subhuman@xgtx wrote:

Did it come with thermal tape or similar?

It came with nothing, not even a box 😀 However, this must not be a problem, most people on this forum have thermal grease and epoxy in stock. I suggest putting small drops of epoxy on the clean corners of the chips after applying thermal grease on the chip itself. Perhaps I should also work with a grindstone a bit so that the cooler would cover the left TMU better (GENDAC chip is currently too high to be covered).

rodimus80 wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

retrofanatic wrote:

I think another question to ask as well is what system should one use for the "ideal" Voodoo 2 SLI configuration?

A regular Voodoo scales with a Pentium from 100 to 200 MHz. So a Voodoo 2 definitely needs something faster. A Pentium III is a good platform, for SLI a high clock speed, like 700 - 1000 MHz should do the trick.

A Pentium II isn't strong enough for a Voodoo 2 SLI setup?

Pentium II-450 is just about as far as it is rational to go with V2 SLI and not V3, if not for compatibility reasons. However, it is known that V2 scales well with CPUs up to at least 700 MHz.

Concerning Voodoo Graphics, I thought the card scaled with CPUs up to PII-333 or something around it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/3d-accele … step,51-17.html

V2 can be very cpu bound and scales beyond even a 700mhz P3/athlon. V1 tops out around 400mhz before there are no longer any tangible gains. V3 and VSA continue to scale well beyond the V1 and V2. Socket A is known for a reason as the bases of the term "Voodoo Rocket".

Thanks for all the responses, guys. This thread has yielded lots of useful information.

Here's another topic for discussion: what are the power requirements of a typical Voodoo 2 SLI rig? I have a mini tower Pentium II 450 which would be great for Voodoo 2's - however, the PSU is small, oddly-shaped, and only 90 watts. It does not inspire confidence.

rodimus80 wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

retrofanatic wrote:

I think another question to ask as well is what system should one use for the "ideal" Voodoo 2 SLI configuration?

A regular Voodoo scales with a Pentium from 100 to 200 MHz. So a Voodoo 2 definitely needs something faster. A Pentium III is a good platform, for SLI a high clock speed, like 700 - 1000 MHz should do the trick.

A Pentium II isn't strong enough for a Voodoo 2 SLI setup?

Not if you want to max them out. V2's respond really well to more powerful CPU's. A 1ghz P-III or Athlon is probably the sweet spot for V2's in SLi. They are really fast, but they don't produce so much heat that you have to add extra fans to your system to remove it. I don't think I'd even try running them with a Netburst CPU, but I'm overly cautious that way. I know other people have done it without issues.

That is good info for sure...it's made me rethink my strategy for my Voodoo 2 sli build. Good to hear that I can go with a faster cpu than my p166. ..I will still keep my eye on temperatures... I think I may go with my AOpen pII 400...shouldn't be a problem with overheating....I'm curious to hear if people prefer using a dual Voodoo 2 setup strictly for dos games or is it good to run win95 or 98 games as well? Or should I just stick to playing early windows games on my Voodoo3 pIII system? Sorry. I am not trying to hijack your topic maximus...I just think it would be relevant to get an idea of what is ideal to run on an ideal V2 SLI configuration.

retrofanatic wrote:

That is good info for sure...it's made me rethink my strategy for my Voodoo 2 sli build. Good to hear that I can go with a faster cpu than my p166. ..I will still keep my eye on temperatures... I think I may go with my AOpen pII 400...shouldn't be a problem with overheating....I'm curious to hear if people prefer using a dual Voodoo 2 setup strictly for dos games or is it good to run win95 or 98 games as well? Or should I just stick to playing early windows games on my Voodoo3 pIII system? Sorry. I am not trying to hijack your topic maximus...I just think it would be relevant to get an idea of what is ideal to run on an ideal V2 SLI configuration.

I'm pretty sure Windows was more the target for the V2 then DOS but I know a lot of DOS Glide games, at least via patches can benefit from a V2 sli setup.
I use a voodoo 1 strictly for DOS in my P1 200mhz and plan on a V2 sli setup for my PII 450mhz Win 95 machine.

retrofanatic wrote:

Sorry. I am not trying to hijack your topic maximus...I just think it would be relevant to get an idea of what is ideal to run on an ideal V2 SLI configuration.

Not a problem. The CPU scaling of these cards is interesting to me as well.

How do you verify if the Voodoo 2 SLI is working correctly?

