VOGONS


Voodoo Graphics SLi?

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Reply 20 of 31, by nforce4max

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leileilol wrote:

Do they support 800x600? 😀

In some titles it should be possible but the usual 4mb limits things too badly. The V1 can go up to 8mb and has the same max frame buffer as the V2 at 4mb. I thought people knew about the two generations being very similar as the V2 was only an evolution of the original architecture rather than being entirely different.

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 21 of 31, by swaaye

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I think leileilol was asking if the various Quantum3D Voodoo1 SLI cards support 800x600 in all games. The products with 4MB framebuffer should.

Reply 22 of 31, by NitroX infinity

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nforce4max wrote:
[...] The V1 can go up to 8mb [...] […]
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leileilol wrote:

Do they support 800x600? 😀

[...]
The V1 can go up to 8mb
[...]

You mean 16MiB; 4MiB framebuffer + 3x 4MiB texture memory 😎

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/primary_image.htm

Notes from Paul Slade, former Primary Image employee: Primary Image rolled out Piranha in October 1997. This was a PCI board that had the following on it: - an embedded Mips R5000 200MHz processor that ran an embedded version of Glide driven by the client side part of the Tempest scene manager, the server side ran on the PC. The client side did all the cull/draw calculations thus relieving the PC's CPU of this burden and allowing multiple cards to be placed in a single PC (see below) - a Voodoo 1 FBI with 3 TMU's (to my knowledge this and the Barracudas are the only 3Dfx implementations by anyone to have 3 TMU's). This allowed for a tri-linear filtered base texture and a dithered trilinear filtered secondary texture, or even three dithered tri-linear textures in a single pass. - A daughter card with another Voodoo 1 FBI with another 3 TMU's. This was used in SLI mode with the set on the base card. The cards had a pixel bus connector system that allowed 2, 4 or 8 of them to be joined together and composited into a single channel to generate 2x, 4x or 8x rotated grid anti-aliasing. There were also tiling options so that half the cards could generate the left side of the screen and the other half the right side thus doubling the pixel fill rate and increasing the maximum resolution to 1280x1024. A second connector system was used to daisy chain the Pixel Clock, VSync and HSync signals, thus allowing multiple channels to be video synchronized. Industrial PC's were used which had up to 20 PCI slots in a 19 inch 6U rack mount chassis. The PC was a single board computer (SBC) that plugged into the end slot. This system was developed almost 2 years before Quantum3D debuted their 3Dfx based AA offering.

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Reply 23 of 31, by elfuego

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tincup wrote:

Grand Prix Legends.

...it works on V5 5500, much better then on V1. Hind works at least on V2 (you stated that yourself in the other thread). Anything else? 😊

Reply 24 of 31, by vetz

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elfuego wrote:
tincup wrote:

Grand Prix Legends.

...it works on V5 5500, much better then on V1. Hind works at least on V2 (you stated that yourself in the other thread). Anything else? 😊

I've got one. Running Mechwarrior 2 on a Voodoo 1 in 800x600 is not giving the best framerate. Here I do suggest a Voodoo 2 (V3 and higher doesnt work). Also you got the annoying torso turning performance bug, which is less prevailent with a Voodoo2.

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Reply 25 of 31, by nforce4max

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NitroX infinity wrote:
You mean 16MiB; 4MiB framebuffer + 3x 4MiB texture memory :cool: […]
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nforce4max wrote:
[...] The V1 can go up to 8mb [...] […]
Show full quote
leileilol wrote:

Do they support 800x600? 😀

[...]
The V1 can go up to 8mb
[...]

You mean 16MiB; 4MiB framebuffer + 3x 4MiB texture memory 😎

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/primary_image.htm

Notes from Paul Slade, former Primary Image employee: Primary Image rolled out Piranha in October 1997. This was a PCI board that had the following on it: - an embedded Mips R5000 200MHz processor that ran an embedded version of Glide driven by the client side part of the Tempest scene manager, the server side ran on the PC. The client side did all the cull/draw calculations thus relieving the PC's CPU of this burden and allowing multiple cards to be placed in a single PC (see below) - a Voodoo 1 FBI with 3 TMU's (to my knowledge this and the Barracudas are the only 3Dfx implementations by anyone to have 3 TMU's). This allowed for a tri-linear filtered base texture and a dithered trilinear filtered secondary texture, or even three dithered tri-linear textures in a single pass. - A daughter card with another Voodoo 1 FBI with another 3 TMU's. This was used in SLI mode with the set on the base card. The cards had a pixel bus connector system that allowed 2, 4 or 8 of them to be joined together and composited into a single channel to generate 2x, 4x or 8x rotated grid anti-aliasing. There were also tiling options so that half the cards could generate the left side of the screen and the other half the right side thus doubling the pixel fill rate and increasing the maximum resolution to 1280x1024. A second connector system was used to daisy chain the Pixel Clock, VSync and HSync signals, thus allowing multiple channels to be video synchronized. Industrial PC's were used which had up to 20 PCI slots in a 19 inch 6U rack mount chassis. The PC was a single board computer (SBC) that plugged into the end slot. This system was developed almost 2 years before Quantum3D debuted their 3Dfx based AA offering.

