In your 486 you may have a problem with PCI cards that use 3.3 Volt.
I don't know whether Voodoo PCI cards use 3.3 Volt or not.

Does your 486 post at all with the FX 5500?
I do not recommend to use any ISA graphics card in a VLB or PCI 486.
--
Currently I use a Matrox G450 PCI in a HOT-433 motherboard. mkarcher has made a thorough modification to the BIOS to initialize its PCI to AGP bridge in time.

IMHO, there is no reason to use an ISA VGA card on a PCI 486 unless you need to use it in one of its explicit backward compatibility modes (CGA or Hercules) which newer PCI cards do not have. Also IMHO, late gen 486s are not the bes for that .

A Voodoo 3 on a 486 will likely not be faster than Voodoo 2 and higher resolutions ( 800x600 and/or higher) in 3D mode will not be playable. As for Glide compatibility, AFAIK, pretty much anything that only works on a Voodoo1 before patching will work on either a Voodoo 2 or 3 after patching (someone please correct me if I am wrong).

What it boils down to is what do you expect to run other than Desqview/X and WFW ? Both of these would normally work with a Voodoo 3 (Vesa for Desqview/X and there is Windows 3.1x driver for tge Voodoo3).

any voodoo on 486 will be <20fps

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-12-24, 05:02:

any voodoo on 486 will be <20fps

I have a 133Mhz 486 system with voodoo 1 card and I dont agree with this. I have mostly played games like tomb raider, Archimedean Dynasty and lands of lore 2 that have been using 3dfx and frame rates have felt pretty good to me even if I dont have any way to measure the actual frame rates.

Baoran wrote on 2022-12-24, 05:38:

I have mostly played games like tomb raider, Archimedean Dynasty and lands of lore 2 that have been using 3dfx and frame rates have felt pretty good to me even if I dont have any way to measure the actual frame rates.

With the 3DFX version of Tomb Raider you can press F2 to display the frame rate.

Note that this game is capped at 30 FPS and won't go over that limit even if your graphics card can deliver more performance.

There is no 486 which can hold a consistent 30 FPS in Tomb Raider and most other 3D games of the era (not even with extreme overclocking - i.e.: an AMD 5x86 @ 180 MHz).
In some smaller areas, you will be able to reach the 30 FPS engine cap, in others... not so much.

Having said that, it IS playable (it definitely would've been very playable for me 25+ years ago).

I think there are two different cases going on here:

a) Using a Voodoo 2 with an ISA SVGA card

just don't
Unless you have a 386 and older, don't use ISA VGA/SVGA cards on anything 486 and newer, it will bottleneck your 486 hard. I've seen people use ISA VGA cards on such systems (and Pentiums even!) to slow the systems down significantly and it doesn't sound like your interest lies in that. I wonder if it will slow down Glide games even further.

b) using a Voodoo on a 486

Power to you if you want to do it and I've actually done if myself just for fun, but don't expect it to make 3D games playable. Only reason you'd do this would be to play around for a few days and then remove that 3Dfx card and install it elsewhere where it actually won't be pointless. There are actually notable performance gains going from Voodoo 1 to Voodoo 2 on a 486 and that's entirely due to the fact that the Voodoo 2 has a better triangle setup which offloads the CPU more. That being said, performance is still bad and that's with the absolute fastest 486 systems in mind, you haven't told us what kind of system you have in mind.

Avoid using a Voodoo 3 on your 486. If you go the Windows 95 route, installing drivers for this videocard will crash the system AFAIR, the driver expects Pentium instructions. If you're doing DOS only, then the Voodoo 3 is a lot less compatible with DOS Glide games.

Wanted to clarify two facts that have been established over the last few years.
Tomb Raider 1 gravitates around the 30 fps on a well overclocked 486 system with Voodoo3 graphics card.
Voodoo3 (+ driver stack) work just fine on 486 machines and delivers better performance than Voodoo2 SLI.
With that said, i agree with the previous comments that the whole 486 3D accelerated gaming is on very tin ice.

pshipkov wrote on 2022-12-24, 10:44:

Voodoo3 (+ driver stack) work just fine on 486 machines and delivers better performance than Voodoo2 SLI.

genuinely interested in seeing evidence that supports that, is there a specific driver for Voodoo 3 that a) doesn't need the CPUID instruction b) has lower overhead than Voodoo 2 drivers? I find the latter to be an impossibility.

As others mentioned, use a PCI video card which are much faster than an ISA one. Running Windows 3.x without any compromises requires MS-DOS (preferably older ones such as 6.22) or IBM PC DOS, and a video card that has adequate drivers for GUI acceleration since the generic SVGA/VESA driver is slow.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-12-24, 05:02:

any voodoo on 486 will be <20fps

Realistically, it is a novelty, but I have seen people here running Voodoo2 cards on 486 computers for early 3D hardware-accelerated games and it wasn't unplayable.

Certainly Garrett W.

