It has no hooks to make gaming interesting, IIRC the drivers did not even get Q3 completely right, and I guess there is no retro computing geared for productivity apps.

Some of us enjoy collecting old pro cards like Wildcats, Elsa Glorias, Fire GLs, Oxygens, etc. If you have an interest in running old 3D apps like 3D Studio MAX, Softimage, and Lightwave then these boards were the ultimate, and it's kind of a thrill to buy one for $15 on eBay knowing that it cost in excess of $2,000 when new.

But they are not meant for general purpose computing. They are generally slow at 2D, have poor DirectX compatibility, and work best in WinNT/2K, so if you intend to run a Win9x/DOS rig then look for consumer level video cards instead.

I remember a friend who experimented with 3D Studio in the 1990s on a 80386DX40 with 80387: it took hours / days to build a 3D vase for example. 🤣

WildcatVP is kind of an odd duck in 3DLabs' history, because it was one of the only chips (the other being the Permedia) designed with the original intention of being both a pro card (what was ultimately sold as WildcatVP) and a consumer card (a single, ill-fated example of that exists as the Creative Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect; the 880Pro is a superior card). As Putas mentions, it doesn't have anything "special" for gaming, but it isn't a bad card because of that imho. They're capable of up to DX8.1, but can have some quirkiness with pixel shaders in certain applications (in 3D01SE depending on driver settings, and in Morrowind according to ixbt) - I can't say I've ever tried Q3 on mine though. Performance is generally somewhere in the GeForce 3-4Ti range (in my own testing it isn't too far away from Radeon 9550 in 3D01 either), but without as extensive driver/application optimization for games (it does actually have optimizations and profiles for a number of popular games, but not to the level of GeForce or Radeon).

Some things to keep in mind with these cards:

- There are no 9x, Linux (it will run the basic X driver, but feature-support is very limited there), WDDM, etc drivers available for these cards. So your machine has to run 2000 or XP if you want to use the card with its drivers ("Acuity").

- I've experienced serious issues with the VP on my i815 chipset system running Windows XP (Windows becomes unbootable until you unload either the Intel INF or the Acuity package in safemode). With i845 I've had no such issues, and it will thus work in XP just fine, and it works great in Win2000 on the i815 and i845.

- They seem to work 100% with Voodoo2 in the same system - I had no issues running it in Win2k with the 3dfx reference drivers for a V2 on i815 or i845.

- The stock fan, at least on my card, was horrendously loud. However the mounting holes were the right size for a Zalman VF700, which runs cold to the touch even when the card is running 3D. Power draw is not terrible, but it does appear to want full-spec from the AGP slot in terms of power (I don't know if this will or won't be a problem for any system, but I felt it's worth mentioning). What I mean here is: running 3DMark or some other 3D application, the overall system power draw with the VP 880 is similar to with FX 5700 Ultra or some other card that requires 4-pin aux power, but the 880 takes all of its power through the AGP slot (looking at it another way: the 5700 is over-built).

Other 3DLabs cards gets a bit trickier - Wildcat4 and below do not support pixel shaders, and generally they all require AGP Pro (not to mention they're generally massive cards - the largest are triple-slot and require an additional PCI connection). I'm not sure how useful any of them would thus be in a gaming system, especially if you don't have a massive case.

You can see more of my thoughts on the VP 880 here:
AGP Mini-Comparison (7 Cards, 3DMark2001) **UPDATED**

And read the ixbt review (which talks about their issues with Morrowind) here:
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/digest3d/itogi-video-vp870.html

Do note that ixbt is reviewing with older drivers than what you'd get from the 3DLabs website, but that doesn't mean any/all of their issues were resolved by 3DLabs at any point (and I don't own any of the games they experienced major problems with; the odd-ness in Morrowind with the water's surface happens to a (much) lesser extent in 3DMark depending on driver options (which profile you have loaded), but does not seem to occur in AquaMark3 (I didn't sit through the entire thing since it can only run at like 1-2 FPS)).

Some other general information:

The WildcatVP was "refreshed" - as far as I know (and as far as I've read) there were little-to-no changes made to the actual chipset itself, they simply added more memory and made revisions to the PCBs. The numbering changed slightly - the originally launched 870/970 became the 880Pro and 990Pro (and went from 128MB cards to 256MB and 512MB cards, respectively).

The Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect is based on the lowest-tier 560 chipset and has 64MB of RAM, and beyond that I've never found driver downloads for it on either the Creative or 3DLabs websites. I do not know if the WildcatVP Acuity drivers would work with it or not, and I have no idea what kind of performance it offers (or if it improves on anything for gaming, is better optimized, etc). They're not terribly hard to find though; last I knew there were a few sellers on Amazon and eBay selling them NIB.

