Not wasted.

There's a lot who always urge to give a P3 1GHz+ so it can "max out" for some forsaken bungholiomark, but no it ain't wasted. There's driver and multitexturing benefits that similar cards of its generation don't do as well (Rage Pro, G200, i740, etc). It'll even do better than a Voodoo Graphics on a 486 due to that.

The Voodoo2 starts showing its age and thrash quite a bit on games from late 1999 that'll be slow on a P233 regardless of video card anyway, and a second in SLI won't overcome that.

Cool thanks, that helps. For the record my "maxed out" 3dfx system is a P3 1 GHz with a Voodoo 5500 so that'll easily handle all the most demanding 3dfx games.

How I am going to deploy my semi-imaginary (I haven't got them all found yet) Voodoo2 arsenal is, the 8MB goes in a good spec P233MMX system, the pair of 16MBs go in a 400Mhz system, and the odd 16Mb goes as compatibility enhancement/enforcer in the system I can get the best XT to near Ghz range out of. But I also have V3s that may go in 500-800mhz machines.

edit: as imi points out below, 16MB v2s do not normally exist, I would be talking about 12MB cards.

My dual voodoo2's are in a dual pentium pro 233 system. Happy with it, but 266 would offer a little more headroom

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-07-18, 00:29:

My dual voodoo2's are in a dual pentium pro 233 system. Happy with it, but 266 would offer a little more headroom

I always had trouble getting beyond 250mhz on ppro (and had to carefully select)

I always thought Intel gave a royal screwing to Socket 4 and Socket 8 by not offering newer / faster clock chips back in the time they were relevant

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-07-18, 00:04:

How I am going to deploy my semi-imaginary (I haven't got them all found yet) Voodoo2 arsenal is, the 8MB goes in a good spec P233MMX system, the pair of 16MBs go in a 400Mhz system, and the odd 16Mb goes as compatibility enhancement/enforcer in the system I can get the best XT to near Ghz range out of. But I also have V3s that may go in 500-800mhz machines.

16MB Voodoo 2s?
where do I get myself one of those ^^

You take an 8MB Voodoo 2, and think "derpy derp derp, what's dat one with double the texture memory, derpy derp?" and come up with 16, coz you forgot that double the texture memory is double 4, not double 8... and just like that, 4+8 = 16... brainfart maff.

In my opinion:
Pentium (models strarting from 1994) , Pentium MMX fits Voodoo 1
Pentium MMX , Pentium II fits Voodoo 2
Pentium II fits Voodoo 2 SLI x2

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-07-18, 03:37:

You take an 8MB Voodoo 2, and think "derpy derp derp, what's dat one with double the texture memory, derpy derp?" and come up with 16, coz you forgot that double the texture memory is double 4, not double 8... and just like that, 4+8 = 16... brainfart maff.

we all have our derp moments 😁

I have a Voodoo 2 with 8MB and 83MHz memory in my 233MMX

It definitely depends greatly on what games you're playing and the resolution, but according to my tests, a Voodoo 2 can actually bottleneck a 266 MHz PMMX at 640 x 480 in games like GLQuake!
In other games, however (Quake 2, Unreal), the CPU will definitely bottleneck the Voodoo 2 even at 800 x 600.

Anyway, what I do know is that, for the games I play and the resolutions I play them at, more often than not I go with a Voodoo 3 when testing P MMX233 platforms (which I usually overclock at either 266 or 292 MHz).
So, no... IMO, a Voodoo 2 is not wasted on a 233 MHz PMMX. In fact, the card will actually be less stressed and run cooler. 😁
The Voodoo Banshee PCI is also a very good option if you're more into single textured games running @ 640 x 480. There are also some games where the Banshee is actually usable at 1024 x 768 (at period correct framerates, that is). 😀

As for Voodoo 1, I only use it on P166(MMX) or slower, and purely for its historical value. It severely bottlenecks higher speed Pentium MMX CPUs.

Last time I tried a Voodoo2 8MB in a P-MMX 233 config it felt like a good balanced choice for a fast MMX machine that needed a last upgrade.

OK I'll stick with my original plan and use a Voodoo2. I'm happy about that as the video cards will both be STB, a Velocity 128 and Black Magic 3D, so that will add a little extra "cool" factor to the build.

The current setup I am using is a 233MMX with a vd2 SLI setup.
And my conclusions are:

There is litterally no game that maxes out the card and the reason I use this combination is that it will run games in 1024x768 with no loss in performance.
If your CRT is up for the task you can even run it @ 120Hz.
Also the multi texturing is a great advantage in games like Unreal and Quake2.
It will run most msdos games that supports 3Dfx voodoo1 with the proper patches.

I have made a few video's where you can see it performing in win98SE.
https://youtu.be/-0-fwseSKgk

And a Q2 with Unreal benchmark
https://youtu.be/OdXKTVfvqQo

Warning it has been done really ammateuristic, since I have no capturing hardware at my disposal.