VOGONS


First post, by DonutKing

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I haven't really done much in the way of retro computing lately; real life had me occupied other things. In fact I even sold off a large part of my collection last year.
Lately I felt the urge to get back into the hobby again, so when a very generous fellow on OCAU offered me an old Pentium PC at a great price I went for it.

The time of the Pentium is quite an interesting era. In my memory they are almost synonymous with Windows 95, the widespread adoption of dialup Internet and the paradigm shift in computing that resulted. More and more families started buying computers to get online, Win95 made them much more accessible, and the PC's were often Pentiums.

Around this time 3d Accelerator cards started coming on the scene; while there were several different brands out there, 3dfx was the one to have (for a couple of years anyway). I was a teenager with no money so I could only salivate over the reviews and screenshots in Hyper or PC PowerPlay, and dream of a Pentium system with a Voodoo Graphics card.

Build goals

For this build I have decided to aim for a 1997 system. (The case I have actually has a warranty sticker on the back dated 1997 - so I know it's authentic 😀 ).
This was the year that the final Socket 7 Pentium was released. I thought about what I would have built at the time if I had the cash. There may be technically better options, but I didn't want to build the 'ultimate box'; rather fulfilling my wish list from the era. I also wanted a system that was great for DOS games as well as Windows.
In 1998 the price of the Pentium 2 had gone down enough to make such a system a better choice; and they were almost all ATX form factor with AGP video, which would be a radically different build.

As part of this build I wanted to research original prices for the parts. I managed to find a computer wholesaler site that had been archived on Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/19971013121038/ht … s/retailhw.html

This gives a good indication how much the system would cost if you had built it yourself. During the build I'll list prices from this site for the different parts I used. As mentioned above a Pentium 2 system would be more expensive - about $850 more in fact. Keep in mind this is wholesale, so if you were buying retail the difference would be even more after they add their margin.

Case

1997 price: $49

This picture shows the system as it was received.

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The Moebius brand baby-AT tower was in pretty good condition apart from some rust spots on the top of the outer metal case; but I've seen much worse.

I pulled the front bezel off, gave it a clean and soaked in Oxy Action for a couple of days; this seems to have taken the edge off the yellowing.
Inside the steel was in quite good condition with very little rusting. It also had a removable motherboard tray to make it easy to work on.
I gave the outer case a sand with some fine grit sandpaper and then polished with Kitten no.1 cutting polish. This made a bit of a difference but the surface rust is still visible. I don't think I'll be able to make it pristine without actually stripping it back, priming and painting again, and I'm incredibly lazy so this is unlikely to happen soon.

Behind the bezel there is space for a digital LED speed display but none is included. The case doesn't have a turbo button so it wouldn't serve much purpose anyway. I could put one in there and either leave it saying the same thing all the time, but again, I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered.

Power Supply

1997 price: $45

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A fairly standard AT power supply; only 200 Watt but I don't expect this will be an issue.

The worst thing about AT power supplies is that the mains power is routed through the switch on the front of the case. ATX moved to a 5V power switch - a much safer option - and allowed the system power to be controlled by software. Remember the old 'Its now safe to turn off your computer' screen? ATX allowed your computer to turn itself off 😀

When I received the system there was a bit of vibration coming from the power supply, so I opened it up, cleaned out all the dust, pulled apart the fan and dropped some sewing machine oil on the bearings, which has deadened it nicely.

j6sklugl.jpg

CPU

1997 price: $682

I received the system with a Pentium 166 non-MMX. This was a retail, boxed model as it came with a heatsink glued on. Unfortunately the fan was a bit noisy due to aged bearings.
I have a number of Socket 7 CPU's available but I decided to go for Intel's last and greatest Pentium - the 233MMX. It would certainly be pricy back in 1997; the 200MMX would be much better value at $434. Or even the AMD K6 200 at $339, but Intel had the reputation and the marketing, so if I was buying this in 1997 I'd probably still stick with a Pentium. And I'm not paying 1997 prices so why not get the fastest one 😀
At this time the Pentium 2 266 was almost double the price at $1198, plus you'd need a more expensive ATX case and Slot 1 motherboard.

