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Do I need 3dfx graphics?

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First post, by Ark125

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Hi,

This is my w98SE PC:
-MSI 694T PRO
-Tualatin Pentium-s 1.26GHz
-1GB RAM 133MHz
-Sound blaster 5.1 live
-GeForce4 Ti 4600 with dx8.1 and 56.64 driver

I am thinking adding two voodoo 2 cards on SLI to the MOBO in order to play games that use glide API.

My question is any game going to look better on the voodoo 2 cards with glide than in DirectX or OpenGL with GeForce4 Ti 4600?

Thank you.

Last edited by DosFreak on 2020-11-07, 15:24. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 31, by Oj0

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Yes there are (eg old Need for Speed games, Unreal, Turok, etc) but I think you'd be better off with a single Voodoo3 2000/3000. It will use a single PCI/AGP slot (instead of three) and have more texture memory.

You won't find any newer games that look better, it will be mid to late 90s games.

Alternatively, you can use a Glide wrapper.

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Reply 2 of 31, by Ark125

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Oj0 wrote on 2020-04-29, 09:34:

Yes there are (eg old Need for Speed games, Unreal, Turok, etc) but I think you'd be better off with a single Voodoo3 2000/3000. It will use a single PCI/AGP slot (instead of three) and have more texture memory.

You won't find any newer games that look better, it will be mid to late 90s games.

Alternatively, you can use a Glide wrapper.

Can I use Geforce 4600 ti and Voodoo3 both at the same time?

Reply 3 of 31, by kolderman

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Ark125 wrote on 2020-04-29, 09:44:
Oj0 wrote on 2020-04-29, 09:34:

Yes there are (eg old Need for Speed games, Unreal, Turok, etc) but I think you'd be better off with a single Voodoo3 2000/3000. It will use a single PCI/AGP slot (instead of three) and have more texture memory.

You won't find any newer games that look better, it will be mid to late 90s games.

Alternatively, you can use a Glide wrapper.

Can I use Geforce 4600 ti and Voodoo3 both at the same time?

If the voodoo was pci, possibly, but you would be switching the monitor cable around.

Reply 4 of 31, by Oetker

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I'm kind of surprised how many people seem to think they need a 3dfx card but don't have any specific games in mind. Not to be an ass but I've noticed it multiple times.

You're looking at a pretty narrow time period, 1997/98.

For some games you're stuck with either Glide or software rendering, however for some of them software is fine. Blood is an example.
For some games D3D or OpenGL support have improved since 1998. Unreal at release was best played with a 3dfx card, but eventually they updated the D3D renderer and there's also improved renderers you can download for use on modern systems.
For a period of time 3dfx cards were the best/most compatible, but that was even true for non-glide games. For those games it's a gamble whether their early use of e.g. D3D looks fine on a modern card and a 3dfx card might be the thing they work best with.

In any case the Voodoo cards will limit the resolution and color depth compared to what you can play on with your gf4.

In any case here's some games I played with Glide back in the day: Unreal, Deus Ex, Carmageddon, Blood, Shadow Warrior, GTA, POD.

Reply 5 of 31, by appiah4

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Long Answer: You don't 'need' a 3dfx card but a lot of games from the early 3d hardware acceleration era (96-98) have poor/inferior/buggy/slow rendereres for other APIs such as OpenGL and Direct3D and some games have no alternatives to 3dfx Glide whatsoever. For example, playing Longbow Gold and F-15 with 3D acceleration is important to me so I make sure to have a 3dfx card in such systems. So research the games you want to play and check if they require or enhance the experience on 3dfx cards. If yes, add a Voodoo 2 which has fairly good compatibility with nearly all Glide games.

Short Answer: When in doubt,just add a Voodoo 2 or SLI setup to that system and be done with it.

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Reply 7 of 31, by kjliew

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I am going to tell you NO 😜
I ditched my Voodoo2 back then when I had Matrox G400 with Pentium III 1GHz and fully resorted to dgVoodoo for Glide only games, played in windowed mode on Windows XP and enjoyed much better colors saturation. Both Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 have blur-ish texture look. (it was a feature, not a bug back then...)

I have not come across any Glide games that one absolutely require the real hardware. Glide wrappers/DOSBox/modern emulation can now fulfill the needs much better, coupled with state-of-the-art CPUs. But this is the section for old hardware...., well if you really have to have one for nostalgic reasons then I would suggest Banshee/Voodoo3 or newer.

Reply 8 of 31, by Oetker

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Ark125 wrote on 2020-04-29, 10:27:

Thank you guys.

I was thinking on Tomb raider, quake, half life and diablo 2. Because, they're my favorites.

But for those there is no improvement over GeForce4 Ti 4600 right?

Half-Life and Quake, there's no reason to use a 3dfx card. Both aren't Glide games and work fine on more modern cards. Diablo 2 is supposedly slightly better in Glide than in D3D. Tomb Raider, however, really is best played on a Voodoo, I don't think it supports anything but software and Glide.

Reply 10 of 31, by kolderman

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kjliew wrote on 2020-04-29, 10:33:

I have not come across any Glide games that one absolutely require the real hardware. Glide wrappers/DOSBox/modern emulation can now fulfill the needs much better, coupled with state-of-the-art CPUs. But this is the section for old hardware...., well if you really have to have one for nostalgic reasons then I would suggest Banshee/Voodoo3 or newer.

