Its faster, but once you get much above a P-III or athlon above 1.4ghz, it doesn't really matter.
Here is a 3dmark 99 result of one (pci v3 2000 @ 166mhz this particular one can reach 183+) in an overclocked socket 478 prescott @ 3.8ghz based P4 - i875 with 3dmark 99 for a v3, there are more in the 99 thread with pictures.

Below it is a PII 450 on an BX board.

1Project Settings (Template):
2Rendering Platform: Internal (3dfx Interactive, Inc. Voodoo Series Driver)
3Resolution: 800*600
4Color Depth: 16-bit Color
5CPU Optimization: Intel(r) Pentium(r) III
6Z-Buffer: 16-bit
7Frame Buffer: Triple buffering
8Refresh Rate: VSync Off
9Looping: Disabled
10Texture Format: 16-bit, 4444 RGBA
11Run Tests: Once
12Title Screen: Shown
13
14Test Results:
153DMark Result : 6,663 3DMarks
16Synthetic CPU 3D Speed : 50,739 CPU 3DMarks
17Rasterizer Score : 3,024 3DRasterMarks
18Game 1 - Race: 69.6 FPS
19Game 2 - First Person: 63.9 FPS
20Fill Rate : 156.9 MTexels/s
21Fill Rate With Multi-Texturing : 307.9 MTexels/s
222MB Texture Rendering Speed: 549.4 FPS
234MB Texture Rendering Speed: 575.2 FPS
248MB Texture Rendering Speed: 523.8 FPS
2516MB Texture Rendering Speed: 4.1 FPS
2632MB Texture Rendering Speed: 2.1 FPS
27Bump Mapping Emboss, 3-pass: 141.2 FPS
28Bump Mapping Emboss, 2-pass: 186.0 FPS
29Bump Mapping Emboss, 1-pass: Not Supported
30Point Sample Texture Filtering Speed: 102.4 %
31Bilinear Texture Filtering Speed: 100.0 %
32Trilinear Texture Filtering Speed: 56.5 %
33Anisotropic Texture Filtering Speed: Not Supported
346 Pixel/individual: 1,280.1 KPolygons/s
356 Pixel/strips: 1,279.7 KPolygons/s
3625 Pixel/individual: 1,277.6 KPolygons/s
3725 Pixel/strips: 1,283.9 KPolygons/s
3850 Pixel/individual: 1,290.0 KPolygons/s
3950 Pixel/strips: 1,285.8 KPolygons/s
40250 Pixel/individual: 550.6 KPolygons/s
41250 Pixel/strips: 557.3 KPolygons/s
421000 Pixel/individual: 149.1 KPolygons/s
431000 Pixel/strips: 149.5 KPolygons/s

PII-450

1Project Settings (Template):
2Rendering Platform: Internal (3dfx Voodoo3)
3Resolution: 800*600
4Color Depth: 16-bit Color
5CPU Optimization: Intel(r) processor
6Z-Buffer: 16-bit
7Frame Buffer: Triple buffering
8Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
9Looping: Disabled
10Texture Format: 16-bit, 4444 RGBA
11Run Tests: Once
12Title Screen: Shown
13
14Test Results:
153DMark Result : 3,159 3DMarks
16Synthetic CPU 3D Speed : 4,192 CPU 3DMarks
17Rasterizer Score : 2,389 3DRasterMarks
18Game 1 - Race: 35.7 FPS
19Game 2 - First Person: 28.3 FPS
20Fill Rate : 156.9 MTexels/s
21Fill Rate With Multi-Texturing : 304.7 MTexels/s
222MB Texture Rendering Speed: 257.4 FPS
234MB Texture Rendering Speed: 249.1 FPS
248MB Texture Rendering Speed: 203.9 FPS
2516MB Texture Rendering Speed: 6.2 FPS
2632MB Texture Rendering Speed: 3.1 FPS
27Bump Mapping Emboss, 3-pass: 126.9 FPS
28Bump Mapping Emboss, 2-pass: 161.7 FPS
29Bump Mapping Emboss, 1-pass: Not Supported
30Point Sample Texture Filtering Speed: 102.6 %
31Bilinear Texture Filtering Speed: 100.0 %
32Trilinear Texture Filtering Speed: 56.8 %
33Anisotropic Texture Filtering Speed: Not Supported
346 Pixel/individual: 912.6 KPolygons/s
356 Pixel/strips: 1,323.7 KPolygons/s
3625 Pixel/individual: 939.3 KPolygons/s
3725 Pixel/strips: 1,480.0 KPolygons/s
3850 Pixel/individual: 961.4 KPolygons/s
3950 Pixel/strips: 1,463.4 KPolygons/s
40250 Pixel/individual: 554.2 KPolygons/s
41250 Pixel/strips: 569.1 KPolygons/s
421000 Pixel/individual: 150.9 KPolygons/s
431000 Pixel/strips: 151.3 KPolygons/s

obobskivich wrote:

To the Voodoo3 - is it PCI or AGP? If it's AGP you're basically limited to Kx266 or Kx333 AMD platforms for the "best" but if it's PCI you can stick it in anything with a PCI slot; there are probably i7 machines that fit that criteria. Performance-scaling wise I'm sure ~1GHz is probably nearing the top-end, but if you're buying all new parts, why not go with the AthlonXP and call it a day?