TFAgdSOl.jpg

This photo shows the 233MMX at the top - probably an OEM or tray processor as it had no fan attached. The middle is the 166 the system came with, and its attached heatsink. The bottom is the heatsink and fan I will be using. I lubed the fan's bearings and it makes almost no noise.

So what's the deal with MMX? At the time the most notable thing about MMX was the advertising campaign!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zyjSBSvqPc

Without going into technical detail, MMX was a form of Single Instruction Multiple Data; which made a big difference if your software was written to take advantage of it.
3DNOW! and SSE (introduced with the Pentium 3) were variants/enhancements of the same idea.
Even if your software wasn't written for MMX, these CPU's were slightly faster at the same clock speed than the older Pentiums. They ran at a lower core voltage (2.8V compared to 3.3V of the older processors) so produced slightly less heat; however motherboards needed to support 'split rail' voltages to run the MMX CPU safely.

Intel started multiplier locking certain Socket 7 CPU's to stop dodgy builders selling overclocked systems; the 233MMX is not one of these. This will be useful if I want to slow down the system to play any speed sensitive games (in addition to disabling caches etc).
One note with this CPU is that the 1.5X multipler is interpreted as 3.5X (as most motherboards didn't have a 3.5X multiplier as standard); so 2X multiplier is as low as this CPU will go.

Motherboard

1997 price: $106

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The motherboard is a TMC AI5TV.
This has an Intel 430VX chipset. This was a budget chipset and the second last Intel chipset released for Socket 7.
The 430TX is the last, and most feature-rich, Intel chipset for Pentium.
The main differences are that the 430TX offers slightly better memory timings and UltraDMA33 - so much better hard disk performance.
Both 430TX and 430VX have a limit of 64MB of cachable memory; although you can exceed this, performance will suffer. I won't be going above that limit anyway (64MB was a huge amount of RAM back then).
Beggars can't really be choosers so I'll stick with the 430VX.

Speaking of cache, this board comes with 256KB of cache; with a COAST (cache on a stick) slot for a further 256KB.
Luckily I had a COAST module in my box o' parts:

vqqW9iQl.jpg

CACHECHK confirms the 512KB of cache is all present and working.
Socket 7 was the last platform to have cache installed on the motherboard; later processors moved all cache onto the CPU. This is why Pentium 2's were on such wide cartridges; initially the cache chips and CPU core were soldered onto a PCB which became the processor cartridge. The Celeron moved all cache into the CPU core, so there was no reason to keep using a cartridge, and Intel moved back to sockets for their future CPU's.

One problem with this board is that it has one of those Dallas clock chips soldered onto the board, and it had gone flat, so the CMOS settings would reset on each boot.
A previous owner had unsuccessfully attempted the CR2032 battery refit mod.

I had a spare, unused DS12887+ chip (datecode 2008) and new ones are still available online. So I set about desoldering the old chip.

rIJiPy7l.jpg

Hitting it with the hot air while levering the chip up got it out of the board.

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I then fitted a DIP socket so the chip can be easily replaced in the future.

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Finally the new Dallas clock chip is installed, and I can save the CMOS settings again 😀

bHIDA0Sl.jpg

One downside to this board is that it only supports 2.8V or 3.3V CPU's. That means the AMD K6-2 or K6-3 is not an option.
The fastest CPU this board officially supports is the AMD K6 233MHz; faster K6's ran at lower core voltage.
I have a K6-2 400AFR which I tried out, and the board booted and seemed to run fine. Only issue is that warm reboots (ctrl+alt+del) seemed to hang the system; I needed to hit the reset button every time.
Of course at 2.8V the CPU was running very hot (it's only rated for 2.2V). I think I will stick with the 233MMX for this board; there are better boards for the K6-2 and later.

