Glitches in textures normally means faulty memory. I've had by now two faulty voodoo 1 cards with memory issues.

That's what I fear is the case, can it be repaired?

Check if it doesn't get overclocked by the driver and make sure it runs at the stock 50mhz. Maybe try and downclock it a bit.

Also make sure the pci connector is clean and try every pci slot on the board, it might make a difference. Try another psu or another system, you never know.....

meljor wrote:

Check if it doesn't get overclocked by the driver and make sure it runs at the stock 50mhz. Maybe try and downclock it a bit.

I tried setting the core clock to stock 50mhz. Didn't help. I don't want to downclock, I at least want stock clocks.

meljor wrote:

Also make sure the pci connector is clean and try every pci slot on the board, it might make a difference. Try another psu or another system, you never know.....

I cleaned the slot and connector with contact cleaner, I have also tried 3 differend PCI slots and I just swapped another PSU from a working system in. Didn't help.

I also tried setting switching from PCI 2.1 to 2.0 to reduce the PCI clock to 33MHz. Didn't help.

I switched the Memory from the PC133 to some PC66 i had laying around. Didn't help.

It also doesn't seem to matter wether it's cooled or not. It still exhibits the same symptoms.

I'm feeling pretty sad and defeated right now.

Try a more recent driver or 3rd party driver from 3dfxzone.it or falconfly.de

Some drivers OC the card by default, so double check the clocks with tools. I remember this happening with V2.

Also try pure DOS games. The 3dfx Tomb Raider demo for example.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Try a more recent driver or 3rd party driver from 3dfxzone.it or falconfly.de

I have tried the original Guillemot Maxi Gamer 3D driver, the latest reference driver from falconfly.de as well as the oldest Diamond Monster 3D driver from there. I read in a thread here that that could help. The first two both produce exactly the same result. The Diamond driver makes it even worse.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Some drivers OC the card by default, so double check the clocks with tools. I remember this happening with V2.

Hey Phil,
I edited the .bat file of the 3dfx configuration to set the clock to 50MHz on startup. That didn't change anything.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Also try pure DOS games. The 3dfx Tomb Raider demo for example.

Well this is weird now. In Windows 98 SE the game shows similar texture flickering and corruption as the Windows games I tried. However under pure DOS the demo seems to run fine. Maybe DOS doesn't use the feature that's broken? I doubt it's really a driver problem, not after spending more than 12 hours fiddling about.

EDIT: Here's a few pictures to show what I'm talking about:

The Card itself

Quake at startup

Quake ingame (much worse with Diamond drivers)

The menus in NFS III HP show issues as well

Half Life seems to be especially screwed

Unreal also has some artifacts here and there but not as much.

Ok quite a few things you can try. These are just things I would do myself, not things that I know will fix it:

- Put the Voodoo into another PCI slot
- Remove PCI cards for testing (Ethernet, Sound)
- Load BIOS defaults
- Check BIOS for any PCI timing related options and play around with those

The fact that Tomb Raider under DOS works fine gives some hope, especially seeing it does cause issues under Windows.

EDIT: Try the Iceman drivers: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/2 … win9x-30101.zip

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Ok quite a few things you can try. These are just things I would do myself, not things that I know will fix it: […]
Show full quote

Ok quite a few things you can try. These are just things I would do myself, not things that I know will fix it:

- Put the Voodoo into another PCI slot
- Remove PCI cards for testing (Ethernet, Sound)
- Load BIOS defaults
- Check BIOS for any PCI timing related options and play around with those

The fact that Tomb Raider under DOS works fine gives some hope, especially seeing it does cause issues under Windows.

EDIT: Try the Iceman drivers: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/2 … win9x-30101.zip

I already tried moving it to all the other PCI slots.
I also removed all unnecessary PCI cards. Only the S3 TrioV64+ and an ISA Soundblaster 16 were plugged in.
Loading BIOS defaults has produced no improvement.
The BIOS has PCI latency settings. I just fiddled around with them. There's little to no difference at all.

The Iceman drivers are between the Reference and Diamond drivers in terms of severity, still unusable.

Am i the only one around here who noticed that this Voodoo stock clock is actually 45 and not 50 MHz? It says right on the PCB "45 MPixel/s", knowing that 1 MHz of pixel pipeline clock produces 1 MPixel/s fill rate. Voodoos are known for it's low overclocking headroom, at certain point of OC'ing these cards, 1 MHz can make a difference between a perfectly fine picture and what you have there.

Have you tried it on another system yet? Voodoo 1 can get finicky with faster Pentium 2, maybe it's acting up on this specific system as well.

I remember having similar issues trying to run some games (Warhammer Dark Omen comes to mind!) on a Voodoo1 years ago. The card was fine, I just had to experiment with different drivers.

I have a Diamond Monster Voodoo 1 that runs at a default speed of 57mhz, and I remember 58mhz caused no issues.

