The 3Dfx Voodoo 2 - Taking 3D to the Next Level!

The original 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics accelerator completely transformed the world of 3D gaming, but by late 1997 the competition was beginning to heat up. How do you improve on such a legendary card? You double down on EVERYTHING. The Voodoo 2 improves upon the original in pretty much every way and even allows two cards to work together in SLI for truly next-level 3D performance.
The 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics Accelerator:
• The Legendary 3dfx Voo...
Matrox G100 Repair:
• VBIOS Bit Rot? Saving ...
Phil’s SLI CPU Scaling Project PDF:
www.philscomputerlab.com/vood...
Serdashop SLI Bridges:
www.serdashop.com/3DVideoBridge
A huge thank you and shout out goes to Alexander in Germany for his very generous channel donation. Thank you again!
**
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**
00:00 Introduction
01:47 A Look at the Voodoo 2
05:38 A Big Thank You!
06:38 Scan Line Interleaving
08:38 SLI Challenges and Scaling
09:58 Test Setup and Drivers
11:57 Benchmarks
14:10 Some Classic Games
19:41 Conclusion
The closing audio track is an original called “Prelude to Space” by Bertrand Guégan. You can find more of his work here: / bertrandguegan

[@stormykeep9213]

I remember playing games like Quake, Quake 2 and Jedi Knight in software rendering. Then I got my voodoo card, and omg, it was like going from VHS to 8k! Such great days...

[@jamesborum4092]

I still, to this day, remember the moment I saw opengl Quake 2 on my brand new Voodoo 3. What a time to be alive.

[@VikingRul3s]

Same, got my first "gaming PC" shortly after the release of Voodoo 2, it was amazing!

[@ruyan247]

I still have the packaging of my voodoo and voodoo2 cards. The cards got lost somewhere along the way sadly. It was a glorious time!

[@mattgohio]

the best was a quake 2 mod called : "action" had like a cops vs robbers theme and you could bandage your wounds or you would die. best gunplay

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

Actually being able to play Unreal with a playable framerate, let alone a good one, was the ultimate shit for me at the time!

[@JayMaverick]

Nowadays the only thing that doubles between GPU generations is the price.

[@gremfive4246]

Actually nowadays the price of a 3Dfx Voodoo 2 doubles about every year.

[@albertrynkowski3599]

Yep. I remember the times whey you could get v3 for 7€. Last year i paid 70€ for Banshee and I still consider it being cheap for the time.

[@TheVanillatech]

@@gremfive4246 I still have 3 boxes of unopened "Maxi Gamer Power Of 2" VooDoo 2 SLI kits. I bought 4 from an eBayer a decade ago, for £35 a set NIB. Only ever opened one of them. Perhaps it's time to sell the others. My dream of a roomful of retro PC's never transpired, and now I'm old and fat.

[@varisware]

And the performance.

[@LeeMc007]

@@TheVanillatech Lmao, those last few words cracked me up, I feel ya 😂😂

[@WadeMade]

God, I remember this card. After Nvidia released its first card. People were slamming 3dfx. I actually reached out and sent them a nice letter congratulating them on what they had done and to keep it up and ignore all the negative press. They responded to me with a sweet box of swag and told me they appreciated the letter, and they said they spread the letter around the office to boost morale. I really thought they would have retaken the 3d crown. It was never to happen though. It's probably the only reason I didn't buy Nvidia's stock. You see for me the 3dfx gaming card was the first of its kind. It was an add-on card that made games look night and day better. When they launched the second one I jumped on that right away. To me, they were the pioneers of the industry. It was sad to see them dissolve into obscurity.

[@solandri69]

My workplace put us on a bunch of different 3D cards to try to maximize compatibility in the games we were making. I was the "lucky" one who got Nvidia's first card (preceding the Riva 128). It was a piece of crap. Poor drivers. Fell back to software emulation on a lot of 3D functions. And I wasted 2 weeks of my life trying to find a bug in my code that kept crashing my computer, which I eventually tracked down to a hardware bug in the Nvidia card (as in try to make this 3D call with these values and the computer reboots, but it works fine with any other GPU). That was my reason for never buying Nvidia stock. I was flabbergasted that the company which made that POS card I suffered with somehow managed to dethrone 3dfx.

[@craigdaurizio686]

Very true, when things were developing in the 90s, a 3dfx card was THE card, it meant that you could not just play a game in 3d, you could play amazing games like turok 2 and quake that looked like it came from a super computer. 3dfx is legendary

[@Hadrhune0]

I'm an ole 3dfx customer, or better to say... I was a kid back then and my brothers (who got me in computer science) bought 3dfx cards (we have couple of voodoo 2 and a single 5 5500) because these cards were pioneering and brute power oriented and there was a lot of expectation with voodoo 6000 series. I remember when Nvidia bought 3dfx we were all upset, and since then the only brand new geforce card I bought was soon sent back after couple of days (it was 9800gx2 bought to play crysis, but performances were not great). In time I had lot of amd cards and a 1060 and now 2070s but these were second hand cards because... I don't want nvidia to have my money for the 3dfx acquisition! If it wasn't for Blender performing a lot better with nvidia, I would be stuck with AMD!

