I did this V2 (and SLI) CPU scaling project recently: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/94628483/ … g%20project.pdf

It should answer your question 😀

damn nice PDF Mau1wurf1977.
just what I was looking for, cheers!

If you put Voodoo2 in an Athlon system, remember you need the special Athlon compatible drivers. Falconfly.de has them.

So did you actually find the point where the V2 finally becomes a bottleneck to performance?

What I usually do when I imagine pairing era-correct hardware is research when it was released. The Voodoo2 was released in February of 1998. So then I would head over to cpu-world.com and research which processors came out around the time--which were the cream of the crop during that year.

So for instance, the Pentium II 400 was released in April of '98 which would make it a high-end processor to pair with the Voodoo II. The highest of high-end for the PII would have been the 450 MHz CPU released in August of '98, which retains the 100 MHz bus speed. A Pentium II XEON 450 would be the trickiest part as it has 2MB or L2 Cache as opposed to the 512KB of the regular PII, but it's very difficult to locate PII XEON processors in my experience.

Thank you for the PDF. Great Job!

As i can See, the Framerate are increasing till 800 MHz then they inrceasing only very little...

So 500 MHz should be a good choice to Max Out Your Voodoo2.

And 800 MHz to squeze the last frame Out of it.

I had mine acually running in an PC with Pentium 4, 3 GHZ in Win98 and XP.

Cause this was the only PC who has no 3D Card inside.

And he is fast enough for DOSBOX with Voodoo pass trough.

Yea a BX440 system with a PIII 800 is a good choice 😀

sliderider wrote:

So did you actually find the point where the V2 finally becomes a bottleneck to performance?

The proper answer is that it depends on the game and resolution. With a single card at 800 x 600 or SLI at 1024 x 768 it doesn't need a very powerful processor. The graphics card quickly becomes the limiting factor.

What i did?

My first decision was the install two voodoo2 sli in an pentium II 400mhz rig.. Because i wanted to make a slower windows 98 se machine. I also had planned to build a Pentium 233MMX system for the Windows 95 time period. But that Pentium 233MMX is just a somewhat to slow for beginning windows 98 SE games. I got advised from a user from this forum when using a faster processor that the SLI voodoo will preform much better.
But i didnt want to make that Pentium II build to fast.. For me the sweet spot laying around 500 mhz for the system i want to build.. I decide to go for a Pentium III 550Mhz processor instead..
I know that a much faster cpu will benefit the voodoo2 in SLI just more.. But then it will go out range for the slower demanding games i want to play on that system.. The chance is there that they are willing to get to speedy.

My opinion is.. I wouldnt depend the processor choice on which will preform the best on a voodoo 2 SLI setup. But really looking for the sweet spot from the time period the games your are willing to play.

If you want the best of both worlds: To play games that needed like from a Pentium 233 mhz till much higher i can recommend a processor like a Pentium III 600 mhz.. For anything much faster, you already need a much faster system for that.. Thats why iam building two windows 98se machines.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yea a BX440 system with a PIII 800 is a good choice 😀

sliderider wrote:

So did you actually find the point where the V2 finally becomes a bottleneck to performance?

The proper answer is that it depends on the game and resolution. With a single card at 800 x 600 or SLI at 1024 x 768 it doesn't need a very powerful processor. The graphics card quickly becomes the limiting factor.

It depends on which time period of games you are really want to play..

As i said earlier, if you go with a 800mhz cpus, some slower games like pentium 233MMX as minimal needed (recommend system, is mostly faster), would getting to speedy.. Most games that needed a pentium III 700mhz processor, could better run on a much faster system.. So how closer to the Pentium1 time area how much speed sensiver the games are..

My advise, would recommend to go for a Pentium III 600Mhz at least... I self have take the Pentium III 550mhz, because these became more rare, and nice feature is, with a jumperless board you could switch them also to a Pentium III 366 Mhz setting in de motherboards bios setup.

If you want a good, stable and versatile retro box pick a 440bx board. Asus p3b-f is my favorite but there are many more good ones as the chipset is just great.

Every p2 or p3 is a good match for the voodoo2. If you want to extend the range of playable games, pick a fast p3 and use a geforce 2 or 3 next to the voodoo2.