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Voodoo3 underperforming?

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First post, by Zero_sugar

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I was testing a TNT card in with my SS7 system, and noticed the scores were either on par, or significantly higher than the Voodoo3 1000 @ 143mhz I had in there prior. In 3DMark99, the Voodoo3 scores 2600, and the TNT scores 3600. I then installed my 2 Voodoo2 cards in SLI and they scored 3800. I would expect the Voodoo3 to be about on par with the Voodoo2 SLI. Even with a single Voodoo2, 3DMark scored 2800.

I tried different drivers (latest reference, mikepedo, Compaq) with no significant performance difference.

Quake2 was getting 65 FPS on the Voodoo2s at all resolutions up to 1024x768 where the Voodoo3 was only getting 40 FPS.

AIDA64 says the card has 1 pixel pipeline and 2 TMUs, so it isn't a Banshee. Is there another way to check this?

The Voodoo3 shows no signs of artifacting or instability.

Both TNT and Voodoo3 are AGP

What is holding this card back?

Reply 1 of 10, by mwdmeyer

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What motherboard, cpu and v3 drivers?

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Reply 2 of 10, by Joseph_Joestar

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Zero_sugar wrote on 2021-03-27, 07:20:

I would expect the Voodoo3 to be about on par with the Voodoo2 SLI.

That is only the case with a Voodoo3 2000 and higher models. You wrote that you have a Voodoo3 1000 model.

I know the Velocity cards have one TMU turned off compared to the regular Voodoo3. Not sure if that's the case with the Voodoo3 1000 as well. If so, it will always be slower than the Voodoo3 2000, even at the same clock speeds. The amount of on-board memory might make a difference as well (8 MB vs. 16 MB).

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 3 of 10, by Zero_sugar

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-03-27, 10:06:

That is only the case with a Voodoo3 2000 and higher models. You wrote that you have a Voodoo3 1000 model.

The 1000 is just clocked slower (125mhz) and doesn't have a heatsink. I put a heatsink on mine and clocked it to 143mhz, which is what the 2000 is clocked to.

Reply 4 of 10, by paradigital

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Zero_sugar wrote on 2021-03-27, 11:26:
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-03-27, 10:06:

That is only the case with a Voodoo3 2000 and higher models. You wrote that you have a Voodoo3 1000 model.

The 1000 is just clocked slower (125mhz) and doesn't have a heatsink. I put a heatsink on mine and clocked it to 143mhz, which is what the 2000 is clocked to.

IIRC the 1000 was an 8MB OEM only part. No idea if the lack of additional 8MB of VRAM would impact performance that much however.

Reply 5 of 10, by Putas

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Gateways Voodoo3 1000 might be the only one with 8 MB.
Packard Bell "managed" to create 8 MB 2000.

Reply 6 of 10, by Zero_sugar

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mwdmeyer wrote on 2021-03-27, 09:38:

What motherboard, cpu and v3 drivers?

I've tried the latest reference driver, the OEM Compaq driver, and two beta drivers. Similar results for each.

PC is a ASUS P5A-B (ALi chipset), k63+ 450, and 128MB.

I'll be testing it in a p3 system once I clear some space.

Reply 7 of 10, by Thandor

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If I remember correctly the vSync is turned on by default with the latest 3dfx drivers. Try turning vSync off and benchmark again. You can either use 3dfx Tools or VControl to tweak these settings. VControl has more options, however, several of the options may hurt (or actually improve if you tune them right!) image-quality.

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And the rest of us would be carousing the aisles, stuffing baloney.

Reply 8 of 10, by bloodem

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This is a pretty common issue, and I've had it on all the Ali Aladdin V boards that I tried, including the Asus P5A rev 1.04.
The solution is to use the Ali AGP Tool: Manual settings --> Frame Buffer Size: set to "All" & Write Allocation: "Enable without Hole". Save and restart.

I've used this ALI Aladdin V driver and the attached ALI AGP utility.

Last edited by bloodem on 2021-04-14, 06:31. Edited 1 time in total.

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 9 of 10, by Zero_sugar

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bloodem wrote on 2021-03-28, 14:14:

This is a pretty common issue, and I've had it on all the Ali Aladdin V boards that I tried, including the Asus P5A rev 1.4.
The solution is to use the Ali AGP Tool: Manual settings --> Frame Buffer Size: set to "All" & Write Allocation: "Enable without Hole". Save and restart.

I've used this ALI Aladdin V driver and the attached ALI AGP utility.

Thank you. I was finally able to get that PC back on the bench. Works flawlessly now.

Reply 10 of 10, by bloodem

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You're welcome, glad it worked for you 😀

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k