3Dfx Voodoo or CPU Upgrade?

[@infinity2z3r07]

I enjoy your videos. As with many retro channels you deserve more subscribers!

[@bitsundbolts]

Working on it!

[@JohnDoe-ip3oq]

I already know from personal experience a voodoo 2 massively boosts fps on slow CPUs. Possibly more on Intel CPUs. I had a Pentium one mini PC that I brought to lan parties, with a voodoo2. This machine was capable of playing quake 3 at low settings smooth enough for me to beat faster machines. Also, while some games will block you loading them for missing instruction set with direct 3d, this does not happen in glide mode.

[@bitsundbolts]

I can confirm what you're saying. I finished benchmarks for quake 2. For now, only with the K6-2+. Later I'll probably also check it on a Pentium, Pentium MMX, and a regular K6-2. To see how bad AMD's FPU unit was, MMX vs 3DNow!... Oh my, so much to do!

[@JohnDoe-ip3oq]

@@bitsundbolts dunno if I already mentioned it, but the voodoo2 was designed and advertised to accelerate 3D rendering by offloading additional work from the CPU. This went away with the voodoo 3+/TNT2, until t&l on GeForce. The voodoo2 was faster than any other card on slow CPUs. If the voodoo3 did any of the same, it wasn't as efficient, being similarly CPU bottlenecked with the TNT2. I had both a TNT2 and voodoo 3, and the TNT2 was superior, even to the point of outlasting the GeForce 1-2 generation, which wasn't necessary and couldn't do high fps with it's advertised extra capabilities, making it mostly useless. Hell, you could skip GeForce 3, and only really needed better once the gf4/8500 started being necessary. I don't quite remember what driver I used for the Pentium 1 quake 3 lan box, so it could have been the 3dfxvgl.dll or Mesa gl. Likely glide mode if it worked back then for the speed, but newer game version updates would require Mesa, and the latest Mesa will allow you almost SLI resolution on a single card, and PCI bus texturing, meaning full high texture detail. There was even a doom 3 hacked driver to allow voodoo 2 users to play it. Not with bump mapping though, even though the voodoo 2 could do some variation like the donut demo. That said, there was a game blade of darkness I believe that had real time shadows like doom 3, that would run on a voodoo. That card could do about anything except 32 bit color and high resolution. Perfect for competitive FPS, but rather disappointing when you wanted the quality visual single player experience. Oh, and the monitor cable was a problem, only solved with the obsidian x-24, which I also have, that uses a shielded cable. That said, the x-24 has a bottleneck using a single slot vs real SLI, but only with high res texture games. As a side note about drivers, there was 64 bit updates, although people said its hardware level access could theoretically be a security risk, and I remember somebody working on modding the directx driver with software rendering stuff to get near dx8. Don't know if that went anywhere, but imo useless outside of proof of concept. Card doesn't have the oomph for dx8, not to mention CPU emulation is slow. Glide is the only useful feature, just slap in a real dx8-9 card for primary. There supposedly were compatibility issues on some systems doing this, but I never experienced them. SLI also works better depending on how new the system is, the nforce2 had extra bandwidth over cheaper chipsets. There was one 3rd party chipset on par, via? That or Intel, but I avoided Intel because of P4 and bad value. Cheap now, but absolutely worst choice then. Additionally, the only Pentium 3 worth messing with is the tualatin slapped in an adapter with OR840 dual channel rambus. Which is what my retro x-24 box is. MUWHAHAHAHAHA. /Evil laugh Oh, speaking of drivers, always use the latest open source ones that just provide glide. Best performance and compatibility with mismatched SLI, and glide only means no conflict with a dedicated AGP card that can do directx better. Use power strip which is 3rd party software to configure the card. There were other cool tools like a glide render movie player, but really you only need basic glide to play games. The extras are just fluff. Also, most games that support directx look better not on glide, the newer they are. Like dx7+ games. Only the old games with full glide support look good in glide. I think need for speed 3 had better effects in glide, but games like decent 3 look better in directx. Decent 2 was a joke that didn't do proper shading on the robots, while decent 1 had a really good glide mode. Quake 1 was never programmed properly for 3d rendering, but quake 2 and unreal were. Also, if you are running a retro 9x box, make sure to use a vortex 2 sound card for raytraced audio. That is peak 9x gaming. Decent 3 also has one specific bonus graphic that only enables on a Pentium 3. Afaik, nobody has fixed that.

