Did you test it under DOS or some version of Windows? Did you try other drivers if it's under Windows? Did you disable integrated graphics while testing Voodoo3?

I tested under Windows 98 SE and I was not able to completely disable integrated graphics.
I don't know how to do that. There is no setting to disable it in BIOS/jumpers. I set the memory to 2MB in BIOS but it was still detected under windows 98 with exclamation point.

Disabling integrated graphics isn't possible or necessary in this case. What is important is that the Voodoo (PCI) is set as primary in BIOS and in Windows. Apart from that this sounds more like driver issues than anything else. Do you have the SiS motherboard chipset drivers installed? Exclamation marks in Device Manager are a sure sign of driver problems.

Yes I do both sis and voodoo latest drivers installed.
Yellow exclamation mark says something about drivers not supporting multiple graphics cards. I tried to disable the integrated gpu but it did not help.
Bios setting is set to prefer pci graphics.

Are you switching to GLQuake, or are you using the software renderer. If you aren't, that performance drop is concerning.

If I remember correctly this is how you disable the built in video on the GA-5SMM.

Set PCI as primary video in the BIOS setup, reboot (with the screen connected to the PCI video card) then disable the built in AGP video in Windows then reboot again and enter the BIOS setup and set the amount of system memory the built in AGP video should use as frame buffer to 0MB.

After you power off and and power on the system again the onboard video should be fully disabled and not hurting the memory performance any more.

The integrated graphics is connected through AGP or maybe even through a local bus so the bandwidth is higher. It is also possible that the board will setup the MTRRs when using the internal video but not for a PCI card. Usually Windows should enable write combining for the video card. You could test the bandwidth.

With a Voodoo3 you should definitely use GLQuake (the CPU will be the bottleneck unless you use very high resolutions), but I suppose you have a reason for using the software renderer.

fitzpatr wrote:

Are you switching to GLQuake, or are you using the software renderer. If you aren't, that performance drop is concerning.

No. I used software renderer (just for testing purposes)

In Unreal using glide renderer I get 25 fps@512×386. This is too low for voodoo3 and k6-2+ 500
This is the game I actually planned to play with Voodoo 3 but it runs too slow.

I had a GA-5SMM motherboard. Using a PCI video card and setting onboard VRAM to 2MB in BIOS gives me 0MB allocated to integrated GPU.

lazibayer wrote:

I had a GA-5SMM motherboard. Using a PCI video card and setting onboard VRAM to 2MB in BIOS gives me 0MB allocated to integrated GPU.

That is the same for me, but the problem is it also slows down the CPU.
I'm running some more tests to figure out what is happening.

Just tested with PC Mark 2002 and CPU score is very similar with and without Voodoo3 installed.
So, it is not CPU what slows down, but something else.

ahtoh wrote:

Just tested with PC Mark 2002 and CPU score is very similar with and without Voodoo3 installed.
So, it is not CPU what slows down, but something else.

CPU and integrated VGA share system memory bandwidth, so when both are addressed simultaneously (i.e. during a game or 3D benchmark) performance is approximately halved.

The question is why that is happening here - even if the integrated VGA is still operational, you should be working exclusively on the Voodoo in this situation. Once again, I'm sure drivers aren't working properly.

It could be an interrupt thing. Try the Voodoo in a different PCI slot.

dionb wrote:

Try the Voodoo in a different PCI slot.

Didn't help

I suspect the issue might be due to the bus transfer rate being too low. I tested it with Final reality and it says Bus transfer rate is 16 Mb/s
SiS 530 IGP scores 42 Mb/s in the same test
See attached:

Any idea what could be the cause of this?

Bus transfer rate should be how fast data can be written into video ram. I never had a PCI Voodoo3, it may be just that slow, or maybe the SiS chipset is just crap.

Apart from that, I wonder why you don't use a Voodoo2 instead anyway? You have on-board graphics already for 2d, so a Voodoo2 would be a better match (also with the cpu).

That's because I don't have Voodoo 2, and I would need two to play unreal I think (my primary goal)
I'm also considering changing the motherboard, but not sure there are other SS7 mATX motherboards, and they are probably also based on this SiS 530 chipset.
p.s. I checked the Voodoo3 bus transfer rate on relatively modern PC and it is around 100 Mb/s:

There are micro-atx boards made with MVP4 chipset. There are also m-atx boards with MVP3 chipset but not as common.

There are more than enough mATX SS7 motherboards. Finding them for a decent price is another matter though...

Quick look on Amibay shows that there's one, an MSI MS-5182 with an ALi Aladdin V chipset and onboard ATi Rage Pro AGP (with its own memory, not shared like with the SiS530), going for a very decent price in Poland, and another, an Acer V72MA with the exact same chips/specs and a similar price in Texas. Neither has the AGP slot that would be nice, but both would be vastly better than a SiS530 (or indeed Via MPV4) based board with integrated VGA without its own memory. Search on Amibay for the model numbers and you should spot them straight away.

Will they work with AMD K6-2+ 500 Mhz CPU?
I quickly googled and It seems that they do not support it, at least officially.