Well, about "Voodoo2 and CPU speed" - I use a single Voodoo2 with P4 3.2E. W2k 1.02.00 drivers work in WinXpSp3 but almost all W9x drivers not work ("expected Voodoo^2, none detected"). Only 3.02.02 and 3.03.00 work w/o downclocking. IIRC all other versions of w9x drivers work if I downclock this CPU to 106 MHz FSB (1696 MHz).
I don't have a second Voodoo2 so can't test unfortunately. Maybe later.

Regarding temperatures, I looked into this when I did a paper on V2 and SLI CPU scaling:

http://www.philscomputerlab.com/voodoo-2-and- … ng-project.html

I never tried Windows XP though. But I did find that the Pentium III-S is close to the ideal platform. Going with a Pentium 4, it took very high clock speeds to match the Pentium III-S.

Gamecollector wrote:

Well, about "Voodoo2 and CPU speed" - I use a single Voodoo2 with P4 3.2E. W2k 1.02.00 drivers work in WinXpSp3 but almost all W9x drivers not work ("expected Voodoo^2, none detected"). Only 3.02.02 and 3.03.00 work w/o downclocking. IIRC all other versions of w9x drivers work if I downclock this CPU to 106 MHz FSB (1696 MHz).
I don't have a second Voodoo2 so can't test unfortunately. Maybe later.

Welp, I'll have to give the W2k drivers a shot then, and see what I can see. Good to know they should work just for one card at least though. 😊 If installing the 9x drivers, like 3.03, does that actually enable D3d support? Or is it still Glide/GL only? Any quirks to having a 9x driver loaded?

On the downclocking, is it the FSB or the CPU clock that's a problem do you think? My Xeons run at 533FSB (133*4), and I have a Willamette with 400FSB (100*4) too. Both will be clocked higher than 1700MHz though. 😊

philscomputerlab wrote:

Regarding temperatures, I looked into this when I did a paper on V2 and SLI CPU scaling:

http://www.philscomputerlab.com/voodoo-2-and- … ng-project.html

I never tried Windows XP though. But I did find that the Pentium III-S is close to the ideal platform. Going with a Pentium 4, it took very high clock speeds to match the Pentium III-S.

I remembered you had done this, but didn't know you had tried a Pentium 4. Thanks for the info. I would expect P4 to need relatively higher clocks to keep up with a III-S. I'm guessing that at 3GHz I should be at least leveling off with the III-S, if not beating it; I hope. 🤣

For your temperature tests - that's done with a faster P3, right?

Yes. For these old cards I do recommend some sort of cooling. For V2, there are passive coolers on eBay. Just glue them onto the three chips and you are done.

Alternative, a 120 mm fan on top of both cards, does the trick. But might not be that easy to mount and will likely be a custom solution.

If you're worried about temperature, there is an easy solution. Enable V-sync to keep frame rates in check. That will keep the V2 a bit cooler.

Another good cooling solution is to place them in a sack, fill it with cement and throw them off a bridge into running water.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Yes. For these old cards I do recommend some sort of cooling. For V2, there are passive coolers on eBay. Just glue them onto the three chips and you are done.

Alternative, a 120 mm fan on top of both cards, does the trick. But might not be that easy to mount and will likely be a custom solution.

If you're worried about temperature, there is an easy solution. Enable V-sync to keep frame rates in check. That will keep the V2 a bit cooler.

The case I'm using has a "vent" over the expansion card area, and I could probably rig a fan up there (I've done this on the past on other cases at least). I'll have to give that a look though. Alternately, I have another case that actually has a built-in fan mount over the expansion cards - it worked very well with 7950GX2 QuadSLI (which is only like what? 10x the power consumption?), so I assume it'd work for Voodoo2 SLI... 🤣

And yes, I would probably enable v-sync just as a force of habit. I saw that in your measurements too, and I've seen it reduce temps on other cards in the past as well. 😀

obobskivich wrote:

Welp, I'll have to give the W2k drivers a shot then, and see what I can see. Good to know they should work just for one card at least though.

Don't forget to set all 3 Voodoo2 services (fxgpio, fxptl and ntremap) to the system level. W2k display drivers are core level drivers so they fail in WinXp if the standard level is used.

If installing the 9x drivers, like 3.03, does that actually enable D3d support? Or is it still Glide/GL only? Any quirks to having a 9x driver loaded?

Yes, Win98+DX 9.0c, dxdiag find Voodoo2 as the second dx device. IIRC d3d7 test works ok, d3d8 and d3d9 aren't supported. I will recheck this info.

On the downclocking, is it the FSB or the CPU clock that's a problem do you think? My Xeons run at 533FSB (133*4), and I have a Willamette with 400FSB (100*4) too. Both will be clocked higher than 1700MHz though.

Not sure. I have tested Northwood 2.6C with the same setup. Old W9x Voodoo2 drivers fails with the 155+ MHz FSB (2015+ MHz CPU). So it looks like both factors can break old Voodoo2 drivers.
Then again, w9x 3.03.00, 3.02.02 and w2k 1.02.00 drivers work w/o any downclocking. Maybe even a C2D/Nehalem/Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge speed is supported...

