What exactly would you want to run? Anything that can take real advantage of a Voodoo5 would probably run much better on a faster system.

Well the usual Unreal Tournament/Quake III Arena glide type stuff. I never played any of those games before, mainly games like Baldur's Gate II, Age of Empires, or Thief II. I was wondering how future proof the Pentium II was for 9x gaming.

I think a Voodoo2 SLI setup or a Voodoo3 would be a better fit for that machine. Notwithstanding the fact that Voodoo5s are mad expensive, unless you're asking this question because you have one laying around.

computergeek92 wrote:

Well the usual Unreal Tournament/Quake III Arena glide type stuff. I never played any of those games before, mainly games like Baldur's Gate II, Age of Empires, or Thief II. I was wondering how future proof the Pentium II was for 9x gaming.

There's no reason at all to run any of those in Win9x on a Pentium II.

a Voodoo5500 would be a much better choice for a higher end Coppermine (at least 800Mhz) or a Tualatin , with a PII 450 it will run , but given the CPU intensive nature of the card , a Voodoo2 SLI or Voodoo3 setup would be a better choice (for a primary card , something like a RIVA TNT2 or Geforce256 would make it a good all around system).

ElementalChaos wrote:

I think a Voodoo2 SLI setup or a Voodoo3 would be a better fit for that machine. Notwithstanding the fact that Voodoo5s are mad expensive, unless you're asking this question because you have one laying around.

I have a new sealed Voodoo5 5500 but not sure which system to pair it with.

Jorpho wrote:

computergeek92 wrote:

Well the usual Unreal Tournament/Quake III Arena glide type stuff. I never played any of those games before, mainly games like Baldur's Gate II, Age of Empires, or Thief II. I was wondering how future proof the Pentium II was for 9x gaming.

There's no reason at all to run any of those in Win9x on a Pentium II.

So the 3DFX games would work fine in Windows XP?

computergeek92 wrote:

ElementalChaos wrote:

I think a Voodoo2 SLI setup or a Voodoo3 would be a better fit for that machine. Notwithstanding the fact that Voodoo5s are mad expensive, unless you're asking this question because you have one laying around.

I have a new sealed Voodoo5 5500 but not sure which system to pair it with.

Early P4 that has a AGP slot that still supports the Voodoo5 (there are some chipsets that have compatibility problems) or a P3 1.4ghz Taulatin

Both are pretty good , and yes you can play 3dfx games in XP they do work, but I would go for 98/me , just my personal preference as I dont like messing with things to get them working.

I was thinking of this idea, I have one of those AMD 750 chipset Gateway Jabil Kadoka boards with a Slot A Athlon T-Bird 800MHz. That is a great cpu. It powered my first server with both WinServer 2000 and Server 2003. I know the 750 chipset has the crippled AGP 2x bus that runs more at 1X speed. I was using a wide variety of compatible AGP cards, Geforces or others but DVD playback was not smooth. I even tried a PCI based card: The ATI Rage 128 16MB that played DVDs great in my Pentium III 700Mhz 440BX system, but surprisingly won't do the same in my Slot A rig. My question is that since the Voodoo cards were known to not make much use of the AGP bus speeds, would using my Voodoo5 5500 in that AMD system have no performance loss vs a non crippled AGP system? Has anyone tried using Voodoo cards in Irongate systems and could share me some info? Thanks.

FaSMaN wrote:

Early P4 that has a AGP slot that still supports the Voodoo5

Umm, all the socket 423 motherboards (and up) that I've seen have an AGP 1.5V keyed slot. Earlier 3.3V cards like the V5 will not work on those. They don't even physically fit.

stamasd wrote:

FaSMaN wrote:

Early P4 that has a AGP slot that still supports the Voodoo5

Umm, all the socket 423 motherboards (and up) that I've seen have an AGP 1.5V keyed slot. Earlier 3.3V cards like the V5 will not work on those. They don't even physically fit.

My apologies I forgot about the AGP 4x voltage restraints , but there are some P4 boards with a universal AGP socket like the sis645DX , these boards are extremely rare.
Abit Sa7
Asus P4S533-E

FaSMaN wrote:

Early P4 that has a AGP slot that still supports the Voodoo5

Umm, all the socket 423 motherboards (and up) that I've seen have an AGP 1.5V keyed slot. Earlier 3.3V cards like the V5 will not work on those. They don't even physically fit.