[@salvatronprime9882]

Anytime you see a company go from #1 to bankrupt in such a short time, it's because they made terrible decisions. I was a 3dfx fan, but they squandered their opportunity with bad decisions and they got what they deserved.

[@xeridea]

@@Hadrhune0 My first 3D card was the 5500, with a P3. Played amazingly. I was very sad when they went bankrupt. I stick with AMD now mostly because Nvidia treats gamers like crap, makes everything proprietary, and overcharges. AMD had some driver issues in the past, but I never wanted to switch.

[@TheSorrowedMan]

The nostalgia hits hard on this one for me.

[@Equatis]

For real. I remember my dad purchasing for me what I believe was a Voodoo 5 5500 at CompUSA and remember thinking the graphics uplift from whatever Dell included graphics card I had at the time was life changing. I replayed Half-Life and spent hundreds of hours in the original (good version) Team Fortress.

[@cleverja]

I was king of quake ii with that 56k modem

[@bootysmaka22]

When Unreal came out I was blown away by how it looked with my ATI Rage Pro, and my new PII system was running the flyby at much higher framerates than all my friends' machines...then one day I stopped by a buddy's apartment to check out his LAN setup, and after bragging about my Unreal framerate he was impressed stating his wasn't that high...but he fired it up on his machine and my jaw dropped as I saw Unreal running on his Voodoo 2 with the Glide API. The next day I busted out the credit card for a Monster 12mb Voodoo 2, and a couple weeks later I picked up another to be the only one around with an SLI setup (my credit card bill didn't appreciate it lol). Right around that time we started having a weekly LAN parties, that turned into a permanent setup of tables and people just leaving their PC's there for weeks at a time, coming over after work and school...man, those were the days! Tribes and Unreal tournament were the main games we'd play, with some Half Life, ReVolt and others thrown in occasionally. He had a (rare at the time) broadband connection fast enough to handle us all (6- 8 people) to game online together as a clan...can I time travel back there yet?

[@barryguff6893]

I'll never forget playing Quake and Quake 2 with my 3dFX card for the first time. The graphics, speed, and smoothness was amazing!

[@JH24821]

Absolutely. I'll never forget those times. They were the most exciting times to be a gamer. A voodoo card with games like Quake, Quake 2, Unreal 1 (Never been as immersed in a game as this one), Hexen 2, Half-life. Amazing times!

[@vswitchzero]

Thanks for watching! Wanted to share a couple of corrections: First, it looks like I was wrong about not being able to use an 8MB and 12MB card in SLI. I don't think it was possible initially, but 3dfx improved mismatched card compatibility through driver updates at some point. Numerous people have reported success using 8 and 12MB cards together, which is awesome. If I can ever get my 8MB card repaired, I'd love to give this a try. Second, it is indeed possible to do 1024x768 using a single card when certain 3D features (like Z-buffering) are disabled. Most games don't allow this, but wanted to mention this for historical correctness 👍 And I apologize for my mispronunciation of "Nvidia" and "RIVA" - looks like I've been saying it incorrectly for years! 😂

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Yeah these were the days - performance increases of 2-3 times from one to the next generation, and awesome games as well. Thanks for the memories and for Alexander to support you

[@TheDiner50]

