Voodoo2 SLI + Geforce 2 GTS combination would cover pretty much every period game you would want to throw at such a setup. Voodoo 2 SLI setup is pretty much on par with a Voodoo3 2000 performance wise and the V2 setup will likely be far more compatible with older Glide titles than the V3 would be. For everything not Glide the GTS would handle it just fine, you could even grab a Geforce 3 Ti200 which would be just as good. (The Geforce cards would have much better Direct3d, OpenGL compatibility and performance than the Voodoo3 by a wide margin)

Voodoo 3 cards have better image quality because there's no pass through cable. They also use STB components which results in a very sharp 2D image. And there's also that "22-bit" filter which can look nicer compared to the one that Voodoo 2 uses.

On the flip side, they are not as compatible with older Glide games. This mostly affects the DOS era, but there are also some early Windows titles like Pandemonium which don't run in Glide mode on a Voodoo 3.

There's a ton of Voodoo 2 information in this thread, and also some remarks on the Voodoo 3: Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix You may also want to check the 3DFX page of the Vogons wiki.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-05-26, 06:50:

Voodoo2 SLI + Geforce 2 GTS combination would cover pretty much every period game you would want to throw at such a setup. Voodoo 2 SLI setup is pretty much on par with a Voodoo3 2000 performance wise and the V2 setup will likely be far more compatible with older Glide titles than the V3 would be. For everything not Glide the GTS would handle it just fine, you could even grab a Geforce 3 Ti200 which would be just as good. (The Geforce cards would have much better Direct3d, OpenGL compatibility and performance than the Voodoo3 by a wide margin)

Thanks for the info and thx for mentioning the G3 ti 200 as well. Have not looked beyond Gf 2 because I though for p3 800 mhz a gf 3 would be too "futuristic" but the price and avaibilty of the gf 3 ti 200 cards are good and should not be ignored as a option as well.

@Josep_Joestar Thanks for your input and the links as well I am going to read through everything asap.

I am still at the beginning of my research and need to gather much more information before I make my decision. So any infos are more than welcome.

Everything is not black and white in that matter and the vodoo 3 has some advantages over the V2 for sure that should also put into consideration.

I'd honestly go with the cheapest Voodoo 3 you can find. It's cheaper, faster than V2 SLI even with the 2000 model, you can usually overclock it one tier above its rating if you really want extra performance, image quality and sharpness is fantastic and will cover your needs just fine for the time frame that you have in mind.
You also mentioned in the other thread that the system you're getting has a VIA chipset, which is an early beginner's trap when it comes to instability and various weird AGP issues. Voodoo 3 circumvents all of that and works as intended as a side effect of it not taking advantage of AGP features at all. This will lead to as hassle-free an experience as possible in my book, install the latest reference driver and you're good to go. If a particular game does not work properly, you can always try an older driver, but for the most part this is not an issue with 3Dfx cards, where as with GeForce cards you can already see a lot of games breaking with later games.

I'd consider the Voodoo 2 perhaps later down the line, if you are still so inclined.

retep_110 wrote on 2023-05-26, 07:11:

Thanks for the info and thx for mentioning the G3 ti 200 as well. Have not looked beyond Gf 2 because I though for p3 800 mhz a […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2023-05-26, 06:50:

Voodoo2 SLI + Geforce 2 GTS combination would cover pretty much every period game you would want to throw at such a setup. Voodoo 2 SLI setup is pretty much on par with a Voodoo3 2000 performance wise and the V2 setup will likely be far more compatible with older Glide titles than the V3 would be. For everything not Glide the GTS would handle it just fine, you could even grab a Geforce 3 Ti200 which would be just as good. (The Geforce cards would have much better Direct3d, OpenGL compatibility and performance than the Voodoo3 by a wide margin)

Thanks for the info and thx for mentioning the G3 ti 200 as well. Have not looked beyond Gf 2 because I though for p3 800 mhz a gf 3 would be too "futuristic" but the price and avaibilty of the gf 3 ti 200 cards are good and should not be ignored as a option as well.

@Josep_Joestar Thanks for your input and the links as well I am going to read through everything asap.

I am still at the beginning of my research and need to gather much more information before I make my decision. So any infos are more than welcome.

Everything is not black and white in that matter and the vodoo 3 has some advantages over the V2 for sure that should also put into consideration.

I agree the V3 does have some advantages so long as you are not considering something like a GF2 or GF3 as a primary card at which point any advantages it had get nullified by the better Geforce cards, only time I would ever consider a V3 standalone would be for a 3DFX build that was specifically for Win98 Glide gaming. Voodoo2 pass through isn't that bad and there are a few hardware mods you can do to make it almost perfect, the better quality Voodoo2 cards also have good pass through out of the box.

I remember using SLI Voodoo2 back in the day and pass through quality was never something that bothered me, Voodoo1 pass through is considerably worse all things said.