While fiddling around I found that the manual had a number of undocumented CPU switch settings.
I have discovered that SW5 and SW6 control the CPU multiplier, while SW3, SW7 and SW8 control the bus speed. This isn't made clear in the manual.
A table of my findings is below:


MULTIPLIER SETTINGS

SW5 SW6 MULTIPLIER
OFF ON 2x
OFF OFF 1.5x (3.5x for 233MMX)
ON ON 2.5x (1.75x for AMD K5)
ON OFF 3x


FSB SETTINGS

SW3 SW7 SW8 BUS SPEED
ON ON ON 50mhz
OFF ON ON 55mhz
ON ON OFF 60mhz
ON OFF ON 66mhz
OFF OFF OFF 68mhz
ON OFF OFF 83mhz? no boot
OFF ON OFF 75mhz
OFF OFF ON 60mhz

There is an undocumented SW4 which would simply refuse to boot if it was set ON, regardless of any other settings.
I found the 75MHz bus speed at 3.5X multipler to be quite stable, so I have been running the system at that speed (263MHz).

Memory

1997 price: $185

In keeping with the 1997 theme I have gone for 32MB of RAM.
This was probably a fairly large amount back then - most people I knew had 16MB at the time.
More importantly, this was the only DIMM I found in my stash that was less than 128MB!

This is SDRAM, which was still relatively new as the market was transitioning from 72-pin EDO or FPM SIMM's.
On a Pentium, the SIMMs had to be installed in pairs as the Pentium's external bus was 64bit, while SIMM's are only 32bit.
SDRAM is 64bit so can be installed singly. The motherboard has 4 SIMM slots but only 1 DIMM slot.
This is PC100 RAM and will only be running at 75MHz, so tight memory timings shouldn't be a problem for it.

Hard Disk

1997 price: $415

The system came with a 4GB Seagate hard disk drive.

GSXIkMTl.jpg

This particular model dates from 1999.
4GB drives were definitely available in 1997, plus I don't really have any other working drives from this era so I decided to use this one.
This particular drive spins at 5400rpm; in 1997 this would be considered a fairly high-end drive as most midrange drives would only spin at 4500rpm.
While I could use a compact flash card and IDE adapter, I really do prefer hard drives in my old systems to keep with the theme.

CD ROM drive

1997 price: $136

I'm using an 8 speed Creative CDROM drive.
When I received it, it was a bit finicky, sometimes not closing correctly or intermittently not reading CD's.
So I opened up the case, gave it a good dust out, then removed the drive belt and gave it a soak in some soapy water. I also dropped some sewing machine oil on the gears inside the drive.

xGu3gapl.jpg

Unfortunately this turned into a drama as I managed to break the end off one of the ribbon cables going to the drive controller board. I had to cut the cable straight, then scrape off the insulating coating to make another set of contacts at the end of the cable. Took a couple of goes to clean off the contacts properly but eventually I got the drive working 😀

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Sound Card

1997 price: $332

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The venerable Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold. Great DOS and Win9x support; supports MIDI soundfonts, and good quality sound output.

In 1997 this was the best Sound Blaster available, and the one I would've gone for back then - who wants to take a gamble on some unproven Aureal card ?? 😜
PCI sound cards from this era often had compatibility problems with DOS games, so better to stick with a good old ISA card.

Unfortunately I don't have a memory expansion or SIMM adapter so I am limited to 4MB soundfonts, but that's hardly a big deal. I also have the SPDIF adapter but no speakers that support it 🙁

Video Card

1997 price: $116

tUF5Gevl.jpg

This is a Tseng Labs ET6000 PCI card; the successor to the legendary ET4000. At the time the ET6000 was one of the fastest cards for DOS and 2D graphics in Windows; while there were faster cards available like the Matrox Millenium, they were considerably more expensive.
This card is 2D only, but I'm not too worried about that right now 😀

This card used Multibank DRAM (aka MDRAM), as far as I know, the Tseng Labs chipsets were the only ones to use this type of memory, and additional chips are hard to come by. This card is fully expanded to 4MB of MDRAM.

