3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 vs Nvidia Riva TNT2 Pro

[@efpcvintageplanet3406]

Great video. For me the second half of the 90s is the golden age of glide. Although the TNT2 Pro is an excellent card, 3dfx wins both in quality and in rastering. Then comes the Geforce 256 with the T&L and things changed 😉

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Thank you! After benchmarking and using the Voodoo 3 and TNT2 for so long, it’s clear to me that the Voodoo 3 was the overall better card, having many advantages over the TNT2. The Voodoo 3 was faster, it had a better 16-bit image quality with more intense vibrant colors and a better game compatibility. The only real advantage of the TNT2 over the Voodoo 3 was its support for 512x512 textures, which made some games released after the year 2000, like Warcraft 3, to look better than on the Voodoo 3. In terms of overall speed / performance the Voodoo 3 2000 is at the same level as the TNT2 Pro and the V3 3000 slightly faster than a TNT2 Ultra. The V3 3500 is yet another 10% faster than the V3 3000 and clearly faster than the TNT2 Ultra. Still the TNT2 was an excellent and very competitive 1999 video card. The Geforce 256 SDram released in October 1999 is the first Nvidia card to beat the Voodoo 3 3500. The Geforce 256 DDR released in December 1999 was significantly faster than the Voodoo 3 3500 especially because of its DDR memory / 4.8 mb/s memory bandwidth (2.93 mb/s for the V3 3500). Curiously the V3 3500 still had a better / higher 16-bit image quality than the Geforce 256 and 2.

[@efpcvintageplanet3406]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 great hardware knowledge thanks for the valuable information😉

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@efpcvintageplanet3406 thank you a lot. Ever since 1998-1999, like many others, I was really curious which cards where better the 3dfx Voodoo’s or the Nvidia TNT’s :).

[@阿綸的全勳學院]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 in my senior high school.v3 3500 and tnt2 ultra is my Dream 3D Card.but too expensive.but i really really want to buy it in my senior high school

[@phelios6630]

Tuve las tres,un privilegio haber vivido esa época dorada de las GPUs

[@fradd182]

This is a fair comparison, i think that those 2 card were direct competitors. Honestly, i dont see a difference in rendering quality. Voodoo is faster in most titles, sometimes significantly, except in one game (interstate, i believe).

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

I tested the V3 2000 against the 125/150 mhz TNT2 and the V3 3000 against the 143/166 mhz TNT2 Pro because those were direct competitors in 1999. The Voodoo's are overall clearly faster than their TNT2 competitors because thier core runs at a higher frequency and also because of Glide. The Voodoo 3 2000 is overall just as fast as a TNT2 Pro and the Voodoo 3 3000 slightly faster than a TNT2 Ultra. There are some games like Interstate 82, Incoming, Moterhead and others where the TNT2's are faster, but in the vast majority of games the Voodoo 3s are clearly faster. The Voodoo 3 also has more intense vibrant colors in almost all games. The TNT2 displays an ugly weird square shaped pattern when looking at dark textures or walls, like in Quake 2 and Unreal engine games. On the other hand the textures with the TNT2 look better and of higher quality in some of the newer games released after the year 2000, which support 512x512 textures (the Voodoo 3 only supports 256x256), like Warcraft 3, Rally Masters and others. The only real advantage the TNT2 has over the Voodoo 3 is the support for 512x512 textures, which makes some of the newer games look better than on the Voodoo 3. Otherwise the Voodoo 3 is better than the TNT2 in every other aspect (performance, 16-bit image quality, game compatibility).

[@yakovkhalip9714]

nice ! I'm going to buy a Voodoo 3 3000 for my Pentium II/400 Dell XPS R400 by the way.... There's TNT/16mb in it now...

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

A V3 3000 is a nice upgrade to a TNT1, it will be 2x faster in many games like Unreal, Quake 2, etc. Also it has a better game compatibility, better 16-bit image quality and more intense and vibrant colors.

[@yakovkhalip9714]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 I see thanks for the info ... I need to buy it first... Old h-w became expensive even of AGP era)

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@yakovkhalip9714 yes unfortunately retro hardware is very expensive. A V3 3000 is in my country around 100$.

[@spavatch]

OR... you can keep your TNT for those rare cases of nVidia's OpenGL superiority (ida know, only X-Plane comes to mind) and throw in two Voodoo2s next to it for everything else. That way you'll get the best of both worlds.

[@mircomacro1033]

Great video, lacks in game names and sound quality

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@mircomacro1033 Thank you, I thought everyone knows the names of those games :)

[@upgrade1373]

I wish I had one of these cards to play with!

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@upgrade1373 both are very nice for 1999 games. The TNT2 though is a lot cheaper than the Voodoo 3 3000.

[@阿綸的全勳學院]

tnt2 pro can oc tnt2ultra?

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Unfortunately no, the 6ns memory of my TNT2 Pro overclocks just up to around 170 mhz. I would have created a TNT2 Ultra vs V3 3500 video but my TNT2 Pro cannot reach the frequencies of the Ultra. I will have to buy a TNT2 Ultra for that :)

[@阿綸的全勳學院]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 ohoh!i understand thank you. v3 3500 vs tnt2 ultra just like M16 vs AK47

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@阿綸的全勳學院 the results would be very similar to the V3 3000 vs TNT2 Pro video. The V3 3500 is just 10% faster than the V3 3000 and the TNT2 Ultra is 5-10% faster then the TNT2 Pro. It would still be interesting but I will have to buy a TNT2 Ultra first :)

[@66mhzbrain]

Cool vid. Voodoo definately looks better.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Thank you! Yes in almost all games the colors of the Voodoo 3 are more intense and vibrant than with the TNT2. Also dark textures look a lot better with the Voodoo 3 in many games like the ones with Quake 2 and Unreal engine. On the other hand in some newer games released after the year 2000 like Warcraft 3 the textures with the TNT2 look better and are of higher quality (512x512 for the TNT2 and just 256x256 for the Voodoo 3).

