It works but no special use of it. Better use any S3 PCI card and put V3 into some P-III and Windows.

Voodoo3 is a pretty good card for DOS games... Not as compatible as Trio64/Virge, but it will work with almost all VESA games. Also, it is able to run some DOS Glide games (not as many as a Voodoo2, though). Most of its power will be wasted on a DOS machine though.

Voodoo 3 PCI cards tend to run more expensive than AGP versions. If PCI slots are all you have and your machine isn't fast to begin with, a single V2 would probably work well enough and cost less. I think a V3 would be overkill in a P-133 system.

For that matter, an original Voodoo is 100% compatible with all DOS Glide titles I know of.

Matrox/S3/CL + V1 is a better choice....

I'm using a Voodoo3 2000 PCI in my DOS PC. 😀 I'm using it because my PC only has ISA and PCI slots and it is the only PCI video card I have. It turns out to only be slightly faster than the onboard Cirrus Logic in 3dbench, pcpbench, doom, etc. If you want, I can run benchmarks and get you exact numbers. It is in a Pentium 133 with 32MB edo.

While I don't have this particular card, all V3 have very good signal / image quality. DOS performance and compatibility is also very good.

And many DOS Glide games will work on the V3 with the right patches and options, such as Tomb Raider or Screamer 2.

Tomb Raider has issues in bare DOS (it freezes when you bring up any in-game menu. Inside Windows 9x it works fine on Voodoo3 cards, but he mentioned he is using a DOS-only machine.

I went ahead and benchmarked the Voodoo3 2000 PCI against the onboard Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430. Thanks, Phil for your DOS Benchmark kit.
Benchmark-Voodoo3/CL-GD5430
3dbench-115.1/88.9
pcpbench-27.4/25.2
doom-56.8/46.1
quake-24.9/23.1

clueless1 wrote:

I went ahead and benchmarked the Voodoo3 2000 PCI against the onboard Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430. Thanks, Phil for your DOS Benchma […]
Show full quote

I went ahead and benchmarked the Voodoo3 2000 PCI against the onboard Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430. Thanks, Phil for your DOS Benchmark kit.
Benchmark-Voodoo3/CL-GD5430
3dbench-115.1/88.9
pcpbench-27.4/25.2
doom-56.8/46.1
quake-24.9/23.1

Nice scores. Especially Doom is quite a bit faster on the V3.

alexanrs wrote:

Tomb Raider has issues in bare DOS (it freezes when you bring up any in-game menu. Inside Windows 9x it works fine on Voodoo3 cards, but he mentioned he is using a DOS-only machine.

That's a just a memory issue I believe. I remember solving this when I played around with it.

I know I couldn't find anything about it, and the compatibility matrix (in the Voodoo2 compatibility thread) does mention this. If you remember how you fixed it please add it to that thread.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

I went ahead and benchmarked the Voodoo3 2000 PCI against the onboard Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430. Thanks, Phil for your DOS Benchma […]
Show full quote

I went ahead and benchmarked the Voodoo3 2000 PCI against the onboard Cirrus Logic CL-GD5430. Thanks, Phil for your DOS Benchmark kit.
Benchmark-Voodoo3/CL-GD5430
3dbench-115.1/88.9
pcpbench-27.4/25.2
doom-56.8/46.1
quake-24.9/23.1

Nice scores. Especially Doom is quite a bit faster on the V3.

I was actually looking at it from a different perspective. My admittedly fading memory tells me that Cirrus Logic was highly compatible but at the bottom of the performance list. I remember them being the baseline back in the VLB days, and if a friend had a CL-based graphics card they risked getting made fun of. So from that perspective, I was impressed the CL-GD5430 kept up as well as it did to the Voodoo3.

clueless1 wrote:

I was actually looking at it from a different perspective. My admittedly fading memory tells me that Cirrus Logic was highly compatible but at the bottom of the performance list.

Doesn't that title belong to Trident?

Not always and in all cases. I've tested many VLB cards and Trident one seems as fast in DOS as the overall top performer S3 864 (I don't have 964 or Trio64). PCI should be similar but I didn't tested them yet.

Well.... Personally, I prefer CL as a VL-Bus card. Though I have had no issues at all, using a CL-5446-Pci.
Just be aware, that games sometimes want Univesa to be loaded, and sometimes not. No big issue.

At least on ISA, CL are excellent value. Good performance, good price. A lot of 486 machines came with CL VLB cards.

Another thing that struck me, when running eighter my CL-5446-pci or my #9-S3-pci, is that the image is more retro-like on the CL.
The S3 is really clean, high quality signal, lots of brightness and sharp. The CL is somewhat less contrasty-bright and more rounded.
Don't know how to explain it. Just that the CL, for some reason, reminds me more of an CRT compared to the S3.
Even though I do not have any CRT monitor. The CL just feel's more oldschool than the S3 on an TFT.

I can summ it up... The S3 is more "cold" and the CL is more "warm" in image quality. Kind of like Amiga vs. Pc. (Amiga being the "warm")
Yeah... That's the thing... Pinball illusions/dreams feels more "right" on the CL.

The V3 will run fine on your dos rig - but it's a waste to use it in such a machine. If you want pure dos w/o 3d acceleration any old PCI video card will do. Go for an S3 or Cirrus Logics if you want to play older titles (better compatibility). If you want to run glide games, grab a voodoo 1 as well. Sure, some games work on the V3 in dos, but most either will not run or require patches / workarounds witch can be time consuming and frustrating.

What is the DOS speed difference between a PCI S3 Trio or Virge and a PCI Voodoo3?