Network Card

1997 price: $47

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This is a basic Realtek 8019 10Mbps Ethernet card.

This supports both 10base2 Ethernet (the old bus networks with the T junctions and terminators) and the more familiar 10BaseT (CAT5 cables with RJ45 connectors) which is still compatible with modern Ethernet gear.
In 1997 I wouldn't have bothered with an Ethernet card; a dialup modem was more likely. Back then I used parallel port cables (aka Laplink) when I needed to connect PC's. While it was very slow, it got the job done. I remember getting IPX/SPX running over the parallel cable in Win95, and having a 2 player game of Quake. 😀
For this build, the network card will be useful later on.

Operating System

1997 price: $105

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I've gone with Windows95 B (aka OSR2) for this system. Mainly because I wanted FAT32 support - otherwise I would have to split my 4GB hard drive into at least 2 FAT16 partitions. This is the first version of Win 95 to support FAT32.
95C/OSR2.5 doesn't really add anything I want - eg USB supplement, Pentium 2 CPU patch, Internet Explorer 4 and Active Desktop.

Putting it all together

1997 Total price

Pentium 233MMX $682
VX motherboard, 512KB cache $106
32MB SDRAM $185
4GB HDD $415
ET6000 4MB vid card $116
Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold $332
CD Drive $136
Realtek 10M Network Card $47
AT mini tower case $49
AT power supply $45
Floppy drive $36
Keyboard $22
Serial mouse $12
Windows 95 $105
15 inch monitor $309

TOTAL $2600

At retail we can assume this system was probably around the $3000 mark; which is pretty fair - I seem to remember my parents spending about that much each time they bought a computer in the 90's.
A more realistic system at the time would probably be a 166MMX, 16MB RAM and AWE64 Standard (or Sound Blaster clone card) which would drop the wholesale price by about $600. Lucky for me I'm not paying 1997 prices 😀

B5hE0Wkl.jpg

Once everything is put together its time to install Windows on the system. I was surprised that this system supports boot from CDROM; most Pentium systems I've dealt with did not support this option - you would have to make a boot floppy with the CDROM drivers, or just install your OS from floppies.

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The install is pretty straightforward, and I get to hear that lovely 'The Microsoft Sound' for the first time in years.

First thing I do is throw the network card drives on a floppy and install it. I actually had a bit of trouble getting this to work; I had to download the RSET8019.exe utility, and set the card to Plug'n'Play mode otherwise Windows wouldn't detect it.
Once that's working I install TCP/IP protocol, and delete the Microsoft Network client, IPX/SPX and the other crap it tries to install.
Once the Win95 box is setup with a static IP Address and conncted to my network, I can run an FTP server on my main PC, and copy all the necessary drivers across. I use SmallFTPD as its very simple and doesn't have a large footprint.
From the Win95 PC you can use Internet Explorer to connect to the FTP server, or the command line FTP client.

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I find FTP is very simple to get running; I believe Win95 can't view file shares on anything newer than Win7 (and even that takes a lot of effort to get working.)

Once all the drivers are installed its time to play some games! I had a quick round of Dungeon Keeper to christen the new rig.

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Seems to be running fine 😀 There is one more thing I want to take care of but that will have to wait for now...

Last edited by DonutKing on 2016-05-28, 00:51. Edited 1 time in total.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 2 of 14, by clueless1

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Your video card seems to be some proprietary interface that resembles a COAST module. 😉

edit: you fixed it. Hercules was my favorite video card brand back in the mid to late 90s.

In all seriousness, well written and put together. I enjoyed the history that you added. How did you find the 1997 pricing?

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 3 of 14, by DonutKing

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clueless1 wrote:

Your video card seems to be some proprietary interface that resembles a COAST module. 😉

edit: you fixed it. Hercules was my favorite video card brand back in the mid to late 90s.

In all seriousness, well written and put together. I enjoyed the history that you added. How did you find the 1997 pricing?

