Voodoo3 flies with a Pentium M 2.0Ghz. I got over 8000 in 3dMark99.

I very much prefer using a V3. For me V2 and V2 SLI is indeed all about nostalgic and coolness 😀

I think Windows games should all run just as well on the V3. But some DOS games can have issues on the V3, but also on the V2 and run better on the V1. 🤣

Having a matching pair is nice, but as far as I recall, pretty much any two VooDoo 2 cards can be used in SLI as long as they have the same VRAM count. That is I don't know if a 12MB works in SLI with an 8MB, but I could be wrong. Also, differing clock speeds might be an issue but maybe the drivers simply fix the cards to the lowest common denominator (to match the slowest card).

I have two sets of Maxi Gamer 3D2 cards, one still sealed but the other pair I opened to play with in a retro rig. They are 8MB cards and my first ever VooDoo card back in 1997 was a Maxi Gamer 3Dfx card, so I bought those sets of V2's when I recognized the original (new) boxes and while they were going cheap on eBay a few years back. They were £25 a pair including shipping.

Anyways, what I found was that when used in a K6-III 500Mhz system, they throttled pretty bad. I saw playable framerates in most games even at 1024x786, but looking at what the cards are capable of with a must faster processor confirmed the CPU was bottlenecking the cards heavily. A pentium 166MMX cannot even give enough power to max out a VooDoo 1 card, so using a V2 in anything less than a fast K6-2 / Celeron P2 is a bit of a waste, in terms of letting the card stretch it's legs.

I messed around with the V2's in a few rigs, and eventually got them to run in a Pentium 3 550Mhz machine and they were amazingly fast. Unfortunately that motherboard had no AGP slot so I put them back in the K6-III rig to run alongside a TNT2 Ultra. I ended up removing one of the V2's though, as that K6-III system didn't have the horsepower to warrant the second card in there.

As Phil said, a single VooDoo 3 3000 is around as fast as a pair of V2's in most circumstances, but you will lose style points this way. A couple of V2's connected via the flipped floppy cable makes you an instant pussy magnet, as far as I'm concerned.

bytesaber wrote:

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.

You're correct 😀

bytesaber wrote:

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

Take a look here for Voodoo2: Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix Then compare it to the same games with the Voodoo3: Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix

There are also some early Windows games that the Voodoo3 can't run, like Pandemonium and Mechwarrior 2.

In my opinion some of the rarest (and ideal) v2 setup is the canopus witchdoctor setup (spectra 2500 connected with two pure3d 2) full V2 compatibility and no image degradation in 2d

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/canopus.htm
http://tdfx.de/eng/spectra2500.shtm
http://tdfx.de/eng/pure3d2lx.shtml
http://tdfx.de/eng/pure3d2.shtml

Iris030380 wrote:

Having a matching pair is nice, but as far as I recall, pretty much any two VooDoo 2 cards can be used in SLI as long as they have the same VRAM count. That is I don't know if a 12MB works in SLI with an 8MB, but I could be wrong. Also, differing clock speeds might be an issue but maybe the drivers simply fix the cards to the lowest common denominator (to match the slowest card).

Ive seen people on Vogons post builds with 8 and 12 MB Voodoos in working SLI several times. I also have an SLI setup with 90 and 100MHz memory and everything works great.

On a similar topic, does having 100MHz over 90MHz memory give you any noticeable performance gains if the core itself is running at stock 90 Mhz? Would test it myself, but all my retro machines are at another location for now.

horstmueller wrote:

http://tdfx.de/eng/spectra2500.shtml *

nice setup, special cabling for that or is it sviceo?

also, how do you connect an sli setup if theres just one port for this witchdoctor setup?

vetz wrote:

Take a look here for Voodoo2: Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix Then compare it to the same games with the Voodoo3: Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix

There are also some early Windows games that the Voodoo3 can't run, like Pandemonium and Mechwarrior 2.

This is great info vetz 😀

I'm running a STB pair on an Intel 440BX based system with a PIII 1Ghz CPU and 256MB of memory. So far it is running well. I tried Need for Speed III. Voodoo2 runs great. For fun I switched the 3D settings to try D3D on the Geforce2 TI in the AGP slot. Fail.

The menu was all distorted. I did not try loading a race level. I'll need to learn the menu blind first. This is probably not the right place to ask, but I was thinking DX7 hardware and DirectX 7 being installed, would be friendly to all old D3D games. Just something I interpreted from wikipedia. Silly me.

vetz wrote:

It's more expensive than a Voodoo3 AGP, but a Voodoo3 PCI costs alot more.