Alright, just an update - I got the second card in the mail recently, and had some time to put everything together tonight. Both cards show in XP Pro, and install just as they would in 2k Pro. I was able to get an old 3dfx Glide demo working right off the CD, but haven't tried much in the way of games yet. Overall everything seems to work about as well as I've seen the Voodoo2 run in 2k Pro - I've had one crash of the 3dfx control panel, but logging out and back in again cleared it.

Gamecollector wrote:

Don't forget to set all 3 Voodoo2 services (fxgpio, fxptl and ntremap) to the system level. W2k display drivers are core level drivers so they fail in WinXp if the standard level is used.

Can you elaborate more on this?

Device Manager/View/Show hidden devices, select Non-PnP devices.
Voodoo2 Memory Mapper, Voodoo2 PCI Port I/O.
Doubleclick on each, Driver/Autorun type - set it to "System".
Or you can use this .reg:

1Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
2
3[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\fxgpio]
4"Start"=dword:00000001
5
6[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\fxptl]
7"Start"=dword:00000001
8

Voodoo2 W2k driver CAN work w/o this but fails.

What do you mean by "fails"? I'm not unfamiliar with what you're suggesting to do (but thank you for providing details anyways 😀 ), I'm just not following why you're suggesting it. Thus far the Win2k driver has worked just fine (as it does in 2k), and the cards have been detected and run fine in the few games/applications I've tested them with. Is there some "gotcha" lurking around the corner here? Or is this in the realm of "this may be a problem you encounter and if so, here's the fix"?

obobskivich wrote:

What do you mean by "fails"?

"Genport I/O error" and "Memmap error".
If you get one of these messages at the OS loading - use the .reg above.

Gamecollector wrote:

obobskivich wrote:

What do you mean by "fails"?

"Genport I/O error" and "Memmap error".
If you get one of these messages at the OS loading - use the .reg above.

I see. I've experienced neither, but I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks. 😀

Just an update - I swapped around multiple nVidia cards in this system and they all worked, but when I swapped to an ATi card the machine hard-locks on start-up once Catalyst and the 3dfx drivers are installed. It appears there's an issue with Catalyst <-> 3dfx (with one or the other removed it was working, and with neither installed it boots but ofc there's limited graphics options). I'll be re-imaging the machine and going back to an nVidia card of some sort.

A few tips for the voodoo 2 SLI:

1. Official 3dfx driver for win 9x only works well on slower CPU (PIII @ 600 MHz and below should be fine, I'm quite sure of that). IIRC there are serious problems with K7 CPUs, so I recommend not using 3dfx WHQL driver on Athlon platform.

2. Quantum 3D based Voodoo2 - Obsidian2 X-24, Obsidian2 200 SBi, Obsidian2 S-12. Chrontel TV-OUT encoder runs very hot (more than 60°C) when using normal V2 driver. Official Q3D driver doesn't suffer from this problem... so it is probably better to stick with that one to keep the card cool and safe. Unfortunately the Q3D driver does not work on K7 either, just like the original V2 driver.

3. For windows 9x the FastVoodoo2 4.6 has proven to be fast, stable and reliable, works on most CPUs - at least up to Athlon XP 2 GHz and P4 3 GHz. For win XP FastVoodoo2 4.0 XP is the best in my opinion. I had no problems running V2 SLI on A64 3000+ with VIA K8T800 board and Radeon X800 XT PE as a primary GPU.

4. There might be problems with random glide lockups in win98 (not sure about XP). This is most likely caused by directx 9c. All versions up to 9b (included) are safe and stable, I haven't tested the early builds od 9c - some of them may be fine... but I guess 9b should be more than enough for V2 SLI PC.

5. Some chipsets might not work well with V2 SLI. The most problematic ones are nForce4 and supposedly nForce3. Maybe newer pci-e nForce chipsets as well. Personally I tried V2 SLI on NF4 SLI board and it didn't run at all. Not sure about the other ones. All Intel chipsets up to P35 (included) are fine, I haven't tried more recent ones. I guess noone will use V2 SLI in modern PC.

6. Cooling - unless running V2 in Pentium MMX or something like that, I strongly suggest to use some cooling fan pointing towards the cards. V2 SLI can run very hot (especially in newer boards) and even lockup or artifact. Cooling should prevent these problems and even increase the V2 lifespan. Passive heatsinks won't do much good without some airflow, so there is not much point in installing them. Decent airflow is sufficient.

Btw - link to a nice 3dfx help page http://helppage.3dfx.sk/#SLI

If we had a "useful voodoo stuff thread" - that post should be in it.

Gamecollector wrote:

"Genport I/O error" and "Memmap error".
If you get one of these messages at the OS loading - use the .reg above.

Finally, after two-dozen some odd successful boots, running multiple 3D applications, etc I get genport error. 🤣