Yep, Hercules was a great brand. I have an ET4000 from them as well, and I had a Muse XL soundcard many years ago.

Finding the pricing actually took a while. I have a heap of old computer magazines from the 90's, and I noticed some of the ads had a website URL - about 1 in every 4 ads or so. Surprising that even in 1997 most computer shops didn't have a website (in Australia at least).

In any case I plugged the addresses into archive.org and CWS was the only one I found that had a price list from 1997. Most of the sites weren't archived until after 2000, even if they did, there was no online price list.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 4 of 14, by petro89

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Very nice!

*Ryzen 9 3900xt, 5700xt, Win10
*Ryzen 7 2700x, Gtx1080, Win10
*FX 9590, Vega64, Win10
*Phenom IIx6 1100T, R9 380, Win7
*QX9770, r9 270x, Win7
*FX60, hd5850, Win7
*XP2400+, ti4600, Win2k
*PPro 200 1mb, banshee, w98
*AMD 5x86, CL , DOS

Reply 6 of 14, by Tetrium

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Very well written and very good pics too! 😁

This thread would actually be very informative and helpful to anyone new who happens to be looking for info (and guides and walkthroughs and examples) about how to start building retro rigs on their own.

And about those prices, I used to keep a big stash of price leaflets and books, but I don't know if I kept them till now (should be roughly from 97 till maybe 2000 or so??). Should be fun if I still have them and can find them 😜.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
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Reply 7 of 14, by archsan

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I have to acknowledge the way you put things together. Very enjoyable to read. 😀

Back in 1997 to early 1998 I'd randomly and mindlessly write down specs on my notebooks or random sheets of paper at school, in my bedroom or anywhere else. "Pentium w/ MMX tech 166MHz, 512k L2 cache, 32MB EDO DRAM, Seagate Medallist (or Quantum Fireball something) ... Diamond Monster 3D 4MB w/ 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics, Creative Sound Blaster AWE ... ". Yeah we all know the drills. 😁 A bit later on I'd even write Pentium II and 3D Blaster Voodoo2 12megs if I were feeling high. 🤣

Such is the power of what magazines and marketing could do to a teenager's memory!

As for prices, have you tried google's PC Magazine 90s archives? I wanted to give a link but google's location detector will screw it up. Just search "pc mag 1997" from books.google.com.
There are usually listings by component in the ads section toward the end (store pricelists).

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."—Arthur C. Clarke
"No way. Installing the drivers on these things always gives me a headache."—Guybrush Threepwood (on cutting-edge voodoo technology)

Reply 8 of 14, by DonutKing

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archsan wrote:

I have to acknowledge the way you put things together. Very enjoyable to read. 😀

Back in 1997 to early 1998 I'd randomly and mindlessly write down specs on my notebooks or random sheets of paper at school, in my bedroom or anywhere else. "Pentium w/ MMX tech 166MHz, 512k L2 cache, 32MB EDO DRAM, Seagate Medallist (or Quantum Fireball something) ... Diamond Monster 3D 4MB w/ 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics, Creative Sound Blaster AWE ... ". Yeah we all know the drills. 😁 A bit later on I'd even write Pentium II and 3D Blaster Voodoo2 12megs if I were feeling high. 🤣

I used to do that too! Although it wasn't until about 2002 that I actually managed to fulfill my ambition - even then I had to compromise.

Such is the power of what magazines and marketing could do to a teenager's memory!

As for prices, have you tried google's PC Magazine 90s archives? I wanted to give a link but google's location detector will screw it up. Just search "pc mag 1997" from books.google.com.
There are usually listings by component in the ads section toward the end (store pricelists).