[@bitsundbolts]

👀 So much information! As you can see, I am still stuck on Socket 7, but I will get into Slot 1 soon, just need to get the hardware to my location. I skipped the Pentium 3/4 models as I became a multi-year AMD owner: K7-700, XP-2400+ (Thoroughbred), XP-3200+ (Barton). Quake 2 definitely had a big impact being an OpenGL game. 3Dfx quickly released "Glide-compatible" (MiniGL) render DLLs and AMD released patches to support the 3DNow! instruction set. I learned a lot working on the Quake 2 video - which I can hopefully finalize within the next couple of days. I'll definitely mark your comment for future reference! Thank you!

[@JohnDoe-ip3oq]

@@bitsundbolts same, Athlon XP 1700, overclocked 333 fsb. Developed a chip in the CPU, wonky if paste in the chip. Upgraded to XP-M, overclocked pretty hard on nforce2. Next system was Athlon 64 X-2, upgraded to Opteron 170 also overclocked. Would recommend Windows ME over 9x, and using the February security update disc to properly update any old Windows, especially since it included all the updates, including DX, redistributables, IE, media players. MGDx site for special software, also Majorgeeks. There are UI updates that make 9x look like Windows 7, kernelEX to run XP era software. Protip: Dual slot Pentium 3 boards require a terminator for single CPU. 9x does not support dual CPU, second chip does nothing. I have a Pentium 4 dual socket rambus system and Pentium 3 dual rambus system. The P4 is far more modern, best for XP, supports sse2. Athlon XP and Pentium 3 do not have SSE2, makes new software impossible to run. Steam does not work, I don't think it installs anymore on XP either. All software must be the original old stuff. ATI had a cool all in wonder video card that does TV and media center. Had one hooked up to a game console, use the dx8 card for lower latency. Additional Pentium 3 tip: Tualatins are not directly compatible, requires modding or power leap socket adapter. Use a good heat sink. A guy on eBay sells pre modded Tualatins. They are all socket, requires slot adapter or socket motherboard. Sdram is not amazing for performance, why Athlon DDR was faster including FSB. The voodoo 5 did some cool things, but uses old AGP version, not compatible on new boards. Kinda cool, but nothing will beat a 8500 AIW for features and quality, think there is 128mb version. I know a bunch of cool old games too, both DOS and 9x. Myth2, die by the sword, ds9 the fallen, carmageddon, mageslayer, earthsiege2, kings quest 8, system shock 2 / Deus ex, blade of darkness, dark forces 2, OUTWARS (play this!), Soldier of fortune, starsiege, decent 1-3, homeworld, alien vs predator gold, nfs3, rogue spear, xwing vs tie fighter, pod racer, force commander, doom/blood, xevil, liero, raptor, total annihilation, red Baron 3d, thief, duke 2, rogue squadron, hocus pocus, realms of chaos, undying, catacombs 3d, commander keen, jazz jackrabbit, knights and merchants, stronghold, sacred, another world, dark stone, turok, elite force, tachyon, Alice madness, kiss circus, swiv3d, waterworld, cyber storm, Dr riptide, skyroads, lost vikings, deer hunter, nerf arena, house of the dead, etc

[@southernflatland]

I had a Pentium 1, 120MHz, with a used Voodoo 2 (which didn't come with the patch cable, but I made one myself...) Even with the 120MHz Pentium, the Voodoo 2 performed absolutely fantastic for Tomb Raider 1! I even had the Nude Raider hack, but that's a different story haha!

[@kenielsen]

Had one installed in 1996 and fun for years forward... A true beast of it's time! Who doesn't remember the excitement when the "3dFX" logo came up on screen?!;)

[@tezinho81]

This bad boy brings back memories. I had a 3dfx voodoo paired with a matrox mystique back in the day. Unreal and HL1 looked amazing at the time. Sweet memories.

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

I love you

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

A K6-2 with a Voodoo2 or Banshee and even Voodoo 1 was a very nice system for the games from 1997 to the end of 1999.

[@bitsundbolts]

Absolutely agree! And they are still nice today - for retro stuff!

