VOGONS


First post, by viper32cm

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My Win98 PC currently runs a pair of 12MB Voodoos2s along with a Gainward GF4Ti4200. I use the FastVoodoo driver.

One of the Voodoo2s is a Diamond Monster II
The other is a CMC Orbit3d

I originally had the CMC card as the primary/master and the Diamond as the secondary/slave.

The image quality was not great. In particular, with Unreal at 1024x768, it was very easy to see scan lines out of sync. Further, there were alternating line render errors and discoloration in some games (e.g. Battlezone and Heavy Gear), so bad sometimes that I would have to disable SLI. I know that SLI was never perfect even from the perspective of 1998 or 1999, but this seemed unacceptably bad.

So bad that I decided to switch the order of the cards, and it made things better. The render errors went away, but it still seems like there is a sync issue particularly in Unreal.

The CMC card worked fine on its own before I purchased the Diamond, so I don't think there's anything wrong with my cards. Could there be a small difference in speed between the cards or some other relatively small difference that would create a sync or compatibility issue between them? I've been giving serious thought to buying another Diamond Monster II 12MB for the SLI setup and using the CMC as a standalone card with my Win95 PC. Would going with a matched set help with the sync issues? Are there any other brands that are known to pair well with the Diamond or CMC cards?

Reply 1 of 5, by waterbeesje

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Might this be something that has to do with memory timing? I can imagine if the matter card runs faster than the slave can handle, there might be some instability in the image.
Would loosening timings be an option to try?

Stuck at 10MHz...

Reply 2 of 5, by chinny22

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Bad SLI cable? Not sure how likely it is but I'd definitely try that before spending money on another card

Reply 3 of 5, by chrismeyer6

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Do both cards operate at the same speeds? I'd also make sure that the vga cable for your monitor as well as the vga pass through cables are of good quality and shielded properly as that can cause issues as well.

Reply 4 of 5, by viper32cm

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Not to bring back old threads, but I was finally able to figure this out. The Fast Voodoo driver has some sort of default overclock built in, you can disable it by setting everything to "default." Once I did that, everything got better instantly, much better image quality.