V3 - good availability and relatively "normal" prices
V4- poor availability, which reflects prices
V5 - good availability and high prices

Depends on which games you're targeting and at what resolution. For DOS Glide games and some early Win9x ones, the original Voodoo 1 is the best choice, but that card doesn't work correctly on systems faster than ~400 MHz. Alternatively, a Voodoo 2 with some tweaks applied should be able to play most of these early Glide titles. You can find more info about the compatibility in this thread: Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix

If you only care about Win9x games, go for a Voodoo 3. There are some early Glide games which may not work (e.g. Pandemonium and Mortal Kombat 4) but generally, it's pretty smooth sailing. With this card, you can target resolutions up to 1024x768 and get fairly good performance. Image quality is also improved over the Voodoo 1&2 due to the lack of a pass through cable and better filtering.

If you want higher resolutions and Full Scene Anti Aliasing, then a Voodoo 5 can be useful, but the prices of those things are absolutely insane. These cards can also render in 32-bit color depth, but I'm not sure if that's applicable to Glide games or just Direct3D. Someone who actually has one of those should be able to tell you more. I don't really see a use case for a Voodoo 4, since its performance is relatively close to the higher tier Voodoo 3 models. You can find more info about the various Voodoo cards on the Vogons Wiki.

stef80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 07:00:

V3 - good availability and relatively "normal" prices
V4- poor availability, which reflects prices
V5 - good availability and high prices

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-31, 07:13:

Depends on which games you're targeting and at what resolution. For DOS Glide games and some early Win9x ones, the original Voodoo 1 is the best choice, but that card doesn't work correctly on systems faster than ~400 MHz. Alternatively, a Voodoo 2 with some tweaks applied should be able to play most of these early Glide titles. You can find more info about the compatibility in this thread: Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix

If you only care about Win9x games, go for a Voodoo 3. There are some early Glide games which may not work (e.g. Pandemonium and Mortal Kombat 4) but generally, it's pretty smooth sailing. With this card, you can target resolutions up to 1024x768 and get fairly good performance. Image quality is also improved over the Voodoo 1&2 due to the lack of a pass through cable and better filtering.

If you want higher resolutions and Full Scene Anti Aliasing, then a Voodoo 5 can be useful, but the prices of those things are absolutely insane. These cards can also render in 32-bit color depth, but I'm not sure if that's applicable to Glide games or just Direct3D. Someone who actually has one of those should be able to tell you more. I don't really see a use case for a Voodoo 4, since its performance is relatively close to the higher tier Voodoo 3 models. You can find more info about the various Voodoo cards on the Vogons Wiki.

Thanks for your replies guys.

@Joseph _Joeseph Joestar It is mainly about games from late 98 to 2001/2002.

For 96,97 and early 98 I have my asus p2b slot 1 pentium 2 system.

I have already though that this question is not easy to answer.

The V5 sure has some advantages but the pricing is really insane and it is a good question to ask if the advantages are worth the premium price or not.

My prefered resolutions to play are "only" 800x600 or 1024x764. I think most retro games look the best in that resolution.

Some higher resolutions might be nice but then the interface of same games looks just strange.

It makes sense that the Voodoo 3 would be the most reasonable choice.

For the coolness factor alone a Voodoo 2 SLI system might be cool as well but it would be expensive matter.

The same can be said about the V1 but the athlon system would be too fast for that card anyway.

A V1 might be suitable for my asus p2b PII 400mhz system though.

I need to do some deeper research about the games I am into but with all things considered the answer for my question is rather clear. At least to me.

And the answer is V3.

GeForce2 GTS (good availability and prices) + one V2 12MB should cover most of the scenarios.

And what about so much hated Voodoo Banshee in terms of DOS Glide games compatibility? It's capable of 1024x768+ without SLI, it has fully integrated 2D accelerator, it beats Voodoo 2 in non-multitextured 3D games and it can be found cheaper than Voodoo 2.

Banshee drivers do not use 3DNow! ... not sure if that affects K7, or just K6. I suspect both.

stef80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 07:40:

Banshee drivers do not use 3DNow! ... not sure if that affects K7, or just K6.

