed from the start:IMG_5787.jpegIMG_5790.jpeg

So hmm yeah, one has the old 3Dfx logo and the other has the new 3dfx logo. Oh look at that, the old one has a VER:2.0 label and the new one has a VER:2.1 label. Cool - so this apparently makes them mismatched enough to not work with the reference drivers. Unfortunately, I can't even get them to work with any of the hacked drivers (FastVoodoo2, etc) either. I think might be because this looks like a revision to the entire reference design, including all the ICs, not just some manufacturer differences to the same reference design that some driver hacks can sort out. Maybe?

Anyway, I'm starting to think these absolutely won't work in SLI, dammit! 😫

I'm pretty sure there's some simple reason other than different logos on the 3dfx chips why SLI doesn't want to work with your cards out of the box.
I have the very same card as the left one on your photos combined with a Creative one and they work fine in SLI despite the Creative one being the more "classical" 12MB design with RAMs on front and back and the other one only having the RAMs on the front.
Did you check your SLI cable? Did you follow the installation instructions of the FastVoodoo driver? Did you swapp slots? How do you determine if SLI is working or not?

As a sidenote: I have never seen a Voodoo 2 card having a heatsink copper area under the TMU on the backside. So they must have known (of course they knew...) these chips are running hot and actively worked against this by design.
I'm not sure if this alone will be enough but it's better than nothing.

Received a "retro" (if it can be called that) package of two 775/Intel 865 chipsetted boards that I sent, back.

Not very happy about this, but it had to happen eventually.

Out of the thousands of items I've sold on eBay, I can count on one hand how many times I've had an item returned. It does happen, but it's pretty rare.

I sold a MacBook once with the battery removed (as indicated in the listing) to save the buyer the weight on shipping, since it was already dead. The buyer then opens a claim because it doesn't work when it's not plugged in. Despite the description clearly stating this, I was forced to accept the return. I had to pay for shipping both ways, which sunk any profit I would make on it in the future.

Even perfectly good items can get sent back for stupid reasons.

Today was a "low energy day" -- all I managed to do was switch the PSU on my Barton machine to a better-suited one, i.e. the one I put in there gives more juice on the 3.3 and 5 volt rails than the previous one.

(Neither one is a retro PSU; in fact, I think the Seasonic unit I put in there might still be under manufacturer warranty..?)

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-08-10, 18:50:

Out of the thousands of items I've sold on eBay, I can count on one hand how many times I've had an item returned. It does happen, but it's pretty rare.

I sold a MacBook once with the battery removed (as indicated in the listing) to save the buyer the weight on shipping, since it was already dead. The buyer then opens a claim because it doesn't work when it's not plugged in. Despite the description clearly stating this, I was forced to accept the return. I had to pay for shipping both ways, which sunk any profit I would make on it in the future.

Even perfectly good items can get sent back for stupid reasons.

It wasn't eBay, just a Craigslist-like classifieds site (OLX). Buyer didn't file any claim - just redirected the parcel to the local courier headquarters, then waited until the 7 day limit was up, and parcel got sent back.

By the way both boards would meet his criteria - 775, AGP, has to run 98SE - I'm running 98SE off a 120GB SATA HDD extracted off a Xbox360 on one of them as I write this post, and I bet the other one (MSI 865PE Neo3-V) could also run it flawlessly (I have another empty 120GB SATA drive as well 😁)

Fortunately shipping was covered by the classified site both ways, so I guess I didn't lose anything besides what I would have been paid on the mainboards + CPUs (2x Cedar Mill 631)

ChrisK wrote on 2023-08-10, 08:24:

I'm pretty sure there's some simple reason other than different logos on the 3dfx chips why SLI doesn't want to work with your c […]
Show full quote

ubiq wrote on 2023-08-10, 01:03:

I recently managed to (separately) acquire two matching make and model Voodoo 2s and have been having pretty much no luck getting them working in SLI. They work independently just fine, but it won't detect SLI with both of them. I took them out and put them side by side and saw what I should have noticed from the start:IMG_5787.jpegIMG_5790.jpeg

So hmm yeah, one has the old 3Dfx logo and the other has the new 3dfx logo. Oh look at that, the old one has a VER:2.0 label and the new one has a VER:2.1 label. Cool - so this apparently makes them mismatched enough to not work with the reference drivers. Unfortunately, I can't even get them to work with any of the hacked drivers (FastVoodoo2, etc) either. I think might be because this looks like a revision to the entire reference design, including all the ICs, not just some manufacturer differences to the same reference design that some driver hacks can sort out. Maybe?

Anyway, I'm starting to think these absolutely won't work in SLI, dammit! 😫

I'm pretty sure there's some simple reason other than different logos on the 3dfx chips why SLI doesn't want to work with your cards out of the box.
I have the very same card as the left one on your photos combined with a Creative one and they work fine in SLI despite the Creative one being the more "classical" 12MB design with RAMs on front and back and the other one only having the RAMs on the front.
Did you check your SLI cable? Did you follow the installation instructions of the FastVoodoo driver? Did you swapp slots? How do you determine if SLI is working or not?

As a sidenote: I have never seen a Voodoo 2 card having a heatsink copper area under the TMU on the backside. So they must have known (of course they knew...) these chips are running hot and actively worked against this by design.
I'm not sure if this alone will be enough but it's better than nothing.

I dunno man. The cards appear to have been manufactured almost 2 years apart and I'm guessing are based off the reference design from 3Dfx. I think it's not unlikely that an update to the reference design could break SLI compatibility. Granted, other than the heatsinking, the only differences I can see visually are 3 * through-hole caps swapped for SMDs and different ram.

