I have not noticed this occruing on my PCI MAC Edition card yet.

I too purchased one of these and flashed it with a PC BIOS and it still functions fine, I will have to look at the components you are referring to, maybe just bad luck or indeed there are some marginal components being used ?!?

My regular 5500 PC edition hasn't blown up yet. It gets maybe an hour of use a year though.

Great Hierophant wrote:

is it just me, or does the Voodoo 5 series seem a bit lacking in variety? I have had two cards, and both I have had to throw ou […]
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is it just me, or does the Voodoo 5 series seem a bit lacking in variety? I have had two cards, and both I have had to throw out because they broke.

The first card was a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI MAC Edition which I flashed with a PC BIOS. It worked fine for a while, but then I noticed that the analog VGA output was heavily de-emphasizing green. It turned out that the green out on the VGA was completely dead. The DVI image was just fine, however. I noticed that there were three small identical components near the VGA connector and one of them looked like it the top half of the component had blown off. I do not remember if I tried to bridge the remaining connection with solder, but as the green did not work, the card was not particularly useful to me.

The second card was a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP. This too worked when I first received it, but after a while it started showing severe graphical artifacts in Windows. While its hard to describe, there were stripes going down the screen in several places and the mouse would leave semi-broken trails that would make the screen worse. I tried reinstalling Windows, but the artifacts appeared in the installation screens. Text modes did not show the issue. My Geforce 256 AGP card showed perfect graphics and my motherboard's settings were at their default. So it too had to go to the trash.

Anyone else experience anything like the issues I have described with the Voodoo 5? I am thinking that a Voodoo 3 would be more reliable overall.

Sounds like you bought 2 bricks 🙁

No, don't pitch the V5 with bad VGA if the DVI works. Someone would gladly take it off your hands, heck it's ebayable as long as the buyer is told only the DVI works.

yeah, don't toss'em, sell them. I'm the kind of person that would buy in hopes of fixing them.

I have 2 Voodoo 5 5500 AGP's that work fine even though 1 of them is missing 5 surface mount caps. Also own a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI I haven't tested yet.

With the artifacts card, did you make sure the fans were running and clean out any dust between the fans and heatsinks?

Never toss a 3dfx card even if it doesn't work. Sell it as a card with issues and someone will buy it anyway. The parts to repair a broken one are too hard to get these days to throw them in the bin. Someone will be able to either repair it or salvage parts from it to repair another one.

sliderider wrote:

Never toss a 3dfx card even if it doesn't work. Sell it as a card with issues and someone will buy it anyway. The parts to repair a broken one are too hard to get these days to throw them in the bin. Someone will be able to either repair it or salvage parts from it to repair another one.

Yes, this.

I've got a dead 5500 sitting on the shelf for this very reason. Something is wrong with it, but there should be at least a few chips that still work.

I haven't had much luck with vintage Voodoo parts. In addition to the bricks described above, I had a Diamond Monster 3D which worked for a while then started showing a blank screen with a block of white stripes. I put the computer in storage for a while, then it worked again briefly, then began showing the stripes. Maybe I have an anti-Midas touch when it comes to 3dfx.

Great Hierophant wrote:

I haven't had much luck with vintage Voodoo parts. In addition to the bricks described above, I had a Diamond Monster 3D which worked for a while then started showing a blank screen with a block of white stripes. I put the computer in storage for a while, then it worked again briefly, then began showing the stripes. Maybe I have an anti-Midas touch when it comes to 3dfx.

Do you make sure they get plenty of airflow?

It's been my experience that the 3Dfx stuff was all hopelessly undercooled. No cooling at all on the Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo 2 stuff, and anemic weaksauce fans on the V4/V5 series. The V3 stuff was okay.

SavantStrike wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Never toss a 3dfx card even if it doesn't work. Sell it as a card with issues and someone will buy it anyway. The parts to repair a broken one are too hard to get these days to throw them in the bin. Someone will be able to either repair it or salvage parts from it to repair another one.

Yes, this.

I've got a dead 5500 sitting on the shelf for this very reason. Something is wrong with it, but there should be at least a few chips that still work.

Actually, I still got a V3 3500 laying around that's defective, but hoping it can still be fixed. When I put it in a machine the motherboard will give a single beep while the screen remains black so I'm judging it's just a connector issue.

Great Hierophant wrote:

The second card was a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP. This too worked when I first received it, but after a while it started showing severe graphical artifacts in Windows. While its hard to describe, there were stripes going down the screen in several places and the mouse would leave semi-broken trails that would make the screen worse.

Anyone else experience anything like the issues I have described with the Voodoo 5? I am thinking that a Voodoo 3 would be more reliable overall.

I've had this issue with my 5500. They seem to be very fragile....the V3s are much more robust cards. Maybe something to do with declining build quality in the last days of empire.... 😜

sgt76 wrote:

Great Hierophant wrote:

The second card was a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP. This too worked when I first received it, but after a while it started showing severe graphical artifacts in Windows. While its hard to describe, there were stripes going down the screen in several places and the mouse would leave semi-broken trails that would make the screen worse.

Anyone else experience anything like the issues I have described with the Voodoo 5? I am thinking that a Voodoo 3 would be more reliable overall.

I've had this issue with my 5500. They seem to be very fragile....the V3s are much more robust cards. Maybe something to do with declining build quality in the last days of empire.... 😜

I had read that the build quality in STB's Mexico plant wasn't good and a lot of OEMs took their business away from 3dfx because the cards were being built there. They didn't want to have to deal with warranty issues.

sgt76 wrote:

I've had this issue with my 5500. They seem to be very fragile....the V3s are much more robust cards. Maybe something to do with declining build quality in the last days of empire.... 😜

Dunno, but it could simply be because of the more complex design of these cards.
The V3's were much smaller and less complex. The V5's are easier to flex and run very hot. Flexing a card never is very healthy.