Not that I've done it but Hardware Profiles might be your way forward.

BIOS can sometimes have an option to initialise PCI over AGP and vice versa but I've never used that option either. You'd just have to check, it might be an option, might not. I've seen it on a few late 90s boards so you could be in luck.

I've always wondered about this too, if you can have a "dormant" Voodoo card which isn't active as the main display but is a device that you can choose in a game's config...

Good luck!

some discussion here: Has anyone tried running an AGP Voodoo 3 alongside another video card?

Second on Hardware profiles. I have that setup in my Win98 Tualatin build. AGP Geforce 4 Ti4200 and a PCI Voodoo3. If I want to play any glide games i go into the bios and switch primary video to Voodoo3 and then load hardware profile that has that enabled and the geforce disabled. Reverse for using the other. Initial setup isn't that bad install both cards and drivers and then duplicate the main hardware profile. Once duplicated rename them (I just called them the name of my cards) and then disable the non-used card in the active profile that you are in. Reboot and then switch in bios to your other card and select the other profile on boot and then disable the other card in that profile. Works great!

Thanks for the info. Seems possible at least with some switching effort.

Is it possible to instal both cards complete with all drivers in parallel with Geforce as primary? In games i would select the graphics device like Geforce D3D or 3Dfx Glide and switch the monitor cable to the selected graphics card.
In best case both cards would work together in a multi monitor solution.

Why do you want to use a GeForce and a Voodoo 3 on a SS7?

I mean, sure, the GeForce will be faster in some games that can take advantage of Hardware Transform (not Lighting, those games are way too new for this platform) and it's also a lot faster at higher resolutions. I myself usually prefer the GeForce 2 MX for SS7 builds, however, a Voodoo 3 is more than enough for such a slow platform (not to mention its compatibility with all those nice Glide games). I would just go with one of the cards and be done with it.

If you lean more towards later Direct3D / OpenGL compatible games, the GeForce should be fine - hopefully you are not using anything newer than a GeForce 3 (Ti 200/500), because driver overhead will kill performance on SS7.
If, on the other hand, you want to play older Glide games and/or you are fine with lower resolutions @ 16 bit (pseudo-22bit) color, the Voodoo 3 is the way to go.

Another possibility would be to go with a GeForce + Voodoo 2 card, since the switch is seamless (however, this is usually my choice for faster platforms, not SS7).

Keep in mind that many SS7 boards have bad / underpowered AGP implementations, so choose the card carefully (a GeForce 2 MX is a safe bet, for sure, however a GeForce 3 might actually kill some SS7 lower quality boards).

The voodoo2 is made for ss7.

I only have a V3 PCI and one V2. With switch to SS7 I want to switch to an AGP graphics card. I have a Geforce 256 DDR which i plan to use. I like the driver support for 3DNow! from the V3 and want to keep the option for 1024x768 Glide gaming and the speed.

The GF256 AGP + V2 is my fallback for Glide compatibility, but with V3 the Glide games would be faster and better.

My board is a M577 (AT board with ATX connector), which i want to use with a Enermax AX365 ATX supply to relieve the voltage converters on the board.

GeForce 256 DDR is generally the wrong card to use on a SS7 and even more so on a PC Chips motherboard (not exactly one of the best boards of the time, to put it mildly). So I highly recommend against it, you could end up with a fried motherboard (not to mention that even a GeForce 2 MX will be severely bottlenecked on SS7, but at least it will use up to 4 times less power).

On more powerful CPUs (like a P3 Coppermine 1 GHz), the GeForce DDR would be about 40 - 50% faster than a GeForce 2 MX 400 at very high resolutions (especially on 32 bit color). However, this won't be the case on SS7... where you will basically see more or less the same framerate on most resolutions.

I tested GeForce 4MX 440 64Mb DDR against Savage Extreme / Rage 128 Pro GL and few other Chips.
HOT591P MVP3 with latest BIOS, K6-2+ @ 600Mhz, Windows 98SE

But the Driver overhead prevents the GeForce 4MX from being faster.
Also the Lack of FPU Power.
In Fact the Rage 128 Pro GL scores more 3DMark99s and higher minimum Framerate.
There only few exceptions where the 4MX is faster.

Quake 3 for example, but this already makes use of T&L and offloads some of the CPU.
But majority of Games running on K6-2 does not use T&L so you won`t benefit from it.
There is one benefit though that could be considered for choosing it.
Choose higher resolutions without loosing fps.

I also happen to have a Rage128 Pro. I also have a G400 Max. But what about those with D3D and OpenGL compatibility and 3DNow! support?

I will test what works best on my system. My focus would be 1024x768x32 with the least possible loss of speed. Quake3 would be more in the focus of my dual PIII with SMP.

But all this does not solve the question of using the V3 with another card in parallel. Maybe it works better with the G400?

Thanks a lot for your help!

PC-Engineer wrote on 2020-09-22, 19:15:

I will test what works best on my system. My focus would be 1024x768x32 with the least possible loss of speed. Quake3 would be more in the focus of my dual PIII with SMP.
But all this does not solve the question of using the V3 with another card in parallel. Maybe it works better with the G400?

Go with a GeForce 2 MX/MX400 with driver version 7.76 and never look back 😀 You can see here a few benchmarks that I ran on a K6-2+ 550 @ 600MHz paired with a GeForce 2 MX. I would say that 89 FPS for Quake 2 @ 1024x768x32 is very good. I tested many cards/driver combinations, and nVidia cards that are supported by driver 7.76 give the best results on SS7 - period. Only the Voodoo 3 comes close (and in some Glide capable games at lower resolutions it can even surpass it), however it's still usually slower than the GeForce at 1024 x 768.
Regarding the Voodoo 3, it should work the same with any other AGP card that you use, however the switch is cumbersome (at least for me). I tested this in the past by changing the AGP/PCI VGA priority option in the BIOS and it worked fine. The Voodoo drivers don't interfere with the nVidia drivers in any way. However, I would still prefer a GeForce 2 + a Voodoo 2 for the seamless switch. The Voodoo 2 is generally more than enough to run any early Glide-exclusive games, while newer games usually support Direct3D/OpenGL too and will run much better on the GeForce.

matze79 wrote on 2020-09-22, 18:27:

But majority of Games running on K6-2 does not use T&L so you won`t benefit from it.

True, but there are some older OpenGL games such as Quake and Quake 2 that can still take advantage of Hardware Transform, which will improve performance by a fair bit.

Very nice, will try it with this driver and the Geforce + Voodoo2. Also interesting your troubles with the 4in1.

Thanks a lot for the advices.