I think I did come across those when searching for prices, but I really wanted to find prices in my native currency (Australian dollars). But that's certainly a good resource for any US members wanting to price up their own retro rigs 😀

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 9 of 14, by DonutKing

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Now imagine, back in 1997, you'd heard about these hot new 3d cards, maybe seen some photos in magazines but decided you didn't need or want one right now... you can always add one later.
Then in about a year's time, your friend boasts about this hot new 3d card he just bought... so you go check it out and you are absolutely amazed.
Mind blowing graphics like you've never seen before on a PC! 😳
You just have to have one! And, even better, you can get two for even better graphics (and to make your mate green with envy! )
You head down to the shop and fork over your hard earned cash for a pair of 3DFX Voodoo 2 cards. It's so expensive but damn it, so worth it! 😈

This is basically what happened to me the first time I ever saw a 3dfx voodoo on a friends computer. Except for the part about heading to the shop and buying one, because I had no money 😢

I could only dream about having a 3D card for few years - My letters to Santa went unheeded; but I never lacked for socks and undies. 😖
But if I did have a fat wad of cash in 1998, you bet your arse I would have bought a pair of Voodoo 2 cards that day.

Because I'm a huge manchild that lives vicariously though nostalgia, adult me can get what teenage me prayed and wished for - a pair of Voodoo 2's.
Riy8mUwl.jpg

These particular card are STB brand, 12MB with an attached heatsink/fan (standard cards didn't have any cooling at all.) I actually got these back in 2010, new old stock, for $15 a card. I fiddled with them a bit then put them in the cupboard; I've been waiting to do something with them ever since.

Now this breaks the '1997' theme of the build because the Voodoo 2 wasn't released until 1998; an original Voodoo Graphics would be more period-correct. Unfortunately I haven't been able to track down such a card (for a reasonable price), and these guys seemed lonely in my cupboard so I decided to stick them in this build. That's why I've played the 'upgrade' card here 😀

So for those of you who've never used a 3dFX Voodoo card... These guys basically were at the vanguard of the 3d gaming revolution on PC.
While there was a few different options out there (NV1, PowerVR, and so on) 3DFX was the one that got the most support back in those early days.
For a few years at least, Voodoo cards were the ones to have.
3DFX developed its proprietary 'Glide' API which enjoyed a lot of support from various game developers, but was incompatible with any other brand of video card.
Soon the other players caught up, (notably nVidia with its TNT and Geforce cards) and developers preferred other API's like Direct3d and OpenGL due to wider hardware support. Other brands often had better image quality (supporting 32 bit colour, while the Voodoo 1, 2 and 3 only supported 16 bit).
3DFX lost its dominance of the market and eventually was bought out by nVidia in 2002. You can read more about 3DFX's fate here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive
But still, a lot of people have fond memories of 3DFX; and some of these games really do look their best on Voodoo cards (Unreal in particular looks AMAZING in Glide mode- especially considering its age).

These early 3D cards were seperate from your standard video card; you needed a 2d card to go along with your 3d card. Not like today where you buy the one video card that does everything. You would connect a short VGA lead from your 2d card into the input of your 3d card; then plug your monitor into the 3d card. The 2d card would do all Windows and 2d gaming, the signal would pass through this VGA cable into the 3d card, and then out into your monitor. When you did something in 3d hardware mode, the 3d card would kick in and send its signal out to your monitor as well.

The Voodoo 2 was special because it allowed 'SLI' mode (ScanLine Interleave): You could have two Voodoo 2 card in the same machine for a massive performance boost. Voodoo 2 was the first and only video card to offer this feature, until nVidia resurrected it with the GeForce 6000 series.
3DFX was actually using mutliple graphics chipsets in its arcade machine technology, but Voodoo 2 bought it to the PC.
SLI also allowed resolutions up to 1024x768; a single card didn't have enough framebuffer memory for this resolution, limiting games to 800x600. The two cards were connected inside the PC with a 34-pin ribbon cable; I made one using an old floppy cable, by cutting off a length about 2 inches long, twisting pins 16-19, and crimping a female connector on either end. You only need to connect your monitor and 2d card to one of the Voodoo 2 cards; it doesn't matter which one.