I would have a very close look at all the pins on the ics and make sure there are no shorts. It does look like a memory fault though.

Hello to everyone, its my first post to this forum.

something is wrong with memory. Put the voodoo out from computer turn it on back side and check all SMD capacitors. Maybe some are missing. Find on google pictures of (EV-3dfx-4) back side.

P.S. its really say 45 MPixel/s. but 50ns memory should work on 50mhz. Try reduce card speed to 45mhz, but Im sure that it will not solve the problem

Greetings from Zagreb

SSTV2 wrote:

Am i the only one around here who noticed that this Voodoo stock clock is actually 45 and not 50 MHz? It says right on the PCB "45 MPixel/s", knowing that 1 MHz of pixel pipeline clock produces 1 MPixel/s fill rate. Voodoos are known for it's low overclocking headroom, at certain point of OC'ing these cards, 1 MHz can make a difference between a perfectly fine picture and what you have there.

That would explain it. Hopefully this is the issue.

Guys, I feel like I don't know what's real anymore. 😕

I put the Voodoo and the P2 266 into my IBM 300PL (see signature) to test it.
I cannot get the card to artifact, I even overclocked it slightly to 53MHz and it works fine even after more than 5 reboots and more than an hour of testing

So I figured it might be the chipset for some reason, 440LX and 440BX respectively.
I put the Voodoo and CPU into my Abit BX6 based build and it's getting the same artifacts as the original system, despite having the 440BX like the 300PL.

The ONLY difference I can think of that could be relevant is that I had a Voodoo 2 in the IBM before putting this card in.
I'm going to try removing the Voodoo drivers from the original machine, install the FastVoodoo2 drivers on it, put the Voodoo in, remove the FastVoodoo2 drivers and install the reference drivers, which is exactly what I did with the IBM.

BTW, I also tried underclocking it to 45 in the original machine earlier, made no difference.

I'll report back if it works.

Edit: I tried it, still having artifacts. However I realized something. I currently have Soundblaster Live cards in both the original machine and the third one. I'll uninstall the card and drivers and try again.

I tried the original PC now with the procedure I detailed above and it still artifacts.
The Soundblaster Live theory I edited into my last post also doesn't work.

I cannot get this card to work reliably in two out of three machines.
Why the IBM works, I have no clue but it's not much use to me since I built that system with a 550MHz PIII and a V2 in mind. I don't have another system to use those components.
Maybe the IBM is more tolerant of faults?

I have spent too much time on this card, I give up, it's broken.

You had some more suggestions I didn't respond to, here you go:

SSTV2 wrote:

Am i the only one around here who noticed that this Voodoo stock clock is actually 45 and not 50 MHz? It says right on the PCB "45 MPixel/s", knowing that 1 MHz of pixel pipeline clock produces 1 MPixel/s fill rate. Voodoos are known for it's low overclocking headroom, at certain point of OC'ing these cards, 1 MHz can make a difference between a perfectly fine picture and what you have there.

I have tried clocking the card at 45 in the original machine. It didn't help. Seeing as the card works in the IBM at even 53MHz pretty much excludes this from being the problem.

F2bnp wrote:

Have you tried it on another system yet? Voodoo 1 can get finicky with faster Pentium 2, maybe it's acting up on this specific system as well.

I remember having similar issues trying to run some games (Warhammer Dark Omen comes to mind!) on a Voodoo1 years ago. The card was fine, I just had to experiment with different drivers.

I have tried it in two other systems now, my IBM 300PL and the 700MHz Pentium 3 machine. Both are in my signature. I know the CPUs in those are too fast so I also swapped in the Pentium II.
The IBM works so far for whatever reason, the other one shows the same issues as the original one. This leads me to believe it's not an issue with Chipset, expansion cards and such.
I have also tried over 5 different drivers now. All showed the same issues.

Imperious wrote:

I have a Diamond Monster Voodoo 1 that runs at a default speed of 57mhz, and I remember 58mhz caused no issues.

I would have a very close look at all the pins on the ics and make sure there are no shorts. It does look like a memory fault though.

That is one of the first things I checked actually! I have had an issue with that before.
I have an Orchid Righteoud 3D II that didn't show 3D at all and showed no framebuffer. I made a thread about that and meljor suggested looking at the pins. The problem was one bent pin.

danijelm wrote:

Hello to everyone, its my first post to this forum. […]
Show full quote

Hello to everyone, its my first post to this forum.

something is wrong with memory. Put the voodoo out from computer turn it on back side and check all SMD capacitors. Maybe some are missing. Find on google pictures of (EV-3dfx-4) back side.

P.S. its really say 45 MPixel/s. but 50ns memory should work on 50mhz. Try reduce card speed to 45mhz, but Im sure that it will not solve the problem

Greetings from Zagreb

Welcome to the forum!