What drivers in pure DOS?

Glide dlls.

stef80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 07:40:

Banshee drivers do not use 3DNow! ... not sure if that affects K7, or just K6. I suspect both.

At least it seems there is some 3DNow! support in Win9x.

stef80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 07:33:

GeForce2 GTS (good availability and prices) + one V2 12MB should cover most of the scenarios.

Thanks a lot for the recommendation. That's a combination I have not considered yet but it is worth looking into for sure. In the long run a Geforce 2 GTS is one of the cards I wanted to add to my collection anyway.

analog_programmer wrote on 2023-08-31, 07:36:

And what about so much hated Voodoo Banshee in terms of DOS Glide games compatibility? It's capable of 1024x768+ without SLI, it has fully integrated 2D accelerator, it beats Voodoo 2 in non-multitextured 3D games and it can be found cheaper than Voodoo 2.

the Banshee is another card I have not considered yet but i will look into that matter as well.

There is no rush for my upcoming purchase I want to look into many different 3dfx cards as possible before making my final decision.

I went with V3 and V5 for my P3 1GHz and Geode (k7) builds.
PII 450 got V2 and GeForce256 SDR .... tested also TNT2, but GeForce was better even on PII.

The era you are targeting (1998-2001) is Geforce era. Games that came out in those years supported D3D or OGL, even if they also had a Glide renderer. Some of them had poorly implemented D3D or GL implementations at launch, but these were typically patched to be very good.

Get a Geforc2, 3, or 4.

stef80 wrote on 2023-08-31, 16:32:

I went with V3 and V5 for my P3 1GHz and Geode (k7) builds.
PII 450 got V2 and GeForce256 SDR .... tested also TNT2, but GeForce was better even on PII.

Yeah the Geforce 256 would also be a in interesting card but not easy to find compared to the GF2.

But it is nice to hear that a gf is even working well with a PII. Do you think that a Pentium II 400 mhz would work well with a Voodoo 2 and the Riva TNT Card that already is in my system.

After doing some more research and this post

smtkr wrote on 2023-09-01, 00:00:

The era you are targeting (1998-2001) is Geforce era. Games that came out in those years supported D3D or OGL, even if they also had a Glide renderer. Some of them had poorly implemented D3D or GL implementations at launch, but these were typically patched to be very good.

Get a Geforc2, 3, or 4.

I will move away from the original plan.

I'd rather turn my rig numer one (the asus p2b 400 mhz PII) into a Voodoo 2 rig in the long run

and get a Geforce 2, 3 or 4 for my Athlon 1400.

In the Geforce 3 and 4 range the Gf 3 ti 200 and the Gf 4 42000 should be the most desirable cards right?

gamefan_851, here you can take a look at different models 3dfx videocards of all the generations: http://www.tdfx.de/eng/grafikkarten_alle.shtml Quantum3D's models Voodoo 1 & 2 are very interesting.

And if you decide to look for some Vodoo Banshee card: https://3dfx-banshee.de/banshee-cards-overview/

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-09-01, 05:56:

Do you think that a Pentium II 400 mhz would work well with a Voodoo 2 and the Riva TNT Card that already is in my system.

Again, it depends on which games you want to play, at what resolution and what kind of FPS target you're setting.

Most Glide games should work fine on that system, but a few outliers like Diablo 2 and Deus Ex need more powerful hardware to run smoothly. In general, Unreal engine games are pretty demanding on the CPU, so temper your expectations with regards to frame rates in those titles. As long as you don't expect a locked 60+ FPS in every single game, it should be fine.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-01, 06:50:

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-09-01, 05:56:

Do you think that a Pentium II 400 mhz would work well with a Voodoo 2 and the Riva TNT Card that already is in my system.

Again, it depends on which games you want to play, at what resolution and what kind of FPS target you're setting.