[@阿綸的全勳學院]

My Voodoo2! My Voodoo2 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! \^.^/ 3DFX Forever~!

[@eletronictoenails]

I wonder how newer games not made for these cards like GTA 3 and Vice City, Half-Life 2, and other games from that era would have ran

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

I have two videos on this channel with the Voodoo 3 3000 running GTA 3 on a P3 900 mhz and Vice City on an Athlon Xp 2400+ :). Half Life 2 unfortunately does not start on the Voodoo 3.

[@Erik.Lundberg]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6Why does it not start on the Voodoo3? I have tested it on a Voodoo2 and it did start but it did not look very good.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@Erik.Lundberg I dont know exactly but maybe a driver issue, because Half-Life 2 was released 5 years after the Voodoo 3.

[@MateusRG]

😲

[@JohnDoe-ip3oq]

I had a diamond viper v770, your test results are driver limited, as I was hitting 90+ fps in quake 3, while 32bit would be more in the 40-50 range. Nvidia is known for crippling their tnt2 drivers after GeForce, plus they disabled multi texturing in 16 bit and AGP. You had to fix this with rivatuner registry edits. The windows XP driver was also much slower than the 98 driver, 98 had double the fps, although there were a few XP drivers that ran decent. Nvidia did a good job screwing their older card to sell GeForce, including making their 16 bit color really ugly with a bad dither pattern that didn't exist on voodoo. Unreal engine also was pretty unoptimized for Nvidia in general, voodoo 2sli beat the GeForce in fps. TnL was never a useful feature, you needed a slow CPU to matter, voodoo 2 was still faster, but lost the CPU edge with voodoo 3 forward. The k6-2 was garbage on a tnt2, while the athlon on 98 made upgrading irrelevant.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

I tested many drivers for the TNT2 and this one is the fastest I found. It definitely run with 2 TMUs. All tests where done in Window 98. 32-bit gaming on a TNT2 is a joke in 1024x768, in 800x600 it would be ok. The Geforce is a lot faster than the V2 SLI in Unreal. A Geforce 256 SDram or Geforce 2 MX 128-bit reach 72 fps in Unreal 1024x768 16-bit whereas the V2 SLI only manages 57 fps.

[@JohnDoe-ip3oq]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 yeah 32 bit was mostly a joke, you can only get good performance in 16 bit, and there is a registry setting where Nvidia disabled multi texture in 16 bit mode. Idk why, but this option is exposed using riva tuner. I remember using several tools back in the day including power strip, which had a bunch of helpful functions including a safe mode shortcut and refresh override. The tnt2 was cool, but there were real limitations using it and it needed tweaks. The diamond viper driver had per game profiles, anti aliasing, and anisotropic filtering, which were removed using the Nvidia driver. Cool bits was another registry tweak people used as well, to enable overclocking. As for the voodoo 2 sli, you're doing something wrong if it's running slow. All the review sites mentioned it being faster than GeForce using glide. 57 fps sounds like a single v2, especially since you sometimes need a "mismatched" driver to enable sli. That or the resolution is too high, and the review sites used lower res. Idk. Overall I preferred the tnt2 over the voodoo 2 for clarity, and the voodoo 3 for color. I never used a GeForce because Nvidia never sold a good one at reasonable prices. The MX was basically a tnt2 side grade, the gf4mx was a scam, and the FX was garbage that a Radeon 9000 was better.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@JohnDoe-ip3oq in Unreal a single Voodoo 2 reaches 46-47 fps in 800x600 whereas the Voodoo 2 SLI gets 57 fps in 1024x768, just 1 fps lower than the V3 3000. The Geforce 256 and 2 MX 128-bit reach 72 fps.

[@chrishoo2742]

Voodoo3 is good. But it only supports 16bit color, both texture and framebuffer

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

The cards from 1999 are too slow for 32-bit gaming, their performace drops by 30-70%, making many games unplayable at 1024x768. Even the GF 256 SDR and GF 2 MX are too slow for 32-bit gaming.

[@chrishoo2742]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 yeah. TNT is capable of doing 32bit rendering but I believe nobody would run games in that mode. 😂😂😂 And Voodoo3 has great antialiasing capability comparing to all the other cards at that time. It’s just focused on speed which is good for players . FPS is almost everything around 1999 since no fancy programable pipeline has been developed yet.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@chrishoo2742 Even with the TNT2 the FPS in 1024x768 16-bit is not that high in many games. If you run 32-bit you wil get 25-35 average FPS compared to 40-50 fps in 16-bit, which is way too low. The TNT1 is much slower. The first cards trully capable of 32-bit where the GF256 DDR, GF 2 GTS and Voodoo 5 5500. The previous generations where just too slow for 32-bit gaming.

[@spavatch]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 - imagine people bought that 32-bit marketing babble and chose anything nVidia instead of 3dfx...

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@spavatchyes because the TNT2 had more advanced features on paper, like 32-bit support, 2048x2048 textures, 32 mb, AGP4x and most gamers and reviewers got fooled and blindsided by that. In practice though the Voodoo 3 was superior to the TNT2.

[@cesaru3619]

16bit and blurry textures LOL

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@cesaru3619 and higher quality textures in many other games, the best 16-bit image quality on the market, more intense vibrant colors.

[@cesaru3619]

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 RIP fake cards boomer fanboys became amd fanboys lol

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Sorry but I dont understand what you want to say.