Vortex 2 would be nice for the games you'll run on a Voodoo5. But the problem is that the 2K/XP drivers are poor when it comes to 3D audio support. Aureal was dead before they got them polished up. I doubt you're planning to run 9x on a dual CPU setup. ;)

I have key members of the Audigy lineup. I really can't tell the cards apart. Audigy 1-4 run the same drivers and have the same capabilities from a gaming perspective. Maybe your Audigy 1 is indeed damaged somehow.

BTW, for Audigy cards on XP-Win7, I like Audigy Support Pack 3.8. No nonsense install that works for all Audigy cards with EMU10K2/2.5 chips.

Another note - I've noticed that EAX behaves differently in the WDM drivers compared to the 9x VXDs. Audigy and SBLive are affected. Some games will sound funky, with weird reverb problems, like Need For Speed 3/4. You really have to use Win9x for best results with the old games.

Most of the games i'm planning on running on this setup are of the 2000-2002 era. Basically my senior year in high school. Quake 3's and Unreal tournament's performance is PARAMOUNT. Those games DEFINED my "gaming experience" That and Starcraft, but thats for a different machine.

As for the sound, if I use headphones, i have a considerable amount of hiss in the background. Its there with my speakers just not as noticeable. It may just be me, because I have excellent high end hearing. I'm not kidding I can hear the old style tv's laser from 50 feet.

Also, i'll post some "real" pictures once I get this girl FINISHED.

You might want to try out something like a GeForce5-6 instead of the Voodoo5 for UT/Q3. UTGLR is awesome, even better than Glide. It will work even on Radeon 8500 and GeForce 3. Also, Quake3 is OpenGL and Voodoo5 was never the best at that. Just ideas for ya.

But of course Voodoo5 is an authentic y2k experience. My favorite use for a Voodoo5 has turned out to be pre-2k Glide/D3D games and adding on 4X FSAA.

That was the nice thing about the V5, was that you could turn up the AA without a huge performance hit. Even the V4 was capable of 2XAA without a huge hit even though it was still underpowered compared to the GF2MX.

swaaye wrote:

My favorite use for a Voodoo5 has turned out to be pre-2k Glide/D3D games and adding on 4X FSAA.

My experience as well. Late 90s/Win98 3D stuff with AA=4x runs very well, even on a fairly modest platform like the P3-800 I have going now. Retro appeal is further enhanced by the original 3dfx UI, and the shocklingly spartan nature of the whole early windows OS/UI experience..

@Luckybob - I'm interested in the mobo - is that a 'universal AGP' slot? I held on to my older boards for fear I'd never be able to fire up the old 3dfx cards, but it looks like you still can even with new parts...

its a universal slot, but in reality its a 2x/4x slot. As for the motherboard, its quite rare. I've only seen one other MSI brand board, ever. The brand name boards for enthusiasts (Asus, msi, iwill, etc) tend to be relatively rare. The asus board being the least so. However if you dont care about overclocking or any "advanced" options, there are TONS of Tyan brand boards on ebay. Some can be had for a song! Tyan is a GREAT company, but they build servers and workstations for "business" use. Meaning you get no overclocking options or any frills, but the boards are very robust and stable.