AGP Voodoo 3's run around $30 online right now. A TNT2 card would do good or a ATI Rage 128 which are also a dime a dozen. The tricky part of the TNT2 is finding a non-m64 model.

Any Radeon 9600-9800 would work pretty good with the P2-450. I've used a 9600XT and 9700 Pro with a P2-400 and now a P3-650, it really complements the CPU well. In most games the CPU doesn't seem to be holding the card back at all. Very handy for flight sims.

I do rarely see V3's on ebay every once in a while; but I wouldn't pay more than 30-40 USD. I bought my V3-3500 for approximately the same.

You could also try reconditioning your V3. It does get quite hot when your thermal paste dries out. Had to reapply AS5 and the like to V3's even back "in the day". If you have the V3-3000 I'm familar with, then the heatsink comes off pretty easy. Just clean up any gunk with mineral spirits and use Ceramique or some type of Arctic Silver variation.

3DFX Voodoo3 3500 (Non-TV Out Version) = $10 + Shipping. I would go with one of these.

duralisis wrote:

Any Radeon 9600-9800 would work pretty good with the P2-450. I've used a 9600XT and 9700 Pro with a P2-400 and now a P3-650, it really complements the CPU well. In most games the CPU doesn't seem to be holding the card back at all. Very handy for flight sims.

I do rarely see V3's on ebay every once in a while; but I wouldn't pay more than 30-40 USD. I bought my V3-3500 for approximately the same.

You could also try reconditioning your V3. It does get quite hot when your thermal paste dries out. Had to reapply AS5 and the like to V3's even back "in the day". If you have the V3-3000 I'm familar with, then the heatsink comes off pretty easy. Just clean up any gunk with mineral spirits and use Ceramique or some type of Arctic Silver variation.

While those cards sound well, The motherboard sports an AGP 2X Slot. So a 4X/8X card wouldn't work.

As for reconditioning, I may consider but it would be a last resort.

A Geforce fx5600 would be a good candidate as well. They are not sought after so prices should be low but they provide good compatibility and performance.

The official latest and greatest AGP 2x card from Nvidia is the GeForce4 Ti series, which is why you will see a lot of BX based systems with them. Plug it in and they work fine.
Some people have reported getting later cards working with a bit of messing about but a BX system the CPU is going to be the bottleneck more then the Video card. Not sure about ATI side of things.

I'd say a Voodoo 3 would be a great choice for a P3-450 build. Besides the attraction of all the Glide games of the era the V3 has excellent image quality - as I recently discovered - and very good overall compatibility. I was curious about reports of the good IQ and picked up a V3-3000 for testing; much better looking than either the V1 or V2-SLI, better than a solo V2, and at least as good looking as a V5. Actually I'd say the V3-3000 has the 'silkiest' image of any Glide 3dfx card I've had. A 16mb card on a 450 rig would be fine too.

There are usually a bunch at any time on US eBay and as a poster noted sell for around 30 USD. Nice one-card solution.

if youre not going for a 3DFX card , a Geforce2 GTS or Pro (64MB version if you can) is a good card to have, you can even add in a Voodoo2 board for some of the earlier Glide games.

a Geforce4 is a good card too , and the picture quality might be better (some Geforce 1/2 card had inferior 2D picture quality compared to the Radeons and Voodoos.), though of course you won't get anywhere near to tapping what the card can do.

ODwilly wrote:

AGP Voodoo 3's run around $30 online right now. A TNT2 card would do good or a ATI Rage 128 which are also a dime a dozen. The tricky part of the TNT2 is finding a non-m64 model.

Non-m64 hmmmmmmm.... How about Vanta? 🤣

Looks like Vanta was the rename of the 64bit TNT2. Finding a good tnt2 sucks, that is why something like a Geforce 3 ti-200 or a Geforce 2 GTS or PRO like Darkman suggested is easier (usually) just shop around with a search term like "agp card" and see what pops up for a good price. EDIT: It helps to know the specific model names of a video card to, for example: A Creative CT6710 is my 16mb TNT card. EDIT2:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Technology-T … 533329830&rt=nc here is a TNT2 Ultra found via looking up parts numbers on Creative's website

I think the best video card here really depends on what exactly you are looking for - DOS performance (VGA/Mode-X/VESA), Glide-compatibility, Direct3D/OpenGL (which resolution? which games?).
For a 450MHz CPU a Geforce2 MX might be a good choice, if you only use lower resolutions or don't need too much speed.

Artex wrote:

3DFX Voodoo3 3500 (Non-TV Out Version) = $10 + Shipping. I would go with one of these.

Woops, forgot the link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/170463347182

Someone else has already mentioned the GF3 ti200
The GF3 is totally overkill but often easy to find for less than $5 so its a good alternative to a Voodoo 3.
I think the GF2 MX is a bit slow but a GF4 MX could be another good option.

Every 3D game you'd play on a P3 450 was likely designed with 3dfx Voodoo as the primary target. You certainly don't want to play any Glide games in D3D mode. OpenGL games could give NV some advantage.

Voodoo 3 is optimal and my preference as explained earlier - but I have had good experience with the nGlide wrapper under W98. So 3dfx/Glide wouldn't necessarily be ruled out if a D3D card were deemed otherwise preferable. But using a glide wrapper would/might introduce another layer of fiddliness and compatibility issues that would be side-stepped with a Glide card.

One of the advantages to Glide is its thinness. It has lower CPU overhead than the other APIs. A Glide wrapper will nullify this advantage since it performs considerable translation. Not good with a P3 450 that's already struggling.

I use a 128-bit TNT2 32MB paired with 2 Voodoo cards in my PII-450 (which is almost exactly the same as P-III-450). It's very nice to have both Glide and a powerful D3D card, that way I can play D3D titles at higher resolutions and compare Glide rendering to D3D.

swaaye wrote:

One of the advantages to Glide is its thinness. It has lower CPU overhead than the other APIs. A Glide wrapper will nullify this advantage since it performs considerable translation. Not good with a P3 450 that's already struggling.

I've always found that colors look better when displayed through a Voodoo card, though that may have something to do with the default gamma settings. Just look at some side by side comparisons of games being played with multiple video cards on Youtube and you'll see just how much the colors seem to jump out at you when the Glide versions of the games are shown. They are much more sedate when played on other video cards. The games don't look altogether bad on other cards, they just seem to lack the vibrancy of the Glide versions.

RacoonRider wrote:

I use a 128-bit TNT2 32MB paired with 2 Voodoo cards in my PII-450 (which is almost exactly the same as P-III-450). It's very nice to have both Glide and a powerful D3D card, that way I can play D3D titles at higher resolutions and compare Glide rendering to D3D.

But TNT2 won't do that much better then V2 SLI. Aim higher.