I looked the card over carefully and compared it to pictures online. There is nothing out of the ordinary, all capacitors are there.
I tried reducing the speed but as you said, it didn't solve the problem.

Thank you all for the help! While the card is broken at least I can say I tried everything.

Don't give up just yet. If the card works flawlessly on one system, then it is safe to assume that it is not broken. The fact that Tomb Raider 1 works flawlessly under DOS as well, means that your Voodoo1 is alive and kicking 😀. Let's take a look at it once more. First off, I'd like you to list the system specs for all 3 systems you tried the card on in detail, like you did in the first post. Secondly, you may want to compare BIOS options and see if they differ between the system that works properly and the other two.

I have two plausible culprits in mind, two options named:

-Spread Spectrum
-PCI Delayed Transaction (or just Delayed Transaction)

In any case, before you start testing again, I suggest removing sound cards and any other extraneous cards that might cause conflicts. Also, from now on, use the driver that worked for you on the working system.

I would like to add to all the suggestions here..... check the FSB of the MBs that are having issues. Your IBM PC with the 550MHz Pentium III... tells me it's running at a 100MHz FSB. I'm sure the system has been configured with a 3:1 PCI clock divider to keep it at 33MHz - the way it's supposed to be. But some people will overclock stuff in a manner that changes the PCI clock timing - which can throw off very sensitive PCI cards that aren't built for that speed increase.

My AMD Athlon XP motherboard actually has a place where I can CHANGE the divider for those expansion cards depending on the FSB I select. At 133MHz FSB, I use a 4:2:1 divider (FSB:AGP:PCI), giving the AGP bus the 66MHz it wants and the PCI bus the 33MHz it wants. When the Barton processor comes it, it will expect a 166MHz FSB, so I will change the divider to 5:2:1, also keeping the AGP and PCI busses where they are supposed to be. Otherwise, I could see artifacts like that on my video card too...if not the card stop working outright.

I know we're trying to nit-pick and you're getting very frustrated. Just take a deep breath and put it aside for a day and not think about it. Come back to it tomorrow. And just think....the harder the problem is to solve, the sweeter it will taste once you figure it out and get it fixed. I know that was the case with me doing a 200MHz Pentium build with that motherboard I had never used. I had to use a drive overlay to get the 20GB HDD to work - ending up installing Windows 95 some 4 times before I was happy with everything. It also has a Voodoo2 card inside and it works properly, but I don't have a VGA passthrough cable yet. I'm working on it - I just don't want to spend a lot of money.

FFXIhealer wrote:

I would like to add to all the suggestions here..... check the FSB of the MBs that are having issues. Your IBM PC with the 550MHz Pentium III... tells me it's running at a 100MHz FSB. I'm sure the system has been configured with a 3:1 PCI clock divider to keep it at 33MHz - the way it's supposed to be. But some people will overclock stuff in a manner that changes the PCI clock timing - which can throw off very sensitive PCI cards that aren't built for that speed increase.

My AMD Athlon XP motherboard actually has a place where I can CHANGE the divider for those expansion cards depending on the FSB I select. At 133MHz FSB, I use a 4:2:1 divider (FSB:AGP:PCI), giving the AGP bus the 66MHz it wants and the PCI bus the 33MHz it wants. When the Barton processor comes it, it will expect a 166MHz FSB, so I will change the divider to 5:2:1, also keeping the AGP and PCI busses where they are supposed to be. Otherwise, I could see artifacts like that on my video card too...if not the card stop working outright.

I know we're trying to nit-pick and you're getting very frustrated. Just take a deep breath and put it aside for a day and not think about it. Come back to it tomorrow. And just think....the harder the problem is to solve, the sweeter it will taste once you figure it out and get it fixed. I know that was the case with me doing a 200MHz Pentium build with that motherboard I had never used. I had to use a drive overlay to get the 20GB HDD to work - ending up installing Windows 95 some 4 times before I was happy with everything. It also has a Voodoo2 card inside and it works properly, but I don't have a VGA passthrough cable yet. I'm working on it - I just don't want to spend a lot of money.

No matter what the pci bus is set at, a 100mhz fsb (or higher) system can sometimes create problems with voodoo1 cards. it happend to me and a some other people. Systems faster as 400mhz p2 can create artifacts with voodoo1 in some games.

I have several v1's and my cards don't even display anything on a fast tusl2-c board with p3-1400mhz, not even when set at 700mhz/66fsb. Tested with several v1's that all worked fine on slower/other systems. I had artifacts on a p2-450 with a card that runs fine on a p1 233mmx. Some people have no problems at all with much faster systems, so maybe it is with certain brands.

So, the p2-266mhz should give no troubles but a p3-550 can be too fast for a voodoo1, certainly with some games. Try the card in a pentium1 system, it should be completely trouble free.