Voodoo3 doesn't support AGP texturing features. The only tangible benefit to a AGP V3 is saving a PCI slot.

The only advantage of the AGP models over the PCI is cost, pci V3 and especially V4 cards are expensive.

Are there BX boards that can keep the PCI bus at stock clock while overclocking FSB and AGP bus? That would be a good use for a V3 PCI.

Yup there are some 440BX boards that support the 1/4 divider for PCI. It shows up on later 440BX boards, like Abit BE6-II/BF6.

I use a V3 3000 PCI in an ASUS P3B-F, an Intel i440BX with a 1/4 PCI clock divider. I would have thought that all BX boards support the divider, but not all support front side bus speeds over 100MHz.

Some early ASUS P2B revisions don't have 1/4. Most boards with overclocking do seem to have it though.

there may be a slight difference, as agp2x still has 4 times transfer rate of pci although voodoo3 doesn't support agp texturing. but really, it won't have much impact.

Couldn't it be that the PCI card is faster due to lower latencies?

IIRC the AGP version is much faster than PCI, under DOS. Guess that's because of the 2x AGP bus clock, providing faster access to frame buffer memory.

Theoretically the AGP version is 3.5-4 times faster in RAM - video memory transfers. Dedicated 66 MHz + 2 transfers per clock + sideband (AGP 2x) versus shared 33 MHz (PCI).
Unfortunately this plus was killed by "no AGP 1.0 compatibility for all major AGP 8x chipsets. All hail Intel!!!"

jwt27 wrote:

IIRC the AGP version is much faster than PCI, under DOS. Guess that's because of the 2x AGP bus clock, providing faster access to frame buffer memory.

Even on a stupidly fast CPU (relatively) it doesn't matter.
http://old.vgamuseum.info/benchmarks.html

Gamecollector wrote:

Theoretically the AGP version is 3.5-4 times faster in RAM - video memory transfers. Dedicated 66 MHz + 2 transfers per clock + sideband (AGP 2x) versus shared 33 MHz (PCI).

I think the only benefit is possibly faster initial loading of textures into video memory. Which with a 16MB video card is likely to be quite inconsequential.

Well, there is one glide game which constanly loads HORDES of textures. Mask of Eternity with "dynamic lighting"=on. But it has built-in 15 FPS limiter and works ok on Voodoo2 PCI. If you set the limiter to 60 FPS - dunno...

swaaye wrote:

jwt27 wrote:

IIRC the AGP version is much faster than PCI, under DOS. Guess that's because of the 2x AGP bus clock, providing faster access to frame buffer memory.

Even on a stupidly fast CPU (relatively) it doesn't matter.
http://old.vgamuseum.info/benchmarks.html

Just did a quick test myself (with Phil's industry-standard benchmark suite). Using a Coppermine 7.5x100, PCI 1/3, AGP 2/3.

1                              | 3DBench2 | PCPBench | Doom | Quake 
2------------------------------+----------+----------+------+-------
3Compaq V3-3500 AGP 16MB SDRAM |    048.0 |    220.0 |  458 | 141.3
43dfx   V3-2000 AGP 16MB SDRAM |    050.3 |    220.1 |  460 | 141.5
53dfx   V3-2000 PCI 16MB SGRAM |    824.7 |    206.3 |  701 | 135.5

PCI does seem to be slower, especially in Doom and 3DBench, but not as much as I expected.

Regarding speed, I think whatever difference you can find in 3D Games is probably within margin of error. The cards should perform identically.

I've had a Voodoo3 3000 PCI for a number of years and while it did prove very useful when I paired it with a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 on a Pentium III system I had at a time, I've really struggled to find any real use for it since then.
I think I used it once on an MMX 233 system with no AGP, so there's that. I've been thinking about selling it, but held off because you never know when you might need one, but I'd sure love to get a Voodoo 5 instead 🤣 .

RacoonRider wrote:

Are there BX boards that can keep the PCI bus at stock clock while overclocking FSB and AGP bus? That would be a good use for a V3 PCI.

Late revisions of ASUS P2B can do that. I had 1.12, it could. Also, the P3B-F rev. 1.04.

I use a PCI Voodoo 3 2000 (by chance/luck). I did initially want a PCI graphics card for the fact that the AGP on alot of earlier boards by a few years can be quite flakey driver wise and it would be more compatable ditching the use of AGP altogether for that early period of the slot.

I wonder however, I also have a NIC, USB ports etc on the PCI bus. I think though, the use of AGP would just allow you to have less latency owing it to be the only thing using the bus. Which after all is why AGP was created. But then the latency is surely neglegible noticable. It's kinda accademic I gather.

On my tualatin p3 1400mhz agp was only faster at very low resolutions but not very much. When used in a p3-450 for example there is no real performance difference.
When used at 1024x768 the card is a bottleneck very fast and the bus can't help it much.

These cards are very usefull for almost every glide game. Pci is more expensive, that gap CAN be huge. I've read that pci versions tend to overclock better (never tested myself, don't like overclocking the old stuff).

Blurredman wrote:

I use a PCI Voodoo 3 2000 (by chance/luck). I did initially want a PCI graphics card for the fact that the AGP on alot of earlier boards by a few years can be quite flakey driver wise and it would be more compatable ditching the use of AGP altogether for that early period of the slot.

Voodoo3 doesn't use any AGP features so it doesn't have compatibility problems with early AGP implementations. There are problems with early AGP boards though, but those result from insufficient current support which isn't an issue with the PCI model.

Great responses! Thanks, all. Given the numbers presented, I can't justify sourcing an AGP model. The tinkerer in me will nag from time to time, but I kind of have to acknowledge that this particular build is complete.