One thing I have found with these cards is that drivers can be a bit of a pain. Not only do you have the normal Windows driver, you often needed to replace DLL's in game folders in order to get the best features and performance.
This is called the 'miniport' driver. Upon extracting this driver,you get a seperate opengl32.dll file (for openGL games) or a 3dfxgl.dll file (for Glide games) to place in a game's folder.
Games often shipped with an old version of these DLL's while the miniport offered better features and performance. For example, I could not run GLQuake in 1024x768 mode until I updated its opengl32.dll file.
There are also some third-party OpenGL drivers such as Metabyte WickedGL or the more modern MesaFX which offer even further enhanced performance or features.

ZPwFqzel.jpg

Anyway, I installed these cards with FastVoodoo 4.6 drivers, and MiniPort 1.46
Once the cards are up and running, I ran through some benchmarks. For these benchmarks I ran 3 times and discarded the highest and lowest result.
GLQuake version was 1.13A, demo3 with nosound.
Quake 2 was version 3.20, demo2 with nosound.
CPU was 233MMX @ 263MHz, (75MHz Bus).

BENCHMARK				     SINGLE CARD		2 CARDS SLI
3dMark99MAX 1523 1555
GlQuake 640x480 48.3fps 53.4fps
GlQuake 800x600 36.1fps 50.5fps
GlQuake 1024x768 X 41.7fps
Quake 2 640x480 48.6fps 48.9fps
Quake 2 800x600 48.6fps 48.8fps
Quake 2 1024x768 X 48.50

So you can see that on this system, the Voodoo 2 in SLI is bottlenecked by the CPU in Quake 2 (Glide) and 3Dmark99MAX (Direct3d), because the FPS doesn't drop as the resolution increases. Conjecture is that a Pentium 3 is required to really let the SLI setup spread its wings.
In GlQuake there is a clear benefit to the dual card setup. In any case, the ability to play in 1024x768 is a big plus for SLI - this was a pretty high res back in 1998.

Anyway, enough chatter; this was a fun little project, now I'm off to play some Quake 2 😀

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 10 of 14, by clueless1

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Once again, well-written. I appreciated the detail on how the Voodoo2 works, how SLI works, etc. Even though I'm familiar with all this already, I never actually owned Voodoo2 cards, single or SLI (I went from Verite->Banshee), so the layman's explanation solidified in my mind how exactly these cards worked. For example, I didn't realize your monitor plugged into the Voodoo2, not the 2D graphics card, and that it didn't matter which V2 you plugged your monitor in. This kind of detail is seldom drawn out, even in reviews of the time.

What would be cool (I'm sure it's already been done by someone) is for someone to run these tests on the same platform, but with progressively faster CPUs, so you can see exactly at what Mhz the CPU stops being a bottleneck.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 12 of 14, by DonutKing

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Yeah my cable management is pretty woeful 🤣 With this motherboard the IDE/floppy connectors are in the middle of the board which makes it hard to hide the ribbon cables; if they were at the edge it would be a lot easier.

S3 Trio, virge etc are pretty boring.... almost every system I came across back then had an S3 card, yet I never saw an ET6000 in the wild. The Tseng cards are supposedly comparable in Windows and better in DOS.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

Reply 14 of 14, by pixelatedscraps

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Love the write up, so very informative especially after all these years of just barely being able to remember the model names but not really their backstory or usage.

Things that have stuck is the rising feeling as you enter a computer store in 1996-1998 (ok fine, that feeling still persists today) and seeing all the boxes labelled ATI, 3DFX, Magic Star (really, at that age - any labelling of hardware would do) of nervous anticipation of maybe, just maybe being able to unwrap one for a teenage birthday or Christmas present.

Some of my best teenage memories are of dissecting computers, swapping out components wondering which came closest to that constantly shifting vision of the word ‘optimal’.

And so we are all back at the age where we a) pine for those memories and b) can afford to splurge on building the dream PCs we could only read about.

My ultimate dual 440LX / Voodoo2 SLI build