[@negrusz]

yep. back then i had a k6-2 350 with s3trio+voodoo2. it was my first amd cpu and my last intel before (P166MMX) :D

[@TheVanillatech]

Both are needed, dude! I had a Pentium 200 vanilla back in 1997 and added a cheap MaxiGamer 3DFX card to it, and enjoyed Quake II and Myth and Carmageddon 3DFX etc. They played well enough, considering the awesome increase in resolution, colour depth and features over software based rendering. But it wasn't until I bagged a free Pentium 2 266Mhz machine at a LAN, and added the VooDoo to it, that I realized how important both were. Framerates almost doubled in some games, like Screamer 2. The Pentium 1 was strangling the VooDoo card. I noticed this a lot when I built a K6-III+ 550Mhz machine a few years back, and added VooDoo 2 in SLI. I had trouble getting the 2nd VooDoo to register in games, because I'd made the SLI cable myself out of a floppy cable. My first attempt failed completely, the second wasn't reliable either, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. So I settled on just using a single VooDoo 2 while I perfected the technique. After a few weeks, I'd made 10 perfectly working SLI cables, and adding the 2nd VooDoo for SLI didn't really make any difference to performance in games, other than allowing 1024x786 resolution. I was surprised that all that power of the flagship SS7 system still couldn't even max out a single VooDoo 2 in most situations. Those SLI V2's ended up in a Pentium 3 733Mhz rig, and I added a Geforce 2 Mx400 with a VooDoo 1 card to the K6-3+.

[@bitsundbolts]

I am also looking forward to check out Pentium II and Pentium III based systems. I am quite limited in hardware that I have around at the moment, but hopefully it will get better later this year. I am sure there are already results available that show what CPU is best for Voodoo 2 SLI. Socket 7 may just not cut it! I may have to build my own SLI cable when the time comes!

[@alejandromoran4590]

You need to test the K6III with games that support the 3d now extensions.

[@bitsundbolts]

Check my video where I test Quake II and the AMD 3DNow! Extension.

[@nalinux]

In 1997, I had a 233MMX overclocked at 290Mhz, with 98 Mo ram and Voodoo1. A beast for this time ! :) Then I had a quite deceptive K6-2 with a TNT, and later a dual CPU Celeron with a Voodoo 3. When the first GeForce 256 arrived, my Voodoo was suddenly old ... But there were nice Matrox cards also. And Kyro, Ati Rage Fury, Savage 4 , etc...

[@bitsundbolts]

Technology changed so quickly at that time. I feel what you're saying. The race to 1-GHz CPUs, GPU manufacturer shake-out, and so on...

[@primus711]

I seriously doubt you had 98MB* in 97 as thats not even a possible config and having anything close would have cost a ton

[@nalinux]

@@primus711 My bad, 96Mo, not 98. Because Unreal made my computer swap with 64 Mo, so the next step was 96, and no more problem.

[@su4ibu4i]

Thank you for this test! Maybe you can do same CPU clocs but puttig another v2 in (SLI)?

[@bitsundbolts]

At the moment I only have one Voodoo 2. But I am looking for a second one.

[@kyrieeleison1905]

very good video .. magazines back then never did these sorts of tests. . what would have been good was if you ran the test in software renderer only as well .. i often wondered whether buying a voodoo or just sticking with a normal cheap 3d card and buying a better cpu was the better way to go..

[@bitsundbolts]

I will be doing follow-up videos with Pentium/Pentium MMX/Pentium II etc. I will keep your suggestion in mind! I also want to check the difference between socket 7 and super socket 7 (running old MMX Pentium 1 at 100 MHz FSB will be fun)

[@carlc.4714]

Reminds me of the "good" old days... Overclocked my Pentium 1 166 mhz to 200 mhz, added up to 96 megabytes of Ram, added a totally overpowered Voodoo 3, and games still ran like sh*t - especially loading times were really annoying. 😂

[@bitsundbolts]

What people don't understand today is that you could not just jump on google and find a solution - or be confronted with the truth that your PC was just - let's say too slow

[@eugenb9017]

Interesting comparison, but you're missing a VERY important thing. Upgrading to Voodoo2 might not give you so much FPS improvement as upgrading to a faster CPU, but you're playing at 512x384 all the time. Upgrading to Voodoo2 would allow you to play at 800x600 with basically the same FPS. And the jump from 512x384 to 800x600 is huge in term of image quality. I had to make almost the same choice back in the days, and I chose to add a Voodoo2 to my system (and keep my Rage Pro AIW). So strictly for gaming, V1 to V2 would be the best option.

[@bitsundbolts]

Valid point, I agree that image quality at 512x384 is not good. But wouldn't the frame rate be similar (or probably a bit worse) at 800x600? I depends how much reserves of the Voodoo 2 are untouched at 512x384.

