VOGONS


First post, by leileilol

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Is it safe?

By modern I mean from the year 2001 and after, P4/Athlon XP era

I remember reading on falconfly.de "OMFG IT'LL FRY! DONT EVER DO IT" I wonder how solid that claim is. I'd imagine it'd be unsafe on 166mhz+ memory buses

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Reply 1 of 15, by sliderider

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leileilol wrote:

Is it safe?

By modern I mean from the year 2001 and after, P4/Athlon XP era

I remember reading on falconfly.de "OMFG IT'LL FRY! DONT EVER DO IT" I wonder how solid that claim is.

There's a guy on youtube who makes videos of his V2 SLi cards on a Dual Xeon 1.7ghz motherboard.

Just curious what the memory bus has to do with cards plugged into the PCI slots, though and why they might fry. 😕

Reply 2 of 15, by DonutKing

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It should be fine? There was only one real standard for PCI used in desktop systems AFAIK.
I don't see what the memory bus has to do with PCI expansion cards.

There are issues with early AGP cards in later motherboards though - some 3.3V AGP1.0 cards wouldn't work in AGP2.0 and AGP3.0 motherboards as the later standards were 1.5V and 0.8V respectively- and apparently not all boards were backwards compatible.

There are 3.3V and 5V PCI cards but I believe this was part of the standard from day one and the cards/slots were pretty clearly keyed to indicate this.

From memory there was a bit of a hoohah at the time because the i850 chipset wouldn't work with a Voodoo 5 - the board or the graphics card would die, can't remember the exact details now.

Last edited by DonutKing on 2011-06-25, 00:42. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 15, by BigBodZod

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I think it has to do with the newer PCI Spec Slots having lower voltage requirements, but this usually means not enough power getting to the card and hence will not POST.

It's not like you can plug it into a PCI-X slot, at least not that I'm aware of.

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Reply 4 of 15, by leileilol

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I know modern AGP4X motherboards exclude the AGP Voodoo3-5 family except for the AGP Voodoo4, the only AGP4X Voodoo to exist.

Though since Voodoo2 is all PCI I wondered why it's supposedly a danger due to some 'Bug' (with a capital B) even on Pentium IV. I know Athlon drivers had to be made for V2 to not crash though

I did used to use a V2 in a P4 once no problem (63fps MDK2, 830 3dmarks for 3dmark 2001), but took it out as soon as I read that FUD at the bottom of this page.

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Reply 5 of 15, by prophase_j

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My speculation here is that modern processors are able to so much data into the card, that even though it can render it, it is processing much more data then designed for, so power consumption and therefore radiated heat increase. Think of it as the "furmark" effect. With that said, my voodoos have spent much time being pushed by an Athlon XP @ 1.67ghz, and I never had an issue.

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Reply 6 of 15, by elianda

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The Furmark Effect is mostly due to BGA chips and thermal stress. I had Voodoo2 SLI running already on a C2Q with 2.83 GHz, runs fine.

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Reply 9 of 15, by SavantStrike

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The problem isn't the slots, it's the cards. They get hot from being fed constant data as others have said. IIRC the V1/V2/V3 cards relied heavily upon the CPU for just about everything.

Reply 10 of 15, by RogueTrip2012

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According to Quantum3D, 3dfx Banshee and Voodoo2 Chips contain a Bug which could cause them to overheat in modern Motherboards ( […]
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According to Quantum3D, 3dfx Banshee and Voodoo2 Chips contain a Bug which could cause them to overheat in modern Motherboards
(e.g. Pentium4 or AthlonXP based Systems)
This overheating effect has been observed to a lesser extend with the Voodoo3 as well.
It is assessed to be most critical on passive cooled Banshee Cards, where it can lead to thermal failure within one Minute of operation or less.
When using a such combination for the first time, leave the Case open and closely monitor Chip/Cooler Temperatures of the Card.

Quoted from falconfly. That doesn't sound so good to me. At least have some fans pointed at those bad boys!!

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Reply 11 of 15, by Tetrium

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RogueTrip2012 wrote:
According to Quantum3D, 3dfx Banshee and Voodoo2 Chips contain a Bug which could cause them to overheat in modern Motherboards ( […]
Show full quote

According to Quantum3D, 3dfx Banshee and Voodoo2 Chips contain a Bug which could cause them to overheat in modern Motherboards
(e.g. Pentium4 or AthlonXP based Systems)
This overheating effect has been observed to a lesser extend with the Voodoo3 as well.
It is assessed to be most critical on passive cooled Banshee Cards, where it can lead to thermal failure within one Minute of operation or less.
When using a such combination for the first time, leave the Case open and closely monitor Chip/Cooler Temperatures of the Card.

Quoted from falconfly. That doesn't sound so good to me. At least have some fans pointed at those bad boys!!

This is good information to know and new to me!

How does one monitor the temperature of the Voodoo's anyway? I'd think they would be too old to have any kind of thermal reading locked within their chips?

And what causes this overheating in the first place? Is it caused by the voodoo's having to work too hard due to the amount of data the cards have to process?
And wouldn't it still be safe to use them if given some good active cooling? Like strapping a 8cm case fan to them?

As far as V3 PCI is concerned, I did notice my V3 PCI's little heatsink becoming VERY hot after even a short while, right to the point I (maybe because I'm quickly worried about my precious 3DFX cards getting damaged and subsequently dying from overheating) fixed a 5cm fan above the HS+Little HS area, and the 5cm fan does very well at keeping both HS's cool to the touch.

Edit: Link to the falconfly quote, clicky me

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Reply 12 of 15, by sgt76

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Tetrium wrote:

How does one monitor the temperature of the Voodoo's anyway? I'd think they would be too old to have any kind of thermal reading locked within their chips?

I'd just use a Musketeer or some other similar front panel sensor thingy...

Reply 13 of 15, by sliderider

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SavantStrike wrote:

The problem isn't the slots, it's the cards. They get hot from being fed constant data as others have said. IIRC the V1/V2/V3 cards relied heavily upon the CPU for just about everything.

But that's why they scale so well. Upgrading the CPU also upgrades the speed of the video card. There must be hard limits to this, though. They can't keep scaling to infinity plus the PCI bus only has so much bandwith so even if you had a 10ghz CPU, it still can't feed calculations to the Voodoo's faster than they can receive them from the PCI bus, so the PCI bus would bottleneck eventually as the CPU kept feeding calculations to the Voodoos faster than the Voodoos can process them.

In case it's true, though, it's a good thing my V2's came with fansinks installed. 🤣

Reply 14 of 15, by ratfink

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I've never noticed problems with my v2 in an althlon xp rig, or v2sli with a p4. But maybe I'll try feeling how hot they get in future.

I did notice a v3 pci getting very hot in an athlon xp rig some years back, running as a secondary card. Then again "too hot to touch" [50 degress C?] is normal for them isn't it?

Reply 15 of 15, by Tetrium

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I only know those V3's could take a lot of heat, but I'm not taking any chances 🤣

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