Power consumption?

I've never understood this "switch in the BIOS" fascination - it's a royal pain in the neck, and it will not defeat the additional cards under Windows (it just picks whichever card is initialized for POST and that will carry over to some bootable environments, like UBCD). I do not remember how 9x handles different graphics adapters with different drivers - I know 2k/XP generally doesn't care unless they create a conflict (I've never had issues with ATi + nVidia, 3DLabs + 3DFX, etc). You also won't have the pass-through feature that Voodoo/Voodoo2 offers, so you will either need a switch for your monitor (and there's going to be display outputs that will then exist in the ether, or you'll have to disable them in Windows, etc), or multiple displays, etc. Basically this sounds like more hassle than it's worth to me. I also don't think a GeForce FX or above is really necessary for a Pentium III, unless it's all you have. Why not just go with the Voodoo3 (or a 4 or 5) and be done with it? I think if you're primarily targeting Glide games you should be AOK, but if you want DX8.1 and DX9 and all that under XP you probably also should look at a faster CPU (P4 era) and a powerful AGP card (like a GF6600).

Power consumption wise I'm not sure - I've never known my single Voodoo2 12MB to really draw that much power, especially when it isn't rendering, so I can't imagine adding a second one would really kick things up that much (when they're doing 3D it might, but that's probably not 24x7). I know that I had no problems with a P3 1GHz, WildcatVP 880Pro, Voodoo2 12MB, SB Live, and 3 hard-drives on a 200W PSU (and the machine never even drew 200W at the wall - usually it was like 100W draw, and this is an old PSU so it may be 50-60% efficient). Swapping all the graphics cards out for a Voodoo 3/4 would probably lower power draw (and decrease complexity), but going from a DX7-8 AGP card + Voodoo2 to DX7-8 AGP/PCI card + Voodoo3 may end up with higher power consumption at the end of the day. But that's just a guess.

I'm basically looking at covering 1996-2000, with some spillover into 1995 and 2001/2002. This means I'm probably going to be doing some Glide games, some DOS stuff, some DX 5/6/7 games, and perhaps even some lower-end DX8/9 stuff. It's a pretty broad range, though it doesn't seem impossible to do with one machine. I've heard Windows 98 can be finicky about multiple video cards, but I know that it can do multiple hardware profiles, so I'm thinking that's how I'll switch between the two cards. I'll either do that, or have a dual-boot where I use 98 for the Voodoo, and 2000 for the Geforce.

Worse comes to worse, I'll leave the side of the case open, and swap the cards every so often.

I'm not overly concerned about power consumption. As long as the PSU can handle it, it's not an issue for me.

I think you'd probably be fine with a GeForce256 or GeForce 2, or Voodoo 3/4, to be entirely honest. I mean, truth be told my '96-'00 machine uses a GeForce FX (and the re-build is going to have a GeForce 7!) and has no problems. I don't have anything that requires Glide though, so that's a consideration in your case. I know back in that era, I had no problems with a GeForce 2 until games like Halo, Half-Life 2, and Doom 3 started coming out; FX 5200 pretty much fixed it for Halo, and then up to 5900 for Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 without much fuss.

Voodoo3 performance is nearly the same with AGP or PCI while Geforce cards will have higher performance with AGP. You are right that a Voodoo3 PCI might be difficult to get but in theory that would be the better combination.
Depending on your games the PCI Geforce may still be fast enough, I suppose the difference will be higher with the later games.

I remember using V3 PCI with Trio3D AGP, just to drive second display. Cheap, simple, would cover Glide and S3d. Something I like to do nowadays is to use display with various inputs (like D-SUB and DVI), connect them to various cards and switch input by the display. Or even use PIP if I feel hyperactive, but that leads me off topic.

It does work. I used to do Ti4200 AGP + V3 PCI, but the solution you're proposing should work the same way. Like obobskivich says though, expect a lot of hassle!
Someone once told me he dual booted to get rid of BSODs and conflicts. So, one boot would be GeForce and the other one would be 3Dfx 😀. Never tried it myself, but it sounds like "fun" 🤣 .

also should look at a faster CPU (P4 era)

A fast P3 is on par with a mid range P4

smeezekitty wrote:

also should look at a faster CPU (P4 era)

A fast P3 is on par with a mid range P4

Define "mid-range." I see mid-range and think 3GHz or so - which is decidedly superior to P3, especially with SSE2, SSE3, dual DDR400, etc factored in.

I know that there are games where SSE2/3 do play a role in performance (Hitman 4 is always what comes to mind first), where even a high speed AthlonXP that is generally on par with 3GHz range chips will fall down against Netburst. This is all moot since we've clarified that we aren't talking DX9 from 2005, but this is why I said what I said above.

i have an xp machine with voodoo3 and 6800ultra. I switched in bios and indeed it is a pain in the.....

dual boot between 98se (v3) and xp (6800u) is the best option. If you want you can still switch in bios to use the 6800u in 98se and vice versa.

GeForce + V2 SLI seems to work for many people. Covers a lot of Glide games and performance is on the level of a V3 2000.