Should tell you in the display properties applet when clicking the System Info button (Scanline Interleave: Detected!) and you should see double the memory for the frame buffer & texture memory counts. I always thought it was funny they put an exclamation point in there for the extra excitement!!

Everything checks out. Time to game.

I have a single 12MB Voodoo 2 in my P4 3.4ghz machine. I'd love to do some comparisons with other CPUs to figure out where the benefits for faster CPUs stop if anyone is interested. Just let me know what we wanna test and I'll try to do it quickly.

The V2 starts overtaking the V1 seriously from a Pentium II 266.
2 V2 will start being interesting (as in have more FPS than single V1, not only allowing 1024x768) from 400MHz P2/Celeron.

That's what I remember from benchmarks I read early 2000 😁

I'd go Athlon classic 500/700MHz : more punch than P2 (Deschute or Katmai), 3Dnow for Quake2 😀
Or P3 (the real one, Coppermine, not the P2+SSE known as P3 katmai), but that's so mainstream ...

I have my Voodoo 2 SLI alongside a Coppermine. Working wonderfully right now.

Perhaps it's time for an "Ultimate 3dfx benchmark"? What tools/demos would you guys use to test V1/V2/V2SLI?

We could finally come to a conclusion on a lot of questions... Stock and overclocked scalability, how much CPU power a Voodoo card needs to run specific titles, Intel vs. AMD when it comes to Glide.

These cards can work in anything from 486SX-25 up to Core 2 Duo and beyond due to PCI interface. Would be an interesting thing to do 😀

I found that you need to purchase a lot of games to do a wide range of tests.

I checked reviews and they used a mix or some of:

- Turok (I think this was a demo)
- GLQuake
- Incoming
- Forsaken
- Quake 2
- Unreal

All of these have built-in benchmarks.

I had my Voodoo2 SLI and a Voodoo Graphics on my main pc just for the hell of it (4770k@ 4.6; Gigabyte Z87X-OC; 2x4Gb 2666; Win 7 x64) via Glidexp64 and it ran them like sh.. 140fps and 28.8 fps for GLQuake timedemo demo1 @ 640x480 respectively. Will have to try Xp and see if it makes a difference 🤣

They were also hot as hell doing nothing at stock, especially the voodoo 1 with its tmu and fbi 500nm manufacuring process

My ideal Voodoo2 SLI system is always Pentium 2 (350, 400 or 450) keeping things as stock as possible, without any heatsinks attached. However, you might want to mount a 80x80 (or larger, if you can) fan in front of the case, so that it blows air across the Voodoo2 cards. It's the cheapest & most efficient way of keeping your Voodoo cards nice & cold! The alternative would be a PCI blower fan, just below (or above) the Voodoo cards.

Also, I strongly recommend that you don't use mismatched configuration for SLI (2 different cards). I've tried this method last week, for the 1st time in my life & had tons of problems! I have 13 working V2 cards, with 3 different SLI setups, so I kinda know what I'm talking about 😀 And yes, I'd say that Diamond cards are the best ones, but they're also prone to memory problems. Apart from those 13 cards, I also have 2x V2 and 2 more V1 cards with bad memory, all from Diamond (one with bad memory and the other with bad chipset).

Why is Voodoo2 often more expensive than Voodoo3? Why seek Voodoo2 over Voodoo3, 4, 5 ?

bytesaber wrote:

Why is Voodoo2 often more expensive than Voodoo3? Why seek Voodoo2 over Voodoo3, 4, 5 ?

It's more expensive than a Voodoo3 AGP, but a Voodoo3 PCI costs alot more. Voodoo2 have better compatibility than Voodoo3 and you can use them in a SLI system, which has a certain coolness factor that the Voodoo3 can't beat. When released in 1998, Voodoo2 SLI was everyone's dream.

Beside the compatibility, Voodoo2 is an addon card, so it makes you able to use a much faster 2D/Direct3D card along side the Voodoo. Drawbacks are worse picture quality compared to the Voodoo3.

I've had similar thoughts, but i've just never asked. I often stick with Voodoo2 for the same reasons. I pair mine with a Geforce 2 TI.

I have seen the image quality difference. The Voodoo3 is nice in that regard. I would describe it like fog or softness. Not a frame rate or resolution thing, if I understand correctly.

Can you mention any obvious compatibility examples, that the Voodoo2 favors?

Thanks for all of your recent help btw! 😀