Most Glide games should work fine on that system, but a few outliers like Diablo 2 and Deus Ex need more powerful hardware to run smoothly. In general, Unreal engine games are pretty demanding on the CPU, so temper your expectations with regards to frame rates in those titles. As long as you don't expect a locked 60+ FPS in every single game, it should be fine.

Thanks again for your reply. Like I said I would be more than happy to play at 800x600. The highest resolution I might want to use would be 1024x768. But I'd say I would consider 800x600 as the base line.

I am also more interested in trying out earlier glide titles. I would never play Diablo 2 or Deus Ex on that system. Because I have already read that D2 is rather cpu hungry.

Concerning Deus Ex I have already tried out that game on my PII system with it's current video card, the Riva TNT and it did not run well at all. The same can be said about System Schock 2.

Running into trouble with some late win 98se games was the main reason for me to get the athlon 1400.

analog_programmer wrote on 2023-09-01, 06:40:

gamefan_851, here you can take a look at different models 3dfx videocards of all the generations: http://www.tdfx.de/eng/grafikkarten_alle.shtml Quantum3D's models Voodoo 1 & 2 are very interesting.

And if you decide to look for some Vodoo Banshee card: https://3dfx-banshee.de/banshee-cards-overview/

Thx for sharing the links. I will check them out asap.

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-09-01, 07:05:

Thanks again for your reply. Like I said I would be more than happy to play at 800x600. The highest resolution I might want to use would be 1024x768. But I'd say I would consider 800x600 as the base line.

Note that a single Voodoo 2 cannot render at 1024x768. You would need two such cards running in SLI mode to use that resolution.

That said, even at 800x600, the framerates which you'd be getting in Unreal and UT99 on that system would probably be in the 30-40 range. That's the period correct experience which we had back in the day, but nowadays, some people want a locked 60+ FPS for more responsive gameplay.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-09-01, 07:58:

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-09-01, 07:05:

Thanks again for your reply. Like I said I would be more than happy to play at 800x600. The highest resolution I might want to use would be 1024x768. But I'd say I would consider 800x600 as the base line.

Note that a single Voodoo 2 cannot render at 1024x768. You would need two such cards running in SLI mode to use that resolution.

That said, even at 800x600, the framerates which you'd be getting in Unreal and UT99 on that system would probably be in the 30-40 range. That's the period correct experience which we had back in the day, but nowadays, some people want a locked 60+ FPS for more responsive gameplay.

I understand. A highter framerate is always more desirable but I am also a avid user of the early 3ds consoles (ps1, sega saturn and the N64) so I do not mind if games run at just 30 fps. Playing games at such framerates is still ok me and if not there is still the option to play the games on my more powerful Athlon 1400 system.

This way i can play games both ways. On the PII 400 MHZ system I can get peroid correct experience and on the Athlon I can get a much smoother experience.

gamefan_851 wrote on 2023-09-01, 05:56:

I will move away from the original plan. […]
Show full quote

smtkr wrote on 2023-09-01, 00:00:

The era you are targeting (1998-2001) is Geforce era. Games that came out in those years supported D3D or OGL, even if they also had a Glide renderer. Some of them had poorly implemented D3D or GL implementations at launch, but these were typically patched to be very good.

Get a Geforc2, 3, or 4.

I will move away from the original plan.

I'd rather turn my rig numer one (the asus p2b 400 mhz PII) into a Voodoo 2 rig in the long run

and get a Geforce 2, 3 or 4 for my Athlon 1400.

In the Geforce 3 and 4 range the Gf 3 ti 200 and the Gf 4 42000 should be the most desirable cards right?

A Geforce 3 Ti200 is the slowest Geforce 3 card, but it's also typically the cheapest. It also has the same features as the faster Geforce 3 and Geforce 3 Ti500. It is fine for games in the 1998-2001 date range.

All of the Geforce 4 Ti4200, Ti4400, and Ti4600 (and all of the oddly named AGP 8x variants) are extremely good.

Given that all of these will meet your needs, get the best deal that you can (my usual advice for the vintage computing hobby, given the degree of hording and scalping these days).

Other considerations in your selection are whether or not you want a DVI port and any VIVO features you want to experiment with.