It's a AGP card. As for the parts i already have them. I have a Athlon XP 1600+ and a ECS K7S5A that needs a full recap, so i was just seeing here how worthy it would be to fix this board and build a Voodoo 3 system with it.

This chart really shows up the issues that the V5 had arriving so late. While it still may have had some oomph in it with faster processors feeding it, it was still only a DX 5 card. The other cards it was competing against at the high end were all DX 7 cards and the GeForce 2 GTS still blew it away on speed.

obobskivich wrote:

To the Voodoo3 - is it PCI or AGP? If it's AGP you're basically limited to Kx266 or Kx333 AMD platforms for the "best" but if it's PCI you can stick it in anything with a PCI slot; there are probably i7 machines that fit that criteria. Performance-scaling wise I'm sure ~1GHz is probably nearing the top-end, but if you're buying all new parts, why not go with the AthlonXP and call it a day?

If you're running a Core i7, then you're not running an operating system that has Voodoo 5 drivers. 2k and Me were the last versions of Windows to get *official* driver support. I seriously doubt that the Linux drivers have been updated in a really, really long time either. XP drivers are all Alpha versions created by fans that are not officially supported by Microsoft and you still won't be running XP on an i7 anyway.

sliderider wrote:

If you're running a Core i7, then you're not running an operating system that has Voodoo 5 drivers.

Not necessarily. There are folks who run XP on systems like that; X58 platform with WinXP was not, and is not, all that rare for example. The "probably are i7 machines" statement was basically a catch-all for the most extreme end of PCI support; I doubt you'd see much performance scaling at that level, but it's certainly possible to build if one was so inclined. I'm not really trying to say "yay" or "nay" either way - there's too many unknowns from person to person and configuration to configuration to really make such generalizations.

Voodoo3 was reviewed by Anandtech with a 500mhz p3, that was VERY high end.

So when you use it for 1024x768 gaming you don't need much more to max it out. When used at 640x480 a 1ghz should be more then enough. If a game needs more cpu power the voodoo3 can't do the game anyway at nice settings (if at all).

At high res. even a v5 doesn't need a lot of cpu power, they scale very well at 640x480. Cool the v3 with a fan, it will be pushed hard when used with a fast cpu.

Most powerfull possible cpu would be a 166mhz fsb barton 3000+ on a kt333 chipset and overclocked to the max, or a fast p4 on a sis chipset that supports 3,3v agp.

sliderider wrote:

http://www.voodooalert.de/board/wcf/images/photos/photo-241-647ee1f9.gif […]
Show full quote

This chart really shows up the issues that the V5 had arriving so late. While it still may have had some oomph in it with faster processors feeding it, it was still only a DX 5 card. The other cards it was competing against at the high end were all DX 7 cards and the GeForce 2 GTS still blew it away on speed.

obobskivich wrote:

To the Voodoo3 - is it PCI or AGP? If it's AGP you're basically limited to Kx266 or Kx333 AMD platforms for the "best" but if it's PCI you can stick it in anything with a PCI slot; there are probably i7 machines that fit that criteria. Performance-scaling wise I'm sure ~1GHz is probably nearing the top-end, but if you're buying all new parts, why not go with the AthlonXP and call it a day?

If you're running a Core i7, then you're not running an operating system that has Voodoo 5 drivers. 2k and Me were the last versions of Windows to get *official* driver support. I seriously doubt that the Linux drivers have been updated in a really, really long time either. XP drivers are all Alpha versions created by fans that are not officially supported by Microsoft and you still won't be running XP on an i7 anyway.

Not all community drivers are alpha: http://falconfly.de/vsa100.htm
They are stable and you can play glide, d3d and openGL games 😁

meljor wrote:

Voodoo3 was reviewed by Anandtech with a 500mhz p3, that was VERY high end. […]
Show full quote

Voodoo3 was reviewed by Anandtech with a 500mhz p3, that was VERY high end.

So when you use it for 1024x768 gaming you don't need much more to max it out. When used at 640x480 a 1ghz should be more then enough. If a game needs more cpu power the voodoo3 can't do the game anyway at nice settings (if at all).

At high res. even a v5 doesn't need a lot of cpu power, they scale very well at 640x480. Cool the v3 with a fan, it will be pushed hard when used with a fast cpu.

Most powerfull possible cpu would be a 166mhz fsb barton 3000+ on a kt333 chipset and overclocked to the max, or a fast p4 on a sis chipset that supports 3,3v agp.

Or you get a AGP2PCI adapter and run the card in a 64Bit PCI with 66MHz.

In my opinion, any CPU over 800 MHz is a waste to pair with the Voodoo3.

My systems tend to skip from 233mhz straight up past a 1ghz. For some weird reason Super 7 and Slot1 haaaate me.

ODwilly wrote:

My systems tend to skip from 233mhz straight up past a 1ghz. For some weird reason Super 7 and Slot1 haaaate me.

Intel knew that, so they made 500-1ghz cpu's for the s370 just for you! You can also stop beeing cheap: 440bx boards from Asus, Aopen or Abit hardly ever give trouble. Ss7... well.... they are females and need some attention sometimes. (flowers won't help though, just be nice and laugh about it when they fuck things up).