The VP970/870/560/760 have 3dlabs drivers for 98, it's just the Pros that don't [880/990]. The 98 drivers don't have all the features.

Imo the cards give crisp 2D. And yes they work fine alongside v2sli. Agree about the speed too - not up with gf4 ti but above fx5500.

Importantly for me, like Matrox they gave me none of the sparky glitches that s3, nvidia, ati and 3dfx cards produced on my 21" crt in warcraft 1 played in Dos [rather than dosbox]. Only other card I've come across without the issues is the rendition verite cards.

Quake, quake 3, warcraft 3, ut2004 all played fine on the vp cards as I recall but I'm not an expert in every driver feature - they looked great and did not crash.

I tried one of those massive old wildcat's once, it was a pair of cards with a 3 or 4 inch wide ribbon cable. It gave lots of obvious graphical glitches in quake 3 - can't remember exactly, missing texture type stuff I think - but it didn't crash

.

ratfink wrote:

The VP970/870/560/760 have 3dlabs drivers for 98, it's just the Pros that don't [880/990]. The 98 drivers don't have all the features.

Well, learn something new everyday. 🤣 😊

Did a bit of looking and it appears the Picture Perfect has 98/ME drivers too (see here: https://web.archive.org/web/20030609221534/ht … tureperfect.asp); no idea where to get them from though. 😵

Thanks for all the info, i decided to skip this card 😀
Are there any cards like Voodoo that seriously have better image and quality than the rest in games like Half Life and UT99?

ratfink wrote:

The VP970/870/560/760 have 3dlabs drivers for 98, it's just the Pros that don't [880/990]. The 98 drivers don't have all the features.

It seems 3DLabs provides the same driver w9x_3000_1536.exe for all VP cards. Did you mean the driver doesn't have all features for the Pro's or am I missing something here? 😕

Stojke wrote:

Are there any cards like Voodoo that seriously have better image and quality than the rest in games like Half Life and UT99?

Yes, there are few hundred cards like that.

lazibayer wrote:

ratfink wrote:

The VP970/870/560/760 have 3dlabs drivers for 98, it's just the Pros that don't [880/990]. The 98 drivers don't have all the features.

It seems 3DLabs provides the same driver w9x_3000_1536.exe for all VP cards. Did you mean the driver doesn't have all features for the Pro's or am I missing something here? 😕

It's a long time since I used them in 98 but from what I recall:

- I thought I recalled that that driver will not install for the vp990 regardless of the fact it is the download they offer you for 98 on that card. I don't have a vp880 so I guess I am inferring that would be a problem for the same reason. Edit: actually the readme for the driver lists cards up to 870/970 but not the Pro cards [880/990] so maybe that's actually what I'm thinking of.

- again as I recall, the 98 drivers don't for example have the option to make windows translucent while being dragged. I would have been using them on a vp970. Edit: ok that's the acuity window manager, maybe not the driver as such.

Putas wrote:

Stojke wrote:

Are there any cards like Voodoo that seriously have better image and quality than the rest in games like Half Life and UT99?

Yes, there are few hundred cards like that.

I mean in year 1998, 1999 obviously 😀

ratfink wrote:

It's a long time since I used them in 98 but from what I recall:

- I thought I recalled that that driver will not install for the vp990 regardless of the fact it is the download they offer you for 98 on that card. I don't have a vp880 so I guess I am inferring that would be a problem for the same reason. Edit: actually the readme for the driver lists cards up to 870/970 but not the Pro cards [880/990] so maybe that's actually what I'm thinking of.

- again as I recall, the 98 drivers don't for example have the option to make windows translucent while being dragged. I would have been using them on a vp970. Edit: ok that's the acuity window manager, maybe not the driver as such.

My understanding is "Acuity Window Manager" is their answer to nView or PowerDesk. At least in Win2k "Acuity Window Manager" was a separate optional feature when I installed my VP880. I never enabled it beyond whatever minimum features to get the second output working; basically it popped up after the first restart and I just said "No" to all of its dialog boxes except "Enable DualView" and then the secondary monitor output worked. I'm guessing if you didn't need multi-head you could probably completely ignore it without penalty.

ratfink wrote:

- again as I recall, the 98 drivers don't for example have the option to make windows translucent while being dragged. I would have been using them on a vp970. Edit: ok that's the acuity window manager, maybe not the driver as such.

I think this option relies on Windows 2000 alpha support for windows, thats why it doesn't work in 98.