[@eugenb9017]

@@bitsundbolts Well, you can test that yourself :) I bet that the impact on performance will be almost zero on 200 MHz CPU and Voodoo2. Going from 512x384 to 800x600 will result in the same frame rate.

[@bitsundbolts]

"Well, you can test that yourself" - I definitely will! Thanks for the hints - always happy to get new ideas.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Excellent benchmarks. Its better upgrade to 400 mhz with the V1 but even with the K6-2 at 200 mhz with the V2 it was faster by 19% in minimum FPS and by 12% in the average FPS compared to the Voodoo1. And at 400 mhz the difference between the V1 and V2 was already very big. Over 28 fps with the V1 and K6-2 400 ist still very impresive for a card released in 1996.

[@bitsundbolts]

I was surprised how well the Voodoo 1 performed considering that Unreal was a game from 1998! I have a Super Socket 7 coming my way and this Voodoo 1 will see a lot more action!

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

@@bitsundbolts great cant wait to see your next videos with 3dfx cards :). Unreal was the Crysis of the 90s and it had the highest system requirements of any game from 1998, so its really surprising that the Voodoo 1 from 96 can achieve 28 fps on a K6-2 400 :)

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

I love you too. 3dfx Forever

[@k9cj5]

awesome video. What are the commands to run the intro benchmark? It's been so long I forgot lol.

[@bitsundbolts]

Thanks! To run the benchmark, you just open the console and type in: timedemo 1

[@k9cj5]

@@bitsundbolts so weird every time I type timedemo 1 it just says unrecognized command. I wonder if I need to patch it to the latest version.

[@bitsundbolts]

Yes, you do. I have mine patched to 225f. They added the timedemo some time later after the game was already launched.

[@looks-suspicious]

What about OpenGL titles like Quake II - would the results be similar?

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Quake 2 is a lot less CPU dependent than Unreal.

[@supermario8416]

I would like to see a similar video with Quake 2 :)

[@bitsundbolts]

I guess you just picked the topic of an upcoming video! Thanks!

[@supermario8416]

@@bitsundbolts hehe 3dfx cards and Q2 benchmarks will be another great video :)

[@JohnDoe-ip3oq]

Quake 2 was optimized way more for glide on release, you'd get more fps than any other hardware on a voodoo2. This trend lasted as long as voodoo 2 was supported, as voodoo2 SLI could beat GeForce in unreal tournament. Glide was just more efficient. That said, the efficiency boost to slow CPUs disappeared on the voodoo3, and it wasn't that much better than a TNT2, and the TNT2 could be argued to be superior for graphics quality.

[@supermario8416]

Interesting video :)

[@bitsundbolts]

Glad you think so!

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

3dfx scales nicely with cpu upgrade, I use mirohiscore voodoo2 SLi 24mb with 1Ghz Athlon on Epox8KHA+ and matrox dualhead 16mb agp. It runs Clive Barker's Undying with Aureal Vortex 2 very impressive

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Intergestinf topic! CPU upgrade also is much cheaper. K2-6 you can get for a 1/10 of the price for a Voodoo 2.

[@malcom383]

Bonjour Je recherche le pilote pour cette carte. Ou puis je le trouver ? Merci 😊

[@-x21-]

It would be very interesting to see the software renderer too.

[@bitsundbolts]

Oh, those videos are quite old. But good point! I will keep it in mind for a future project.

[@shaun4bigblocks993]

Where are you getting your patches? I am having a hard time finding them, everytime I search the market is so flooded with emulation based patches. Some that I find look like they might work but the hosts often lack details on if for origional hardware or emulation. I have bricked out Windows installs a few times because of this. Drives me crazy...

[@bitsundbolts]

I got mine from oldunreal dot com. The site is a bit difficult to navigate, but they do have the old official patches and community patches. For 3dfx, I stick to version 225

[@DxDeksor]

128mb with an old motherboard like this is a bad idea. The 2+' L2 cache mitigates the problem, but the motherboard cache on most intel chipsets for socket 7 cannot cache more than 64mb so the performance is mitigated by uncacher memory

[@bitsundbolts]

That is true, but you can install a TAG ram and extend the cacheable memory. It's probably mentioned in the manual of the motherboard. But yes, by default, and maybe because of cost cutting, without the TAG ram, the performance degrades if the memory size is too large

[@DxDeksor]

@@bitsundbolts this is true but here's the catch : the tag ram is often limited on these intel chipsets so you're still stuck. However now that I think about it, your board seems to have a i430hx chipset which is one of the few exceptions so nevermind I guess 😅

[@alejandromoran4590]

Cool video. Still... I don't want to be negative, but the 200mhz difference on the same CPU is not an "upgrade", you should have compared it with a Pentium MMX (which in some cases is actually a downgrade), or maybe compare the k6 with a PII. A real CPU upgrade.