I think voodoo emulation is far from perfect across many games. So if you need perfect emulation the real thing may be necessary.

Reply 11 of 31, by kjliew

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kolderman wrote on 2020-04-29, 10:45:
kjliew wrote on 2020-04-29, 10:33:

I have not come across any Glide games that one absolutely require the real hardware. Glide wrappers/DOSBox/modern emulation can now fulfill the needs much better, coupled with state-of-the-art CPUs. But this is the section for old hardware...., well if you really have to have one for nostalgic reasons then I would suggest Banshee/Voodoo3 or newer.

I think voodoo emulation is far from perfect across many games. So if you need perfect emulation the real thing may be necessary.

i don't think so. I would be glad to know the list of games that you think they work better on real hardware without insisting an absolute authenticity of rendering outputs as someone would proclaim, such as the filters and dithering effects of true 3Dfx hardware.

In fact, I can provide a good example, Half-Life 1 looks so much better on OpenGL with modern hardware running from QEMU compared to what I remembered when I played it on Voodoo1/Voodoo2.

Reply 12 of 31, by kolderman

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kjliew wrote on 2020-04-29, 11:14:
kolderman wrote on 2020-04-29, 10:45:
kjliew wrote on 2020-04-29, 10:33:

I have not come across any Glide games that one absolutely require the real hardware. Glide wrappers/DOSBox/modern emulation can now fulfill the needs much better, coupled with state-of-the-art CPUs. But this is the section for old hardware...., well if you really have to have one for nostalgic reasons then I would suggest Banshee/Voodoo3 or newer.

I think voodoo emulation is far from perfect across many games. So if you need perfect emulation the real thing may be necessary.

i don't think so. I would be glad to know the list of games that you think they work better on real hardware without insisting an absolute authenticity of rendering outputs as someone would proclaim, such as the filters and dithering effects of true 3Dfx hardware.

In fact, I can provide a good example, Half-Life 1 looks so much better on OpenGL with modern hardware running from QEMU compared to what I remembered when I played it on Voodoo1/Voodoo2.

I can only go by what I have heard, but it's less than being "better" than the emulation having bugs in reproducing certain effects and renders. And HL1 is better on a v5 not v2, where it looks and performs great. But that is not a true Glide game so it's not surprising it does well under better opengl accelerators. Quake1 on the v2sli OTOH is like stepping back into 1997 with grungey scanlines complementing the industrial NiN soundtrack. Yes I am sure nostalgia is at least part of it!

Reply 16 of 31, by appiah4

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Ark125 wrote on 2020-04-29, 13:14:
imi wrote on 2020-04-29, 12:16:

you can always start with a single voodoo 2 if you find one and then maybe get another one later 😉

Can be paired different brand cards?

Yes, if you use latest FastVoodoo drivers.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 17 of 31, by Doornkaat

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Ark125 wrote on 2020-04-29, 13:14:

Can be paired different brand cards?

Same brand does not gurantee compatibility. Different brands don't rule out compatibility either; many manufacturers simply copied the standard layout and put different silkscreen on it. Changes in revisions (and some people say even RAM chips) are much more likely to cause issues.
In '98 and '99 SLI sets with two cards from the same week were sold as a bundle by some manufacturers but I know people used to run mix-matched setups with official drivers too.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Standard layout and identical components on both cards seem to be the closest thing to a gurantee you can get if you want to use official drivers.

But as appiah said FastVoodoo has solved the compatibility problem.

Reply 18 of 31, by lafoxxx

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I heard Glide was faster than OpenGL/D3D because it was basically "closer to the metal" (all its instructions are actually implemented entirely into the hardware).

But don't OpenGL/D3D cards have same "close to metal" Hardware support for these two APIs as well? Or this support is "not as close to metal" as Glide used to have? And do even today's fastest cards have this "limited" support for OpenGL/D3D/Vulkan "by design", which will never be as "close to metal" as it was on 3dfx Glide cards?

Please explain.

Reply 19 of 31, by kolderman

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lafoxxx wrote on 2020-10-25, 20:17:

I heard Glide was faster than OpenGL/D3D because it was basically "closer to the metal" (all its instructions are actually supported by 3dfx hardware).

But don't OpenGL/D3D cards have same "close to metal" Hardware support for these two APIs as well? Or this support is "not as close to metal" as Glide used to have? And do even today's fastest cards have this "limited" support for OpenGL/D3D/Vulkan "by design", which will never be as "close to metal" as it was on 3dfx Glide cards?

Please explain.

No. Glide is just an API spec, just like OpenGL. Both Glide and OpenGL calls get converted to low level instructions, and both the Glide and OGL implementations were written by 3dfx for Voodoo cards. Glide is better than OGL in some cases because OGL drivers did not exist for voodoo 1/2, or because games were optimized for Glide even on later cards with OGL support (voodoo3/5). By the time of the voodoo5, 3dfx were probably putting more effort into d3d/ogl support than Glide as fewer games were supporting the latter.

And Glide was inspired by IrisGL and designed by the same SGI folks, and is very similar to OGL as an API. Vulkan is truly close to the metal unlike almost anything that came before it. Maybe the Rendition Verite which had something more akin to a programmable cpu as it's gpu is more comparable.