Garrett W wrote on 2023-05-26, 07:25:

I'd honestly go with the cheapest Voodoo 3 you can find. It's cheaper, faster than V2 SLI even with the 2000 model, you can usually overclock it one tier above its rating if you really want extra performance, image quality and sharpness is fantastic and will cover your needs just fine for the time frame that you have in mind.
You also mentioned in the other thread that the system you're getting has a VIA chipset, which is an early beginner's trap when it comes to instability and various weird AGP issues. Voodoo 3 circumvents all of that and works as intended as a side effect of it not taking advantage of AGP features at all. This will lead to as hassle-free an experience as possible in my book, install the latest reference driver and you're good to go. If a particular game does not work properly, you can always try an older driver, but for the most part this is not an issue with 3Dfx cards, where as with GeForce cards you can already see a lot of games breaking with later games.

I'd consider the Voodoo 2 perhaps later down the line, if you are still so inclined.

Geforce 2 and 3 don't break games, you'll only ever see that with later models and newer drivers, Voodoo3 Direct3d will break far more games than a GF2 ever will.

3dFX D3D drivers were and always will be garbage.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-05-26, 07:32:

Geforce 2 and 3 don't break games, you'll only ever see that with later models and newer drivers, Voodoo3 Direct3d will break far more games than a GF2 ever will.

You can find lots of posts here on Vogons and many fora of the era where people were complaining they couldn't play their favorite game from a year or two prior to the release of their new GeForce card. This was common, not just with NVidia. These issues can sometimes be reported with some hyperbole, but there is merit to them.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-05-26, 07:32:

3dFX D3D drivers were and always will be garbage.

I'm not sure what you mean by that blanket statement regarding 3Dfx D3D drivers. 3Dfx cards were targeted by all developers of the the time as their cards were seen as the top of the top. This perception only started to change somewhat with the Voodoo 3 because it was facing intense competition from the likes of the TNT2 and other fairly competitive cards that offered support for AGP features, 32bit color and more, but it was still one of those cards that were focused by devs.

If anything, it's their OpenGL driver that left something to be desired, NVidia had the upper leg here almost from the start.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-05-26, 07:30:

I agree the V3 does have some advantages so long as you are not considering something like a GF2 or GF3 as a primary card at which point any advantages it had get nullified by the better Geforce cards, only time I would ever consider a V3 standalone would be for a 3DFX build that was specifically for Win98 Glide gaming.

Again, OP has stated that they want to play games from 1997-1999. Voodoo 3 was released in 1999 and was one of the faster and more widely supported cards/chips of the year. I can see how a GF2 or 3 could help stretch that to 2001, though I do think the CPU will hold the GPU back in some ways there.
In my opinion, the fact that Voodoo 3 will have zero issues with the Via chipset on the motherboard the OP is getting is far more important than better performance on games that are already running perfectly fine on Voodoo 3.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-05-26, 07:30:

Voodoo2 pass through isn't that bad and there are a few hardware mods you can do to make it almost perfect, the better quality Voodoo2 cards also have good pass through out of the box.

I remember using SLI Voodoo2 back in the day and pass through quality was never something that bothered me, Voodoo1 pass through is considerably worse all things said.

I don't think the OP has demonstrated skill levels that would merit recommending hardware mods to give the Voodoo 2 better quality output. Cool to know regardless.

I realize this may be fairly subjective, but the pass through definitely degrades quality (in my opinion, significantly so). It is true that V1 is even worse in that regard, but even with V2, I've found 1024x768 desktop to be fuzzy for my tastes. You can alleviate that by using a monitor with two inputs, therefore foregoing the passthrough entirely.
That being said, even 3D rendering is somewhat blurry on V1 and V2. Some people love it, some people hate it, I think both sides offer arguments that hold merit.

Thanks a lot for the further infos.

@hardware mod for better image quallity. Nice to know but Garret W is right I am a noob and I would not confident enough to try it due to the lack of skillsets to be honest.The image quality debatte is interesting in general but as someone who never had 3dfx card I maybe could thell the better image quality of the V3 compared to V2 because I cannot compare it. In general having a better image quality is very important to me.

@GarretW Thanks for mentioning the pontial problems with the via chipset compability in my future pc. That's very important and should not be understated.

Garret is also right about the time frame. It is mainly about games from 1997 to 1999. I would not be averese to enhance the time to 2001 with a Nvidia geforce card but I also feel that for 2001 a Pentium 3 800mhz would start to show it's age.

In that case I had to go in the 1 GHZ range. So I will focus first on the 97 to 99 era as originally planned.

The discussion about the 3dfx driver isses with Direct3d is really interesting. Never heard that before I have only started studying reviews. In the few german reviews I have studied about 3 V3 so far bad 3d3 support was not mentioned at all.