I didn't mention that card as it is so rare but any off the shelf V1 can be modded by hand to 8mb but the only problem the ras timings is hardware controlled and no one knows the pin that is needed for it to work. Even with the stacking people are still clueless 😢

The V2 is interesting with the TMU having rather high memory limits.

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 26 of 31, by d1stortion

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swaaye wrote:

It's true that a Voodoo1 6MB has advantages with some games because it won't run out of texture memory like the 4MB cards do. But still, the 4MB texture memory of the 6MB cards is not much storage for later games. It's the same amount as a 12MB Voodoo2 has. You really want to go to a Voodoo3 instead of even Voodoo2 SLI. SLI doesn't increase texture storage.

I've heard of compatibilty issues with 6MB V1 cards, I think with some DOS games?
Also, doesn't V2 SLI pretty much force you to turn on VSync? But then again, if that's true, it could apply to V5 as well if they reused the same alternating horizontal lines mode there

Reply 27 of 31, by Putas

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I don't see a reason why 3dfx TMU's should duplicate data.

Reply 28 of 31, by tincup

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elfuego wrote:
tincup wrote:

Grand Prix Legends.

...it works on V5 5500, much better then on V1. Hind works at least on V2 (you stated that yourself in the other thread). Anything else? 😊

Well, most first generation 3D flight sims and driving sims I was involved with benefited measurably when stepping up system performance above minimum recommended. Like GPL, European Air War, the NovaLogic jet sims, Longbow 2 etc., would have been happier with a Voodoo 1 SLI. The 3dfx patch for NASCAR Racing 2 another one.

An interesting one is EF-2000 V2. The 3dfx version was pretty much married to V1 hardware - it only runs on a V2 with environmental variables set to emulate a V1 and won't run on a V5 at all I don't think. None the less I bet it would handle furballs and other of the more complex sim moments more smoothly with the extra horsepower of a V1 SLI setup.

My experience was that these sorts of games almost universally benefitted from any increase in system performance.

Related to all this is CART Racing 2, the Rendition version designed for the V1000 chip. It runs smoothly on a 4mb board, better on a V2200/4mb card [with the V2200 rendition patch]. Though it's framerate capped at 30 FPS, I notice improved "smoothness" during race starts [typically the most sluggish/resource hog part] with a QDI 8mb Rendition card. The extra video power smooths out the troughs in the actual vs average FPS, even if it always appears to be running at or near max FPS.

Bottom line is I love the idea that a Voodoo 1 SLI is lurking somewhere out there. I'd love to upgrade my W95/Diamond 3D-2000 Pro 4mb/Voodoo 1 4mb like that:)

Reply 29 of 31, by elfuego

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Hey dont get me wrong - I also prefer more 'horsepower'; I was just asking for an example where explicitly only Voodoo 1 will work (slowly or choppy) and no other type of voodoo. Because only in those games we would be able to utilize V1 SLI. It seems EF-2000 is such a game "since EF2000 for 3DFX was not written using the Glide API, but instead makes calls directly to the 3DFX hardware". For everything else there is Voodoo 5 which will run almost any glide game, better, faster and with FSAA 😀

Reply 30 of 31, by tincup

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oh it's all cool! This game era is a major interest of mine and being able to up the reselution without sacrificing FPS is/was the goal, to get drivable/flyable performance out of the box. GPL is a prime example. I may go through my notes and make a list of ones that had Glide versions before the appearance of the Voodoo2.

BTW, Hind 3dfx is very stubborn, and I've had only very limitied success getting it to run properly beyond a W95/V2-SLI environment, V5 included, though one can with some luck get it ro run on a modern system with a Glide Wrapper and massive fan patches - retro rig *much* easier solution regardless. Still I think a V2-SLI is the minimum spec I'd care to play, thou it was intially released for the V1. Longbow 2 is a bit the same but at least it loves the V5.. good hunting...

Reply 31 of 31, by subhuman@xgtx

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I'd pay 500 bucks for a complete 100db - 100sbi solution 😀

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