What are the full specs of your system?

What patches (including unofficial) do you have installed on Windows 98?
Is it Windows 98 or Windows 98SE?

Do other 3D intensive games run OK?

Other 3d intensive (soul reaver, rogue squadron 3d, etc.) games run fine for long periods without crashing.

System Specs are:
OS: Windows 98 SE
Board: VOS 9GM91104181 Ver A03 ATX Aladdin V
CPU: AMD K6-2 450MHz 32MB RAM
RAM: 288 MB
Video Card: Voodoo 3 2000 AGP

No windows patches i believe, only patch for NFS3 is the Voodoo3 patch that came on disc. Haven't overclocked the card either.

try without patch?

Might as well 😜

Okay so it works as Direct3d Device 1 without the patch, but with the patch specifically meant for a voodoo 3 card it screws up. Odd.

Found the problem, on disc instructions only instructs you to copy two files, when you also have to copy the third one. did that and no crashes. file is 3ddata.exe EDIT: Though this does fix graphical issues, the Cockppit hud is still invisible and I did suffer a random hang while crashing the car into a wall. All in all this voodoo3 patch seems to be rather slapdash.

IIRC NFS3 Voodoo3 patch disables the fog and have the wrong brightness for the horizon.
I use the 2nd (banschee) patch.

Interesting! I'll have to give that a shot, come to think of it I had to use a rush/banshee patch for tomb raider to get my V3 to work before too. Thinking of buying a 486 fan to plop onto it too.

The strangest thing is that the sound is continuing, including the sirens (looping as they should) I just can't exit the game. ctrl-alt-del doesn't work either.

Seem to have finally found a permanent fix for this from the 3dfx game support google group. Not only has it ended the crashing, it's also made it so the dashboard cam actually works. Thank you all for working with me on this. EDIT: I'd be careful surfing it though, everything past a certain date is spam.

What was it that you did to fix it?

firage wrote:

What was it that you did to fix it?

I copy pasted a gentleman's text into a notepad and saved as a .reg file, i'll upload the original txt file. credit goes to a p...@mail.utexas.edu for the solution. After using this I was able to select my voodoo 3 card in the 3dsettings config.

Not use EA 3dsetup because 1) it works with limited number of cards, 2) not works correctly in WinXp.
Run 3dsetup once then edit the game registry manually.
"Hardware Acceleration"="1".
"Group"="3Dfx". Case sensitive.
"Thrash driver"="voodoo2" or "voodoo". Voodoo2 is the glide3x driver (almost always), voodoo is the glide2x driver.
"Thrash resolution" isn't needed for NFS3 because you can change the resolution in-game. If not - "640x480", "800x600" etc.