The only cons the german gaming mags mentioned was lack of AGP texture support and the missing 32 bit color mode that could cripple to card for future games.

Have not read any V2 reviews yet but will get into it in the evening.

Garrett W wrote on 2023-05-26, 07:25:

You also mentioned in the other thread that the system you're getting has a VIA chipset, which is an early beginner's trap when it comes to instability and various weird AGP issues. Voodoo 3 circumvents all of that and works as intended as a side effect of it not taking advantage of AGP features at all.

Thats a very good point which I didn't consider.

You have another option, if you get a PCI Voodoo 3 you can pair this with a AGP card with better D3D support and have a multi screen setup (or move the vga cable)
Set AGP as the primary adapter and this is where games will use by default.
Any games that use glide will automatically use the Voodoo as it's the only card that supports glide.

I have this setup and only one game (Powerslide) doesn't work. In this case I have to disable the AGP card in device manager, reboot and then can play the game.

With that said, I prefer anther build with a GF2 MX paired with V2 SLI. Slightly less messing round, I don't really notice much difference in image quality using the passthrough cable, plus it's cool knowing your playing on a SLI rig.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-05-26, 08:43:

Thats a very good point which I didn't consider. […]
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Garrett W wrote on 2023-05-26, 07:25:

You also mentioned in the other thread that the system you're getting has a VIA chipset, which is an early beginner's trap when it comes to instability and various weird AGP issues. Voodoo 3 circumvents all of that and works as intended as a side effect of it not taking advantage of AGP features at all.

Thats a very good point which I didn't consider.

You have another option, if you get a PCI Voodoo 3 you can pair this with a AGP card with better D3D support and have a multi screen setup (or move the vga cable)
Set AGP as the primary adapter and this is where games will use by default.
Any games that use glide will automatically use the Voodoo as it's the only card that supports glide.

I have this setup and only one game (Powerslide) doesn't work. In this case I have to disable the AGP card in device manager, reboot and then can play the game.

With that said, I prefer anther build with a GF2 MX paired with V2 SLI. Slightly less messing round, I don't really notice much difference in image quality using the passthrough cable, plus it's cool knowing your playing on a SLI rig.

That's a good idea. Have not considered getting a PCI card instead of a AGP card but in the case of the Vodoo 3 using PCI instead of AGP would not make a difference since the V3 has no AGP support anyway. Price wise the V3 Pci and AGP cards are on a similar level.

Have you checked out the videos of phils computer lab already he did some very nice videos about the vodoo 3 and also about the vodoo 4.

A personal advice I cannot give you. I am a beginner like yourself and I also just consider adding a Vodoo 2 card as second card to my primary card, A GF4 in my upcoming retro system.

Good luck with your search for the right card.

Just a word about Voodoo 2 passthrough image quality. I have 2 Voodoo 2 cards from different manufacturers. One of them has noticeably poor passthrough quality. The other is faultless as far as I can tell.
So I think these blanket statements about certain types of hardware, although well intentioned, may be unhelpful.

Spark wrote on 2023-05-26, 18:19:

Just a word about Voodoo 2 passthrough image quality. I have 2 Voodoo 2 cards from different manufacturers. One of them has noticeably poor passthrough quality. The other is faultless as far as I can tell.
So I think these blanket statements about certain types of hardware, although well intentioned, may be unhelpful.

Yes that's point i do not have considered yet. There are indeed many different companies that made Vodoo 2 cards. It would be much easier with vodoo 3, because from Vodoo 3 onwards only 3dfx themselve made the cards I believe?

But this brings me up to the question if there is a "best" version of the Vodoo 2 or not? Did one manufacturer made a better job than the others?

@theiceman085 Thanks for the advice. No have not watched these videos yet but i am going to check them out.

Spark wrote on 2023-05-26, 18:19:

Just a word about Voodoo 2 passthrough image quality. I have 2 Voodoo 2 cards from different manufacturers. One of them has noticeably poor passthrough quality. The other is faultless as far as I can tell.
So I think these blanket statements about certain types of hardware, although well intentioned, may be unhelpful.

It's not really a blanket statement, passthrough will always be worse to varying degrees.

The OP might not agree but I like the GF3 + V2 SLI setup the best. The best V2's are made by reputable manufacturers, like Diamond or Canopus, and some brands even have 110MHz EDO which opens up the overclocking possibilities. Those are the best.

Can VIA chipset issues be mitigated somewhat by disabling AGP features?

bartonxp wrote on 2023-05-26, 19:02:

It's not really a blanket statement, passthrough will always be worse to varying degrees. […]
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Spark wrote on 2023-05-26, 18:19:

Just a word about Voodoo 2 passthrough image quality. I have 2 Voodoo 2 cards from different manufacturers. One of them has noticeably poor passthrough quality. The other is faultless as far as I can tell.
So I think these blanket statements about certain types of hardware, although well intentioned, may be unhelpful.