[@bitsundbolts]

I will definitely use all those CPUs and compare the results to the ones I already collected.

[@ghost085]

And yet, I insisted on playing Unreal at 640x400 with a K6-2 450Mhz and a Trident 3D Blast. Without using mouse look. I was built different back then LOL.

[@jjohnson71958]

cpu upgrade all the way bro

[@waytostoned]

I go with the card... and overclock the 200mhz cpu to 250mhz @ 100fsb.

[@bitsundbolts]

I do not have a Super Socket 7 Board yet. But it is on the list to have 100 fsb and AGP

[@TheVanillatech]

@@bitsundbolts I have an ASUS P5 SS7 board, probably the best SS7 board ever made, with AGP and beyond 100 fsb. Absolute beast board for it's era. If you're interested, I could cut you a deal, rather than putting it out on eBay as I was planning to. It has a K6-III+ installed too, which I could include or remove, as required.

[@Lake333GLD]

Why do you have a fog glitches above the water? I do not remember it on Voodoo cards. Voodoo 2 needs a good CPU. K6 2+ 200 MHz is too weak. I did have a Pentium PRO 200 MHz - it was awesome even with Voodoo 1.

[@piterstein9625]

в целом вполне очевидный результат, 3dfx карты процессорозависимы (поэтому К6 не очень хороший выбор для этих карт), в то же время архитектура вуд такова, что первая вуда едва ли сможет физически отрисовать более 50fps в данном тесте, Pentium II 400 для этои карты уже достаточно чтоб обеспечить ее таким фпс и дальнейшее увеличение частоты процессора уже практически не будет давать прироста в производительности, в то время как вторая уже сможет более 80fps и ей уже нужен хотя бы Pentium III 600....... хотя...пожалуй все это тоже очевидно...))))

[@petertorda5487]

SIMM memory modules, fuj fuj. 😀 I rather to suggest to used board with DIMM memory, they are much faster. Anyway I used to have same configuration, Voodoo 1 & K6 233Mhz, then I upgraded to P2 Celeron 266@448Mhz and that was mega huge difference.

[@bitsundbolts]

Yes, I agree. I am going to use a super socket 7 board with SDRAM PC-100 memory and 100 MHz FSB. Will be interesting to compare old Socket 7 with Super Socket 7.

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

This could be useful 30 years ago 🙂

[@derbiber842]

This test is kind of misleading, because of one fact you did not mention first. Unreal makes use of multitexturing what the Voodoo 1 is not capable of. So games like Unreal or Quake 2 will get a boost on the Voodoo 2 just because of that feature. In any other games from that time which make no use of multitexturing the difference would be by far smaller or will even go down to zero. So rather compare the Voodoo 1 to a Voodoo Banshee or add more games that make no use of multitexturing as Unreal and Quake 2 are best case scenarios.

[@bitsundbolts]

I have only Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 at the moment. There are probably many ways to go about to test retro hardware - and by no means am I an expert. I just like to relive a few moments in the past and decide to share them here on KZbin. I am sure there will be many more flaws and misleading comments, but I appreciate each and every comment as it gives me new input! If my channel grows, I am sure that I will do more game tests and build more data

[@MrSpacelyy]

screen tearing is not great

[@rd946]

Too. Much. RAM. I don't know why all of KZbin retro builders want to choke Win9x with gobs of RAM. 32MB MAX. Anything more was unheard of, unnecessary, and either doesn't help, and might even hurt performance.

[@bitsundbolts]

I am changing memory configuration here and there. I remember getting a 32 MB upgrade on my AMD 486 DX4-100. I do not remember when exactly, but I think Pentium was already released and reached 100 or 133 MHz at that time. With the K6-2, I believe that 64 and 128 MB was not that uncommon. It also depends what you want to achieve - I don't want to starve Unreal because of too little memory.

[@cosmefulanito5933]

Repeate after me: Before "VooDoo 2" there is "VooDoo". Not "VooDoo 1". Before "Pentium II" there is "Pentium". Not "Pentium 1". Before "K6-2" there is "K6". Not "K6-1". Repeat 1000 times. Now do a good video.