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Dual Video on PIII - Worth it?

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First post, by walterg74

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Hi All, I am building a few pentium machines, and going *sort of* by rule of thumb / period accurate, I was looking at what video cards to install in each one, with the additional thought that I wanted to have the best of both world in terms of 3D, meaning mixing 3DFX with Nvidia...

So when I look at what I have / what I can get, I made these pairings:

- Pentium MMX 233 w/ Diamond Viper 330 (nVidia Riva 128) + Diamond Monster Voodoo 1
- Pentium II 450 w/ Diamod Viper 550 (nVidia TNT) + Diamond Monster Voodoo II
- Pentium III 1Ghz (S370) w/ Diamond Viper 770 (nvidia TNT2) or similar + 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000

So all is ok with PI and PII but looking at the PIII I just realized most cards are AGP and of course just one AGP slot...

Being I already have the Voodoo 3 3000 AGP...

1) Is it even worth it to have dual cards in that build?
2) If so, would it be better to try to get a PCI version of a 3DFX card, or is that even more expensive than the AGP versions?
3) Would it be instead better to leave the Vodoo and search for the other card in PCI, or is that difficult too?

Not sure what the best is in this case...

Reply 1 of 7, by Koltoroc

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1) no, not really. IIRC the Voodoo 3 is about as fast as the tnt 2 and the only advantage of the TNT 2 is 32 bit color depth and I believe somewhat larger texture sizes.. Which is a nice to have but not critical

2) the PCI version is indeed more expensive, because it is more sought after. The reason for this is, that the Voodoo 3 runs just fine on PCI bandwidth and does not use any advanced AGP features. That means you get a pretty much fully capable card for PCI. Kinda difficult to find anywhere else.

3) pointless. Most non voodoo cards are somewhat bandwidth starved on PCI and the voodoo will run circles around them. And since 32 bit color depth and larger textures are the main tangible benefit of a TNT 2 or similar less bandwidth is the last thing you want.

personally, I would just stick with the voodoo 3.

also the hassle of 2 2d/3d combi cards isn't worth it.

Reply 2 of 7, by walterg74

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Koltoroc wrote:
1) no, not really. IIRC the Voodoo 3 is about as fast as the tnt 2 and the only advantage of the TNT 2 is 32 bit color depth and […]
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1) no, not really. IIRC the Voodoo 3 is about as fast as the tnt 2 and the only advantage of the TNT 2 is 32 bit color depth and I believe somewhat larger texture sizes.. Which is a nice to have but not critical

2) the PCI version is indeed more expensive, because it is more sought after. The reason for this is, that the Voodoo 3 runs just fine on PCI bandwidth and does not use any advanced AGP features. That means you get a pretty much fully capable card for PCI. Kinda difficult to find anywhere else.

3) pointless. Most non voodoo cards are somewhat bandwidth starved on PCI and the voodoo will run circles around them. And since 32 bit color depth and larger textures are the main tangible benefit of a TNT 2 or similar less bandwidth is the last thing you want.

personally, I would just stick with the voodoo 3.

also the hassle of 2 2d/3d combi cards isn't worth it.

Thanks, I think I might just stick with that then. Do the other options/bullds seem ok? Anything different that might be worth looking into?

Reply 6 of 7, by walterg74

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

If you are looking for a graphics card that supports dual displays the Matrox G400 or G450 is a good AGP card.

Thanks,but not looking for that. The dual part was meant for d3d and glide game support

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