It's not really a blanket statement, passthrough will always be worse to varying degrees.

The OP might not agree but I like the GF3 + V2 SLI setup the best. The best V2's are made by reputable manufacturers, like Diamond or Canopus, and some brands even have 110MHz EDO which opens up the overclocking possibilities. Those are the best.

Can VIA chipset issues be mitigated somewhat by disabling AGP features?

Thanks for the info

It is not that I actually disgree that a vodoo 2 sli set up and geforce 3 is the best. I just thought that for p3 800 mhz a Gf3 might a bit too powerful. But in case I am wrong I would not mind going for gf3 instead of Gf2. The price and avaibility of Geforce 3 ti 200 is good so it would be big problem to get one.

Thanks as well for mentioning the reputable manufactures for Vodoo 2 cards well.

This is pretty much why I opted for having voodoo 2s in sli vs a voodoo 3 as you can pair them with some kind of geforce card for better direct 3d and opengl support.

Plus not to mention you can in addition to the agp geforce also throw in a pci card like say a matrox mystique for even more API support.

Its just alot more flexible.

I'm not really sure where the discussion about D3D support is coming from. My crusty old memory could be flawed, but I don't remember finding a single D3D game that I couldn't play on my Voodoo5. I'm pretty sure developers expected a large portion of their potential buyers to be running Voodoo cards at the turn of the century and they would have tested their games with 3dfx cards.

By the time of VSA100 3DFX knew that Glide as an API was dead so naturally the VSA chips had the best D3D support of all the 3DFX chips, the earlier 3DFX chips however treat D3D as more of an afterthought and at times you can spend more time switching drivers trying to find a version that is compatible than you do actually playing the game. The newer 3DFX drivers are actually worse in both performance and compatibility than the older driver versions for cards before the Voodoo4, though nVidia has similar issues with drivers.

But w/e some people here would rather run an inferior D3D GPU because of some weird obsession with pass through image quality...not that image quality of 16bit graphics @ 640x480/800x600 was amazing to begin with or even something people in that period even worried about. I don't ever remember anyone complaining about pass through quality back in 1997 as it was all part of the experience of owning a Voodoo2 ..if you owned two of them in a SLI setup ..you really did have a hell of a machine.

The OP wants a period close gaming machine from 1997 - 1999 . .the Voodoo3 didn't release till April 1999 so Riva128/TnT + SLI voodoo 2 was what the power gamer was running for a 97 rig. And no one was seriously upgrading from a SLI Voodoo2 rig to a Voodoo3 2000 as the performance upgrade of the V3 2000 was tiny. It had a very slight edge in a few games but was not performant enough to justify its insane cost at release when better and cheaper options were available. IIRC pretty much everyone wanting to upgrade was waiting for the Geforce 256 to release in October of 99, simply put the Voodoo3 was DOA and is arguably one of the worst cards 3DFX ever released .. though the Voodoo4 4500 is worse and should have never been released.

*S3 Virge + Voodoo1/2 was also a pretty common mid tier combination for 97/98, high tier was usually a NVIDIA GPU alone or with a SLI 3DFX setup, the Riva TnT was an amazingly good card for the time and well priced. The Riva 128 / ZX was another good card but it did suffer from image quality issues depending on card vendor, again this wasn't something people in 98 were seriously worrying about as just having a 3d accelerator was worth any minor issues it had.
** Matrox was also another good primary card vendor, but Rendition were also around with their Vérité cards.
*** Not mentioning ATI for the 97 - 99 period as it wasn't till Feb 2001 and the release of the Radeon 7000 that ATI became a relevant competitor in 3d Gaming. Their earlier Rage series was .. abysmal with even worse drivers and not a series I can recommend to anyone.

People really need to take their rose colored glasses off, nostalgia doesn't build good period gaming rigs.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-05-27, 05:02:

By the time of VSA100 3DFX knew that Glide as an API was dead so naturally the VSA chips had the best D3D support of all the 3DFX chips, the earlier 3DFX chips however treat D3D as more of an afterthought and at times you can spend more time switching drivers trying to find a version that is compatible than you do actually playing the game.

Are there specific games that you can point out where Voodoo cards have problems with D3D? I'm asking because I haven't encountered this, and I don't recall it being mentioned previously. That said, I mainly use my Voodoo cards for Glide gaming and not D3D, so it's entirely possible that I missed it.

I don't ever remember anyone complaining about pass through quality back in 1997 as it was all part of the experience of owning a Voodoo2

You probably mean 1998 since that's when the Voodoo 2 came out. Computer magazines from that time often suggested combining a Matrox card (since they have excellent 2D image quality) with a Voodoo 2, in order to minimize pass through issues. Granted, this wasn't something that was seen as huge problem, but people were aware of it even back in the day.