Wait your saying my Voodoo 3 2000 PCI is worth more than a Voodoo 2, so I could maybe sell it and buy a Voodoo 2 to hook up next to my FX 5900? Interesting

I'm currently using 2x Trust Voodoo II Dragon 12mb, in my PIII@800mhz rig, together with a Matrox G400 - I can say it's a good matching, for what I've seen.

About compatibility...
1) Voodoo3 not have glide 2.1.1 and earlier compatibility. So - minus 4 winglide games (Cybergladiators, Mechwarrior 2: 31st Century Combat 3dfx, Pandemonium!, Scorched Earth) and minus 6 statically linked dosglide games (Battle Arena Toshinden, EF2000: Tactcom, Starfighter 3000, UEFA Champions League '97, VR Soccer '96/Actua Soccer, Whiplash/Fatal Racing).
The trouble is - Voodoo2/SLI not supports them too if the CPU is fast.
2) Archimedean Dynasty uses the old glide2x.ovl too so - not works with Voodoo3 correctly. Not sure about Voodoo2 + fast CPU.
3) Some DOS glide games freeze on Voodoo2 but work on Voodoo3. Dreams to Reality and Screamer 2 (the glide2x.ovl patch, not the statically linked one) are examples. Theoretically Prost Grand Prix and Tie Break Tennis must start too.

as above you no longer need matching cards at all. 8MB, 12MB, Different memory timings, different brands, doesn't matter. The faster card will always downgrade to the slower one.
You do need to use the "fastvoodoo" drivers though

chinny22 wrote:

as above you no longer need matching cards at all. 8MB, 12MB, Different memory timings, different brands, doesn't matter. The faster card will always downgrade to the slower one.
You do need to use the "fastvoodoo" drivers though

That rings a bell. I went through all the 3rd party drivers when I was benching that machine to see if any made a real difference, both visually and to speed. Fastvoodoos were the ones I settled on, although there was another non-official driver that worked almost as well and had a better GUI, but I forget it's name...

Gamecollector wrote:

About compatibility...

3) Some DOS glide games freeze on Voodoo2 but work on Voodoo3. Dreams to Reality and Screamer 2 (the glide2x.ovl patch, not the statically linked one) are examples. Theoretically Prost Grand Prix and Tie Break Tennis must start too.

Nope, i've said it before: Screamer 2 and Screamer rally run on various systems here and they run absolutely fine on a voodoo1, voodoo2, voodoo2 12mb sli and a voodoo3 setup. No problems at all after using the right files.

About sli: I have 10 v2 cards and sli can be hit and miss. Matching cards are always the best option imho. I have a diamond version that will not sli with another card but a diamond and i have a creative card that behaves the same except it does work with a trust card. To me it seems that ''cheaper'' brands like yakumo, trust and helios are much more forgiving about mismatched sli.

But i don't think you can assume that it will work every time with every card.

meljor wrote:

Screamer 2

S2_3dfx.exe (1031 KiB) freezes on Voodoo2 when the game initializes the card. Hardware differencies between Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo2.
S23dfx.exe (1272 KiB, statically linked) not works with Voodoo2 on fast CPUs. Can't find the card. The speed bug was fixed only in Voodoo2 3.02.02 and 3.03.00b Win9x drivers. Of course s23dfx.exe (it uses statically linked glide 2.1.1) is affected by this bug.

You might be correct about the fast cpu part, don't know. You didn't say that part about screamer2. The voodoo2 itself works fine with screamer2.

What cpu is too fast? For these games i didn't go any higher than a p3-700 slot1.

meljor wrote:

About sli: I have 10 v2 cards and sli can be hit and miss. Matching cards are always the best option imho. I have a diamond version that will not sli with another card but a diamond and i have a creative card that behaves the same except it does work with a trust card. To me it seems that ''cheaper'' brands like yakumo, trust and helios are much more forgiving about mismatched sli.

But i don't think you can assume that it will work every time with every card.

I have the similar experience. I had four different 12MB Voodoo2 cards (3dfx Voodoo II 3.0, Creative 3D Blaster CT6670, Provideo PV830 PCB83001, STB V2 1000) on hand and I never managed to make them work in SLI in any combination, using both original and new modified drivers like FastVoodoo. They were all working perfectly as single cards by the way. I gave up and bought a couple of Diamonds and I'm happy now.

Iris030380 wrote:

As Phil said, a single VooDoo 3 3000 is around as fast as a pair of V2's in most circumstances, but you will lose style points this way. A couple of V2's connected via the flipped floppy cable makes you an instant pussy magnet, as far as I'm concerned.

Finally a chance to use this image 🤣

Love it! 🤣

That would have been a nice piece of advertising for 3dfx 🤣

Funny 🤣