I have three motherboards with socket 478 that are compatible with V3 and V5 😀 SIS chipset is what you want to look for.

As has already been mentioned, around 800 Mhz Pentium III is a good match for the V5. A 1024 x 768 you are already pretty GPU bound. A faster machine has benefits with minimum frame rates and loading times however.

I don't like Pentium 4's. No offense, I usually e-cycle them. But I love the Pentium III and Athlon. Now that is cool hardware! Thanks for your posts.

computergeek92 wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

computergeek92 wrote:

Well the usual Unreal Tournament/Quake III Arena glide type stuff. I never played any of those games before, mainly games like Baldur's Gate II, Age of Empires, or Thief II. I was wondering how future proof the Pentium II was for 9x gaming.

There's no reason at all to run any of those in Win9x on a Pentium II.

So the 3DFX games would work fine in Windows XP?

None of those are 3DFX games, or at least they aren't 3DFX exclusive.

computergeek92 wrote:

I was using a wide variety of compatible AGP cards, Geforces or others but DVD playback was not smooth. I even tried a PCI based card: The ATI Rage 128 16MB that played DVDs great in my Pentium III 700Mhz 440BX system, but surprisingly won't do the same in my Slot A rig. My question is that since the Voodoo cards were known to not make much use of the AGP bus speeds, would using my Voodoo5 5500 in that AMD system have no performance loss vs a non crippled AGP system?

Were you using the same DVD playback software in both cases? Some software takes advantage of acceleration features present on the card, but others work entirely through software – and of course there are other concerns like the UDMA mode used by the DVD drive. In any case "smooth DVD playback" is a very poor benchmark (unless you actually want to play DVDs on your ancient computers, and I have no idea why you would want to do that) and I doubt getting a Voodoo5 would help.

computergeek92 wrote:

I was using a wide variety of compatible AGP cards, Geforces or others but DVD playback was not smooth. I even tried a PCI based card: The ATI Rage 128 16MB that played DVDs great in my Pentium III 700Mhz 440BX system, but surprisingly won't do the same in my Slot A rig. My question is that since the Voodoo cards were known to not make much use of the AGP bus speeds, would using my Voodoo5 5500 in that AMD system have no performance loss vs a non crippled AGP system? Has anyone tried using Voodoo cards in Irongate systems and could share me some info? Thanks.

I find the fastest way to get smooth DVD playback on older systems running Windows 9x is to install VLC Media Player v0.8.6 and enable DMA on the DVD drive and HDD.

Yeah I would check if the DVD drive is in PIO or DMA mode and be sure the DVD software supports Rage 128. DXVA support should do the trick.

Any Athlon should be able to do full software DVD processing.

Since when are the Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena games not 3DFX supported? I did not mean they were made by 3DFX.

I was using older versions of VLC media player on the same computers. I've had successful DVD playback on even a Gateway Solo laptop from 2000 with a 600MHz Pentium III and 4MB graphics.

I don't know why you think I wouldn't want to play DVDs on the oldest PC possible. I love to bring old hardware back to life and make it as useful as I can. Just use older versions of software. They work just about the same as modern ones, but they're lighter and support older OS.

swaaye wrote:

Yeah I would check if the DVD drive is in PIO or DMA mode and be sure the DVD software supports Rage 128. DXVA support should do the trick.

Any Athlon should be able to do full software DVD processing.

I've never paid attention to PIO or DMA modes. I try to use 80 wire IDE cables if I can. The AMD 750 Athlon system is the only system out of my huge collection that won't play DVDs right. (Were talking about the machines 600-800MHz or faster that are fast enough to play DVDs)

computergeek92 wrote:

Since when are the Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena games not 3DFX supported? I did not mean they were made by 3DFX.

There might be 3DFX versions of them out there (I'm not sure offhand), but it is also possible to run them without a 3DFX card.

I don't know why you think I wouldn't want to play DVDs on the oldest PC possible. I love to bring old hardware back to life and make it as useful as I can. Just use older versions of software. They work just about the same as modern ones, but they're lighter and support older OS.

What's the point of using them as DVD players? It makes as much sense as using the fans to cool your house. Yes, they could conceivably be useful that way, but there are many other solutions that are far more practical and not nearly as problematic.

If we are throwing practical considerations to the wind, then yes, you might as well go out and put a Voodoo5 in your Pentium II, because who cares if it makes any sense or whether it's a "good choice" ?