ATI Rage 128 Pro as a 3dfx Voodoo 2 SLI partner card \ VOGONS

ATI Rage 128 Pro as a 3dfx Voodoo 2 SLI partner card

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First post, by Danger Manfred

Posted on 2026-03-25, 07:41

Danger Manfred Offline

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Just want to ask if anything in my reasoning is stupid, because few other people seem to be making this choice:

I have an old full-acrylic PC case, which I want to use to showcase some of my personal favorite hardware, mostly a Slot-A Athlon system and a Voodoo 2 SLI.

Since I already own a dedicated DOS system, and also my dream 2003 build, and also because the V2 SLI is the main thing I want to show off, it doesn't need to play games from any other era.

I have a few options what I could use as a partner card, starting with Nvidia Geforce 2 cards, but all of them down to the MX are more of a Voodoo 5 equivalent and would make the Voodoos kind of obsolete. A Riva/TNT/TNT2 series card does not support 8bit paletted textures yet, though.

Matrox G400 series doesn't support the paletted textures either.

The only S3 card supporting both features is the Savage 4 series, but I only have a S3 Savage 4 Pro 32 MB, which is a cool card I guess with its S3TC, however I believe that 32 MB is a bit overkill compared to the 12 MB Voodoos (even if that amount doesn't mean increased performance). If I had the 16 MB variant, I might actually use that instead. Alas, I don't.

The older and newer ATI cards (like everything from the first Radeon on) doesn't support either feature. But the Rage 128 Pro performs comparable to a Riva TNT 2 non-Pro in 16 bit, outpaces it in 32 bit (which the Voodoos can't do at all), and is still slow enough for the Voodoos to make sense in there.

Am I overlooking something or not making sense?

Reply 1 of 2, by leileilol

Posted on 2026-03-25, 09:04

leileilol Offline

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I'd just use the Rage128 Pro alone in this case, or at least have a single Voodoo2 if I really need to Glide something as I never really believed in SLI. Rage128 Pro's paletted texture support is an explicit compatibility check option with performance impact advisories surrounding it however, on the other hand it'll handle some games that won't initialize on a Voodoo2 (such as Vice City)

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Reply 2 of 2, by Joseph_Joestar

Posted on 2026-03-25, 09:14

Joseph_Joestar Offline

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Danger Manfred wrote on 2026-03-25, 07:41:

Matrox G400 series doesn't support the paletted textures either.

That shouldn't matter if you use it together with a Voodoo 2. Just play those few games where paletted texture support actually makes a visual difference on the 3DFX card. Select the Voodoo 2 as your primary Direct3D device in the game's options, and you should be good to go. Or use Glide, if the game supports it.

Table fog is the more widespread and relevant feature. It works just fine on the Matrox G400, as well as the Voodoo 2 of course. And while Rage cards technically support table fog, it doesn't look correct on them.

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