I use a Voodoo3 2000 PCI on an HP Z400 (https://support.hp.com/lv-en/document/c01709672) (Intel X58 with a Xeon CPU). The BIOS has an option to choose whether to boot on the PCI-E card (RTX 2060) or the PCI card (Voodoo3).
The card works fine on DOS, Win3.11 and Win9x. Drivers install fine and I use high resolutions at true color on both Windows.

I faced a couple of gotchas:
* Win98 detected my RTX 2060 and the Voodoo3. In the device manager, I didn't know which was which (both were unidentified VGA devices). I randomly chose one and installed the Voodoo drivers for it in hopes it was the Voodoo3. Well? I lost the bet. It was the RTX 2060, moreover, suddenly the RTX 2060's card's fans started screaming like crazy. I immediatelly reset the PC, but the fans still kept going, so I shut down the machine. Upon turning it on again, the fans still turned at the same horrifying rate. So I shut down the machine and unplugged it from AC. I left it cool down for 30mins.. and tried again. Luckily everything went back to normal this time. I entered Win98 safe mode and uninstalled the driver on the RTX and installed it on the other card, and now everything worked. Lesson here: remove the PCI-E card first, then install drivers, then replace the PCI-E card.

* Voodoo3 doesn't want to run Glide. It runs D3D/OpenGL 3D acceleration fast and correct.. but the moment you run any scene on Glide it will crash, be it on Windows or DOS. Of course the card works totally fine on a period-correct machine, so it has some incompatibility with the HP Z400.

Ah, interesting story, I cannot see an option in my BIOS which lets me choose a PCI graphics card as the graphics output, I wonder if that would be a problem in my case. The BIOS I have is some "Phoenix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility".

Yeah, maybe it will show up when you add one. My HP's BIOS UI is "dynamic", showing/hiding options depending on the hardware installed. It's a proprietary BIOS (if we can say that 🙂), so I'm not surprised.

I've had OK luck running old PCI graphics in somewhat modern machines. Probably 2010 and newer boards might have some issues, especially more likely to happen with OEM boards in Dell, HP and etc.

That said, I cannot recommend using an old PCI graphics card when the board actually has a PCI-E 16x slot. Most PCI graphics cards will have inferior (or on-par) performance to the i945 IGP. Reason being, the PCI bus is rather slow for GPUs.

Which leads me to these questions:
- Why do you need the onboard IGP when you have a PCI-E 16x slot? Is it so that you can have a legacy 9x OS + a more modern NT-based OS? If that's the case, then perhaps utilize the PCI-E 16x GPU for the more modern OS and disable the i945 IGP in favor of adding a PCI graphics card that the legacy OS uses.

Probably might help if you specify what exactly you're trying to do with this system.

It is somewhat typical that IGPU boards will not initialise a 3rd place graphics adapter. If it's got integrated VGA, AGP slot and PCI, it won't initialise PCI, if it's got integrated VGA, PCI and ISA it won't initialise ISA graphics. So I would be expecting an IGPU plus PCIx16 plus PCI board, will not initialise any PCI graphics, even if it's very late PCI, like a 9400GT or something. However, some higher tier retail board makers will take enough care with the BIOS and whatever is needed on the board, that it is possible, it's just kinda uncommon. Very typical of OEM systems though that it isn't, some even have a lot of problems with PCIe cards that work normally in non IGPU systems. I haven't really characterised behaviour of "in the CPU" graphics, vs "in the chipset" graphics though, so IDK if that situation is better or worse.

Another problem I don't see mentioned is that early PCI might be 5V only and later slots might not support 5V But if you're talking classic 3D era then I think it had moved on from that then.

momaka wrote on 2024-07-09, 13:20:

I've had OK luck running old PCI graphics in somewhat modern machines. Probably 2010 and newer boards might have some issues, es […]
Show full quote

I've had OK luck running old PCI graphics in somewhat modern machines. Probably 2010 and newer boards might have some issues, especially more likely to happen with OEM boards in Dell, HP and etc.