So. Yes, I swapped slots, motherboards, processors, RAM, PSU, and took out any superfluous cards. Clean Win98SE install. Tried with both DX7 and DX9 installed (I believe FastVoodoo reqs DX9). Even tried in Win2k and XP, for what that's worth. 😂

I did get frustrated enough to take my multimeter to the SLI cable and it checked out. It's the only one I have unfortunately, but it was new out of the package so I wouldn't expect it to be bad.

Cards always work separately, but together I get SLI "Not Detected" in the Sys Info box from the 3Dfx control panel. And I get a grey screen when I try to launch a Glide app. From what I can gather from my own googling, the FastVoodoo drivers are the best bet to get any weird configuration working. So, since those aren't working for me I'm throwing in the towel on these two. 🫠

ubiq wrote on 2023-08-11, 00:57:

I dunno man. The cards appear to have been manufactured almost 2 years apart and I'm guessing are based off the reference design […]
Show full quote

ChrisK wrote on 2023-08-10, 08:24:

I'm pretty sure there's some simple reason other than different logos on the 3dfx chips why SLI doesn't want to work with your c […]
Show full quote

ubiq wrote on 2023-08-10, 01:03:

I recently managed to (separately) acquire two matching make and model Voodoo 2s and have been having pretty much no luck getting them working in SLI. They work independently just fine, but it won't detect SLI with both of them. I took them out and put them side by side and saw what I should have noticed from the start:IMG_5787.jpegIMG_5790.jpeg

So hmm yeah, one has the old 3Dfx logo and the other has the new 3dfx logo. Oh look at that, the old one has a VER:2.0 label and the new one has a VER:2.1 label. Cool - so this apparently makes them mismatched enough to not work with the reference drivers. Unfortunately, I can't even get them to work with any of the hacked drivers (FastVoodoo2, etc) either. I think might be because this looks like a revision to the entire reference design, including all the ICs, not just some manufacturer differences to the same reference design that some driver hacks can sort out. Maybe?

Anyway, I'm starting to think these absolutely won't work in SLI, dammit! 😫

I'm pretty sure there's some simple reason other than different logos on the 3dfx chips why SLI doesn't want to work with your cards out of the box.
I have the very same card as the left one on your photos combined with a Creative one and they work fine in SLI despite the Creative one being the more "classical" 12MB design with RAMs on front and back and the other one only having the RAMs on the front.
Did you check your SLI cable? Did you follow the installation instructions of the FastVoodoo driver? Did you swapp slots? How do you determine if SLI is working or not?

As a sidenote: I have never seen a Voodoo 2 card having a heatsink copper area under the TMU on the backside. So they must have known (of course they knew...) these chips are running hot and actively worked against this by design.
I'm not sure if this alone will be enough but it's better than nothing.

I dunno man. The cards appear to have been manufactured almost 2 years apart and I'm guessing are based off the reference design from 3Dfx. I think it's not unlikely that an update to the reference design could break SLI compatibility. Granted, other than the heatsinking, the only differences I can see visually are 3 * through-hole caps swapped for SMDs and different ram.

So. Yes, I swapped slots, motherboards, processors, RAM, PSU, and took out any superfluous cards. Clean Win98SE install. Tried with both DX7 and DX9 installed (I believe FastVoodoo reqs DX9). Even tried in Win2k and XP, for what that's worth. 😂

I did get frustrated enough to take my multimeter to the SLI cable and it checked out. It's the only one I have unfortunately, but it was new out of the package so I wouldn't expect it to be bad.

Cards always work separately, but together I get SLI "Not Detected" in the Sys Info box from the 3Dfx control panel. And I get a grey screen when I try to launch a Glide app. From what I can gather from my own googling, the FastVoodoo drivers are the best bet to get any weird configuration working. So, since those aren't working for me I'm throwing in the towel on these two. 🫠

OK, that's bad. I'm not a real expert for 3dfx cards, just speaking out of my own experience.
I know those Voodoo cards can be quite picky at times but I can't really imagine that two Voodoos can't SLI out of some revisioning.
Again, sorry it doesn't work for you!
Maybe you can ask for advice at other places such as https://www.voodooalert.de/board/forum/ or https://dusty-voodoo.com/Startseite/ (sorry only German sites).

I would blame the cable until you can verify its working with another pair

So the sketchy ass board only Radeon X800XL showed up.

Didn't post, removed the little aluminum heat sinks that had been put on the memory chips which got it to post but with massive artifacting. I think those aluminum coolers were shorting out a couple of resistors near the memory chips, which sadly seems to have permanently damaged them.

Annoying as fuck, so hard to get fair deals on decent AGP hardware now.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-08-11, 18:08:

So the sketchy ass board only Radeon X800XL showed up.

Didn't post, removed the little aluminum heat sinks that had been put on the memory chips which got it to post but with massive artifacting. I think those aluminum coolers were shorting out a couple of resistors near the memory chips, which sadly seems to have permanently damaged them.

Annoying as fuck, so hard to get fair deals on decent AGP hardware now.

Can agree, I have a X1950 Pro AGP here that was pretty much tortured. It finally gave the ghost a month later after I managed to somewhat fix it.
Not sure what went bad on it, but all I know is my Epox EP-8RDA6+ will stop at POST 25 code with it installed.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-08-11, 18:08:

Annoying as fuck, so hard to get fair deals on decent AGP hardware now.

I think you will enjoy this then, if you haven't seen it already.

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra triage and repair

Nothing major, put a 40x40x11mm heatsink on my DX2-66 to keep it cool and then played some Privateer (man I hate its unreliable joystick calibration and the game is harder than I remember)