Can't see why not. V2 isn't really a graphics card more of a feature add on card.
As the V2 cant do 2D I would think most software ignores it and it'll act just as your V3/PCX2 setup.
Glide should be even easier as the V2 is the ONLY card that has support.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-08-02, 14:50:

Can't see why not. V2 isn't really a graphics card more of a feature add on card.
As the V2 cant do 2D I would think most software ignores it and it'll act just as your V3/PCX2 setup.
Glide should be even easier as the V2 is the ONLY card that has support.

Thank you for confirming, must admit I already took the dive and the Voodoo 2 has arrived today and began testing!

Right now I have it paired with just a FX5200, I don't think this is normal, but I seem to getting a lot of dots / snow on the screen, they mostly appear on objects mid to far distance, took a few photos with a camera to show below. (This only happens during Glide rendering.)

For now i'm going to give this system a good clean install as it's had a range of cards on it with what knows left behind..

Clean install, different drivers on everything and same results.. is this what normal dithering on a Voodoo 2 looks like or is it most likely a fault?

How hot is the card running? I have a V2 which malfunctions when it overheats. I had to put a fan over it. The faster the CPU, the hotter it gets.

Maybe its just Final Reality? try another program.
Maybe its the passthrough cable? try plugging the screen direct to the voodoo once a glide game is up and running.

I doubt it's either of these but worth a shot! better then a faulty card

Errius wrote on 2021-08-05, 23:08:

How hot is the card running? I have a V2 which malfunctions when it overheats. I had to put a fan over it. The faster the CPU, the hotter it gets.

It should be fine, have a 12cm fan mounted on the side of the case pointing right at the pci brackets, these errors appear straight away from a cold boot too.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-08-06, 08:53:

Maybe its just Final Reality? try another program.
Maybe its the passthrough cable? try plugging the screen direct to the voodoo once a glide game is up and running.

I doubt it's either of these but worth a shot! better then a faulty card

It's already got the screen plugged directly into it, I always suspected the cable myself but it only passes through the AGP card to the VOODOO so that wouldn't make any sense.
And it's any program that uses Glide, here's some screenshots from Deus ex (upscaled x2 to make it easier to see).
I fear it is the card that's at fault, for now my last resort is i'll try it in another PCI slot and use a different AGP card (again).

GrampaGotTheKeys wrote on 2021-08-06, 14:35:

I fear it is the card that's at fault, for now my last resort is i'll try it in another PCI slot and use a different AGP card (again).

Nae joy, looks like it's getting sent back to the seller.
Here's a picture of the culprit for posterity's sake;

Ending on a positive note, the seller replied quickly with a refund without needing to send back the card, a champ in my books 🍺

GrampaGotTheKeys wrote on 2021-08-06, 20:53:

Ending on a positive note, the seller replied quickly with a refund without needing to send back the card, a champ in my books 🍺

hope you find a v2 that completes this graphics card orgy

Just to be curious? What voodoo2 driver did you use?

Aebtdom wrote on 2021-08-12, 05:58:

Just to be curious? What voodoo2 driver did you use?

Tried the newest official drivers I could find first "voodoo2-30202.exe" then some more older and appropriate "diamond-monster3dii-207.exe".
Both had the same issues, in Windows 98 SE and in Windows 95.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-08-12, 00:32:

hope you find a v2 that completes this graphics card orgy

🤣 Thankies.
In very dark games like Thief the problem is less noticeable, using it for now until that can get swapped.
As for the Geforce FX5200, swapping it with a Matrox Millennium G400 32MB, less problems with cards fighting for control with OpenGL games.

Yeah, i've had bad experiences with Nvidia cards with PowerVR PCX2 when their drivers fight for Direct3D HAL dominance. They're fine if you just disable that part of the PowerVR's drivers, but then there goes the curiosity of seeing all your favorite D3D games struggle 🙁

There should be no conflicts with the Voodoo2 because that's strictly a secondary device regarding Direct3D and it's usually up to games to implement a configurator or preference towards 3dfxv2 (usually through caps enumeration on startup).

Voodoo3's fine with PCX2 too and a Voodoo2 should also work with a Voodoo3 (with per game driver shuffle for Glide/GL). There's some visual differences and compatibility/driver differences between the two cards (despite the common sst1 limits), so it's not that pointless and redundant...

Thank you for the thoughts leileilol, I've ended up with putting in a FX5200, semi working Voodoo2, PCX2 and SBLive for now (I've given into some EAX curiosities.)

leileilol wrote on 2021-08-18, 21:22:

there goes the curiosity of seeing all your favorite D3D games struggle 🙁

*PTSD kicks in*

In other news second Voodoo 2 arrived the other day, even worse than the first, freezes the system when even trying to open the display panel or start Glide game.
(Already begun the return process)

Of the things that I know and heard when using a Voodoo2 such fast computer is that you should only use the latest or second to last official drivers as using older drivers brings problems such as the computer freezing.