There is a link to a big thread in my signature where few of us go over that stuff in many posts.
Here is the focal one LuckyStar LS-486E rev:D ticking at 180 and 200 MHz.
It is a big post. There is a video in there where i grind the system with multiple heavy tasks running in parallel. One of them is GLQuake. Despite the load it is still playable.
Later on users @Feipoa and @Chadti99 share all sorts of interesting data related to Voodoo2 SLI, Voodoo3 and even Voodoo4 running on different 486 motherboards.
There are other videos in the thread with 486 mobos and Voodoo3 cards.
If any of this picks your interest, you can follow through the links included in the posts, or simply skim through the directory in the first post of the thread.

Late 3DFX drivers have Pentium specific instructions, so early/mid versions are required.
Same applies for NVIDIA drivers as well.

The short summary:
Voodoo3 2000 is faster than Voodoo2 SLI.
There is not performance difference between Voodoo3 2000/3000. Perf is hard CPU bound.
Voodoo3 2000 can be clocked up to 3000 levels. The above still applies.
Voodoo4 does not bring any performance advantages over Voodoo3. Same as above.

The early 3D accelerated games from the mid-end 90'ies like TR1, GL Quake 1, and others oscillate around 30 fps on this class hardware, assuming the system is overclocked solid and well optimized.
Things really are playable.

I don't want to belittle this absolutely monstrous thread, but I skimmed through it searching for V2 vs V3 and I couldn't find direct comparisons, let alone on the exact same system.
Regarding the video you mention, while undoubtedly ultra cool, I don't see this as a typical use case and I'm not sure what it proves.

I expected to see some direct Voodoo 2 vs Voodoo 3 comparisons on the same setup.
Voodoo 2 SLI should not be faster than a single Voodoo 2, the same principle as V3 2000 vs 3000 applies here, the CPU is holding the entire system down in this case. Unless of course you do something silly and run a later 1999 or 2000 game on the Voodoo 2 at 800x600, in which case the card will chug even harder and SLI could alleviate this, assuming you are not stuttering due to limited VRAM (which is a case where Voodoo 3 will be faster).

Voodoo 4 may actually be even slower than the Voodoo 3 on such a system, depending on driver used and game tried, as it probably has a bit higher CPU overhead thanks to newer and more complex drivers.

Garrett W wrote on 2022-12-25, 12:50:

I don't want to belittle this absolutely monstrous thread, but I skimmed through it searching for V2 vs V3 and I couldn't find d […]
Show full quote

I don't want to belittle this absolutely monstrous thread, but I skimmed through it searching for V2 vs V3 and I couldn't find direct comparisons, let alone on the exact same system.
Regarding the video you mention, while undoubtedly ultra cool, I don't see this as a typical use case and I'm not sure what it proves.

I expected to see some direct Voodoo 2 vs Voodoo 3 comparisons on the same setup.
Voodoo 2 SLI should not be faster than a single Voodoo 2, the same principle as V3 2000 vs 3000 applies here, the CPU is holding the entire system down in this case. Unless of course you do something silly and run a later 1999 or 2000 game on the Voodoo 2 at 800x600, in which case the card will chug even harder and SLI could alleviate this, assuming you are not stuttering due to limited VRAM (which is a case where Voodoo 3 will be faster).

Voodoo 4 may actually be even slower than the Voodoo 3 on such a system, depending on driver used and game tried, as it probably has a bit higher CPU overhead thanks to newer and more complex drivers.

I'm actually curious about how slow a CPU one would need to nullify performance differences between Voodoo 1, 2, 3 and possibly 4 at 640x480, 800x600 and maybe even 512x384, preferably in graph form .

My assumption is that, on a slow enough system, Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 3 would be quite similar (a 100MHz+ 486 may not be slow enough) in most use cases .

@garret w

If i had compiled data i would share it here and save you the time, but i don't have that readily available.
Voodoo hardware mostly outside my area of interest.
Only sometimes i touch on it while looking at other things.

You expressed doubt how practical V3/V4 is on 486 hardware.
What the video shows specifically is that GL Quake 1 still can churn 25 fps while the system is under heavy load.
If running on its own - that's 35 fps on average. There are other videos in that thread showing it.
Technically playable, but largely pointless from today's point of view.
Other games from this period, such as TR1, are in the same boat.
Hope this clarifies it.

Feipoa has Voodoo2 SLI as part of a well optimized Biostar MB-8433UUD-A based system.
If i remember correctly, he is getting around 25 fps in GL Quake there.
This motherboard is well studied.
On a system with Voodoo3 plugged into a different motherboard which is on par with the Biostar guy i see fps in the range of 25-30.
This is of course indirect comparison. More of a hint than fact.

One more note - Chadti99 has both Voodoo3 and Voodoo4 PCI cards.
As far as i remember in one of his posts in that thread (his stuff is all credible) he mentioned that he does not see perf difference between the two cards in one of his overclocked 486 rigs.

Maybe one day i will find enough motivation to quantify all that ...

sometimes I think it'd be cool to have a TSR that enables some vesa modes on the 3dfx - doing FBI display mode setup and then just returning the 3dfx FBI BAR. it would let folks use a really nice compatible vga card (ISA even) with a 3dfx for both 3d acceleration and very limited vesa support.