That said, I cannot recommend using an old PCI graphics card when the board actually has a PCI-E 16x slot. Most PCI graphics cards will have inferior (or on-par) performance to the i945 IGP. Reason being, the PCI bus is rather slow for GPUs.

Which leads me to these questions:
- Why do you need the onboard IGP when you have a PCI-E 16x slot? Is it so that you can have a legacy 9x OS + a more modern NT-based OS? If that's the case, then perhaps utilize the PCI-E 16x GPU for the more modern OS and disable the i945 IGP in favor of adding a PCI graphics card that the legacy OS uses.

Probably might help if you specify what exactly you're trying to do with this system.

Yeah, I have a Quadro FX 1400, which is PCIe, and I even managed to install the driver on NT 4.0 (I used a modified ISO with SP6a slipstreamed because I got the CPUID BSOD iirc). However, even though I can see it got installed properly (color depth changed), it ends up throwing a lot of errors during the logon screen already and ultimately BSODs once I log on.
So yeah that's why I was asking about PCI graphics cards.
Also, I have just seen that my mobo manual says this: "When plug Geforce FX5200 PCI VGA card, the system will be crashed. It results from Intel Driver will conflict with this card." It doesn't say anything else about PCI graphics cards though.

laverio wrote on 2024-07-09, 14:09:

Yeah, I have a Quadro FX 1400, which is PCIe, and I even managed to install the driver on NT 4.0 (I used a modified ISO with SP6 […]
Show full quote

momaka wrote on 2024-07-09, 13:20:

I've had OK luck running old PCI graphics in somewhat modern machines. Probably 2010 and newer boards might have some issues, es […]
Show full quote

I've had OK luck running old PCI graphics in somewhat modern machines. Probably 2010 and newer boards might have some issues, especially more likely to happen with OEM boards in Dell, HP and etc.

That said, I cannot recommend using an old PCI graphics card when the board actually has a PCI-E 16x slot. Most PCI graphics cards will have inferior (or on-par) performance to the i945 IGP. Reason being, the PCI bus is rather slow for GPUs.

Which leads me to these questions:
- Why do you need the onboard IGP when you have a PCI-E 16x slot? Is it so that you can have a legacy 9x OS + a more modern NT-based OS? If that's the case, then perhaps utilize the PCI-E 16x GPU for the more modern OS and disable the i945 IGP in favor of adding a PCI graphics card that the legacy OS uses.

Probably might help if you specify what exactly you're trying to do with this system.

Yeah, I have a Quadro FX 1400, which is PCIe, and I even managed to install the driver on NT 4.0 (I used a modified ISO with SP6a slipstreamed because I got the CPUID BSOD iirc). However, even though I can see it got installed properly (color depth changed), it ends up throwing a lot of errors during the logon screen already and ultimately BSODs once I log on.
So yeah that's why I was asking about PCI graphics cards.
Also, I have just seen that my mobo manual says this: "When plug Geforce FX5200 PCI VGA card, the system will be crashed. It results from Intel Driver will conflict with this card." It doesn't say anything else about PCI graphics cards though.

Does the FX 1400 work well in other OSes on that board ? Asking just to be sure the card is known to work in general and in that board in particular with at least a more modern OS to begin with.

darry wrote on 2024-07-09, 14:44:

Does the FX 1400 work well in other OSes on that board ? Asking just to be sure the card is known to work in general and in that board in particular with at least a more modern OS to begin with.

+1

Test with Windows XP or 7, if possible. Drivers should be rock-solid there. If issues persist, then the card is probably bad.
Quadro FX1400 is essentially the same thing as a vanilla GeForce 6800. The early production ones were somewhat tougher, but the latter GF 6 series was from the onset of the bumpgate era. And from experience modding the coolers on many video cards, I can tell you that the stock cooler on absolutely all of the GF 6 series is not adequate to keep the GPU cool under load. So they are all destined to die when used more heavily / under load.

So long as the motherboard doesn't expect UEFI instead of BIOS, it should work.