I've tried that kind of thing with my Slot 1 machine equipped with a PIII-750 and got problems with some games that uses the Glide API (especially DOS games) with old drivers but not with the latest ones. On my Socket 7 machine or using a slower Slot 1 CPU such as the PII-400, the same old drivers worked without any issues.

The only thing that it's not normal are the dots and snow around the textures.

As for the sound cards you can use both the SB Live! and AWE64 at the same time without problems by using the line-out from one card to line-in to the other one as DOS compatibility with the SB Live! card is mediocre.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-22, 16:29:

Of the things that I know and heard when using a Voodoo2 such fast computer is that you should only use the latest or second to last official drivers as using older drivers brings problems such as the computer freezing.

I've tried that kind of thing with my Slot 1 machine equipped with a PIII-750 and got problems with some games that uses the Glide API (especially DOS games) with old drivers but not with the latest ones. On my Socket 7 machine or using a slower Slot 1 CPU such as the PII-400, the same old drivers worked without any issues.

Ouch, luckily the newer ones are the ones I tend to stick to, thank you for the heads up though!

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-22, 16:29:

As for the sound cards you can use both the SB Live! and AWE64 at the same time without problems by using the line-out from one card to line-in to the other one as DOS compatibility with the SB Live! card is mediocre.

Wow I didn't think of that, sounds neat but I can't help but feel it might be prove really fiddly keeping IRQ settings consistent in Windows, I'll keep it in mind though if I have enough slots free on this Micro ATX board!

I have a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, Voodoo 1, and a PowerVR PCX2 all in the same system and they all seem to play nicely together. I wish there was more room for cooling though.

As far as the Voodoo 2, I've had to repair two of them already and I have another one on my bench waiting to be reworked. I think these cards have in general not been well taken care of (in my experience) and are also subject to a lot of thermal expansion due to how hot the chips get.

I'm not familiar with white snow from a Voodoo 2 so I couldn't tell you if it's a poor connection with one of the geometry processors or a bad ram chip. Either way, don't throw it away as whatever is wrong with it may be repairable.

I was worried this was going to turn into a blog about going through endless faulty cards but third time turned out to be a charm; we got one!

The seller listed the cards as a "Dragon 2 Magic 3D II" but checking the serial on the back is appears to be a "A-Trend Helios 3D II"

Had good feeling about this one, looked pristene coming out of the anti-static bag and behold no weird visual errors to be seen, well chuffed.

Current system:
MSI MS-6156, Pentium 3 750 MHz, 128MB Micron RAM, SBLive
Matrox Millennium G400 32MB (683 Drivers)
Voodoo 2 A-Trend Helios 3D II 12MB (30202 Drivers)

Benchmarks on Windows 98 SE DirectX 6.1, OpenGL scores were by the Matrox:
Quake 2 v3.20 (demo1.dm2)
Software 320 240 - 83.2 fps
3Dfx 640 480 - 93.6 fps
3Dfx 800 600 - 61.4 fps
OpenGL 640 480 - 116.6 fps
OpenGL 800 600 - 94.2 fps
OpenGL 1024 768 - 62.5 fps

Quake 3 V1.32c (demo four)
VOODOO 800 - 41.9fps
FASTEST 512 - 89.8fps
NORMAL 640 - 63.7fps
HIGH QUALITY 800 - 42.0fps

Unreal v226 (Unreal timedemo)
512x384 Software - 36.8fps
640x480 Voodoo - 67.5fps
800x600 Voodoo - 47.1fps

Serious Sam v1.00a (PeacefulNightCoop)
640x480/16bit/Speed
OpenGL - 39.7/41.8
Voodoo - 34.7/36.2
800x600/16bit/Normal
OpenGL - 33.3/34.8
Voodoo - 23.9/24.4

Final Reality 1.01 (Sound off)
2D - 6.04, 3D - 5.07, BusRate - 10.19
RealityMarks - 6.13, AGP(36mb) - 79.34

3DMark 99 (800x600 16bit)
3DMarks 6279, CPUMarks 11044

I certainty wouldn't play some of these titles on this rig, I was actually wanting to go through "Alien Trilogy" and it turns out the G400 is one of the few cards that can actually play it on its 16 bit colour mode so I've been going through that lately before the card turned up!
(Adjusted the brightness and doubled the sized of the screenshots below to make them easier to see)

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-08-24, 09:11:

I'm not familiar with white snow from a Voodoo 2 so I couldn't tell you if it's a poor connection with one of the geometry processors or a bad ram chip. Either way, don't throw it away as whatever is wrong with it may be repairable.

Aye as said above it can be tolerable with the right games, I'm not one for chucking cards.

The listings for the dud cards were described by the sellers as "untested" or "would boot" so certainly wasn't a risk free purchase on my part, but i'll let others keep this in mind for when they need to go hunting.

There are many unscrupulous sellers who advertise boards, cpus, graphics cards as "untested", yet they sell many hardware items and clearly have the means to test them, openly declare they are selling with no warranty and won't be refunding. Yet there are plenty of buyers willing to buy such junk for extortion prices. I wouldn't care less if it cost just $5-$10. I bought my Voodoo 2 for just $2 and it ended up being fully functional.