Thanks, ya, that's what I thought (3d accel only). I'd like something a bit faster just to bridge a few more later DOS/Windows game into the mix, but would going with something more than a Voodoo 3 make sense given the rest of the setup?

NooNaN wrote:

Thanks, ya, that's what I thought (3d accel only). I'd like something a bit faster just to bridge a few more later DOS/Windows game into the mix, but would going with something more than a Voodoo 3 make sense given the rest of the setup?

It makes since. The mx400 or 440 don't make a lot of sense. Gf3 in my opinion would be the cut off. But the mx440 and 400 are still ok in such a system. Held back but usable.

The K6 is already under powered to make the most out of a Voodoo3, if you want to extend the reach to later games then concentrate on trying to run the K6 as fast as possible.

Honestly, a K6-III+ with a Voodoo3 isn't a terrible matchup. The Voodoo3 is held back by the CPU, but not to a hopeless degree, and it should have enough graphics grunt for anything it has enough CPU grunt for. Image quality on the V3 is really good too, IIRC. If you wanna run BSD or Linux with an eye toward making the box moonlight as something halfway modern, you might want a G400 instead, but the V3 is a good companion for a K6. I'd be running one myself, if I could find one that wasn't priced like it was made of iridium...

If that's not enough CPU, get a P3 or an Athlon, and then you'd wanna pair it with something a bit more skookum than a Voodoo3, like maybe a GeForce4 or Quadro4. You can get Quadro4 380s for a song these days, it seems. IIRC, those are basically the equivalent of a GeForce4 MX460. That'd hold back a high-end Athlon T-Bird or Tualatin P3, but could still run most things.

Thanks for all the feedback!

Ya, I know the proc won't completely maximize it, but just curious about any different cards that may be a better pairing.

I really don't want to go up on the CPU as most of what I play are older DOS titles. I use the K6 III+ due to the ability to step it down with software and I have a toggle switch for the mutiplier. It works great in both DOS and Windows either with the BIOS on the P5A-B along with SetMul. I wanted to try and get the most years coverage with one machine. I'm sure that building another, fast PIII is the way to go for the later stuff.

Honestly it really come down to what your doing. If your trying to play something that's cpu intensive then anything v3 or newer will be held back to a noticeable effect. but in games that aren't CPU intensive like mech warrior4 or older games played at higher screen resolutions you probably will not see that much of a bottleneck.

jade_angel wrote:

Honestly, a K6-III+ with a Voodoo3 isn't a terrible matchup. The Voodoo3 is held back by the CPU, but not to a hopeless degree, and it should have enough graphics grunt for anything it has enough CPU grunt for. Image quality on the V3 is really good too, IIRC. If you wanna run BSD or Linux with an eye toward making the box moonlight as something halfway modern, you might want a G400 instead, but the V3 is a good companion for a K6. I'd be running one myself, if I could find one that wasn't priced like it was made of iridium...

If that's not enough CPU, get a P3 or an Athlon, and then you'd wanna pair it with something a bit more skookum than a Voodoo3, like maybe a GeForce4 or Quadro4. You can get Quadro4 380s for a song these days, it seems. IIRC, those are basically the equivalent of a GeForce4 MX460. That'd hold back a high-end Athlon T-Bird or Tualatin P3, but could still run most things.

One advantage I like about matching 3DFX and ss7 is the fact that 3DFX tended to not really use a lot of the specific AGP features, so any crummy motherboard AGP features implementation which might make a system unstable is basically a non-issue with 3DFX (except maybe for some boards which used linear voltage regulators and can't really handle higher powered AGP cards).

And it's a nice way to use all those V3 2000s 😜

A voodoo 3 and a k6-3+ were sold new in stores in the same year so that seems like a good fit to me

Jade Falcon wrote:

older games played at higher screen resolutions

So much this

Im seeing a bunch of talk about bottlenecking video cards and etc lately. its always been a thing you upgrade your video card and then your cpu cant keep up or the other way around.

it was not really a bottleneck if you could turn your resolution up to 1024x768 or 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 and not have a dip in frame rate, it just always felt like effective use of ample fill rate on the video card.

its the same today if you buy a GTX titan or the like. its massively bottlnecked if you are playing at 1080p where a 1060 would just as easily keep up with 60fps but its able to stretch all the way up to 4k and maintain frame rates and so people spend the extra.

Super_Relay wrote:

A voodoo 3 and a k6-3+ were sold new in stores in the same year so that seems like a good fit to me […]
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A voodoo 3 and a k6-3+ were sold new in stores in the same year so that seems like a good fit to me

Jade Falcon wrote:

older games played at higher screen resolutions

So much this

Im seeing a bunch of talk about bottlenecking video cards and etc lately. its always been a thing you upgrade your video card and then your cpu cant keep up or the other way around.

it was not really a bottleneck if you could turn your resolution up to 1024x768 or 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 and not have a dip in frame rate, it just always felt like effective use of ample fill rate on the video card.

its the same today if you buy a GTX titan or the like. its massively bottlnecked if you are playing at 1080p where a 1060 would just as easily keep up with 60fps but its able to stretch all the way up to 4k and maintain frame rates and so people spend the extra.

But a lot of the old games do not support 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 res so the v3 IS bottlenecked. And even these high res games need some cpu power.

I don't care, i even have a v2 in my 486, just because i can. I use v2 sli in my k6-3+ because i like the combination but it becomes a whole different animal when you dump the 2 cards (or one v3) in a fast p3 system, so the bottleneck is there.

I also use a gf2 gts in my k6-3+ and that one DOES make a difference: Games that support tnl are sometimes too harsh on the k6-3 with v2's but become playable using the gf2 as it helps the cpu big time in those games.

Talking of games and K6, I am having a hard time with Operation Flashpoint 😒 20-35fps. Usually 20-25

Im really loving my K6II+ G400Max setup. The G400Max is great, dont overlook it 😀