The days where when young kids or whatever 10+ year olds have access to cheap old machines that can run really old games from the 2000s. Not having to have money to burn just to have fun. (or parents to pay for some stupid expensive thing just to play Fortnight. Or buy a expensive phone to play lootbox games...) Just to late to experience the old days. And to early to have a computers able to run basically anything but the latest trash coming out of the 'gaming' industry. I rather have missed out on flip phones and the birth of SMS. Just to have access to just a bit more grunt from my school laptop. Like I was 3 years wrong what a pity. But I rather that then the option to grow up in today hell school. And what the industry have done to computers and fun games. Still it was a real blast playing Mafia 1 on a Lenovo laptop. And NFS Most Wanted 2005 on a Dell laptop out of a literal office dumpster for being 'old'. Having dedicated GPU's and everything just not the latest and greatest. Still able to play everything from Duke nukem3d to NFS MW 2005! Like even Sims 2 was playable... Somewhat. For free. And it makes no sense looking back to before and foward to today's world how screwed that was. Having so much raw laptop compared to just a few years before. Gta 3,Vc... Really the days of 2-3times performance jumps where still not cheap or any good to be honest. It was the time between around OragenBox and CS:GO that where the good days. :) Playing good games on the go! Or at all for some people. At school on a machine for school playing some of the best game of all time?? That was the good times. Before today's crap. But not so far back that you had nothing since computers where expensive. At best a phone with snake. Or a console/XP PC at home. There was no laptops and then here was cheap and powerful ones. That was the times! Such a shift for ho had access and ho did not just by tech becoming old. Somehow we even had some kind of beast of a class room computer running SA no kidding just a year or so after the game launched. And those computers and there motherboard caps where going bad on but still was able to play recent titles. They where not new and still up to play like recent games well?? Like it was 2005 or 2006 playing SA on school computers. Like I still can not figure out why the school needed that kind of horsepower and the caps where going bad? Like new they must have cost a pretty penny to do that well in 2006 ish. Like imagine today a normal class room having a computer capable of playing the latest releases? That is the good stuff. Not a dam Chromebook to hell. Only raw but cheap enough hardware playing well made games.

[@vswitchzero]

So true! Thanks very much :)

[@spavatch]

My favourite period hardware- and gaming-wise. However, I guess that’s a perspective thing, when I take off my inch thick nostalgia glasses I see nothing awesome about having to replace hardware every two years just to keep up. Those were indeed ‘the days’ - that’s how long the fun lasted.

[@vswitchzero]

@@spavatch Very good point, and very true!

[@jaytee444444]

We're pretty much back to that now. Look at the increase of the 4090 compared to the 3090, on average approximately 64% more powerful across the board... and come to mention it, the 4080 in comparison to the 3080.

[@PixelPipes]

Hugely generous of Alexander to give you his original Voodoo2. Very cool, man!

[@torpedo35]

Went from the 3dfx to Voodoo3 as well. Tech was simply moving so much faster back then, and prices while not cheap were still inexpensive compared to the rest of the system.

[@turrican4d599]

The things was, I sold the V2SLI packgage and got the Voodoo 3 2000 for the same money, overclocked to 3500 levels

[@shawnc3030]

Damn the nostalgia hit hard with this video. This was the very first 3d accelerator I ever bought! Thank you for the trip back. I loved my 3dfx Voodoo 2 SLI setup! So long ago yet seems just the other day.

[@TalonGaming_YT]

I had a few of these cards, there's some nostalgia! I think my last one was a Voodoo 3 2000! Hard to believe it's been what, 20-22 years now? Crazy!

[@AeleksDesigns]

So glad to see this card back in action again. Thank you!

[@vswitchzero]

Thank you so much, Alexander! I really appreciate it! I'm sure it'll show up in some future videos down the line as well :)

[@dasfragezeichen2109]

Danke Aeleks zum Glück hast du es gut eingepackt wir kennen ja unsere post :D

[@LifesLaboratory]

Good memories! I quite literally fried a VooDoo 2 playing NFS2. I was overclocking it a silly amount. The textures in the game disappeared and everything became a very colourful wireframe. For two glorious minutes, NFS became a psychedelic game of Tron. This was followed by a puff of smoke from the tower, the smell of burnt plastic, and a blank screen.

[@HMan2828]

See, the mistake you did is that you let the magic smoke out. It has to stay in!

[@LifesLaboratory]

@@HMan2828 :)

[@pawelvfx]

Graphics and gaming atmosphere in these games was mind blowing at the time. I remember the aww that I had when I first installed Vodooo and player Quake 2 when all you could see before was ugly pixels and stuttering. Halflife also brings so many good memories. Thanks for recording this, great childhood times :)

[@BSzili]

I used to have a sizeable 3dfx collection in the early 2000s, which I'll always regret selling. My favorite cards were two Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo 2s. Like many I made an SLI cable from a floppy cable to experience Unreal in 1024x768 Glide.

[@Crashed131963]

Early 2000 ? the ATI 9700 and 9800 were out by then. They were shocking jump over best card's of the late 90s.

[@pyromethious]

I held onto my Voodoo 3 until about 5-10 years ago as I was still using it in builds over time.

[@buggerlugz6753]

I remember buying my Creative Monster voodoo2 from Game in Nottingham back in 1998. It was a huge upgrade from my AGP ATI rage pro and I was astounded by the improvement in 3D using the GLIDE API, instead of Direct3D. Still over 25 years later I have yet to be as impressed as the first time I loaded up "Unreal" and saw the fly-by.....nothing at all has come close to my jaw hitting the floor since. If only today's graphics cards were as reasonably priced as back then eh?!

[@helloweener2007]

"If only today's graphics cards were as reasonably priced as back then eh?!" 520 DM for the 8 MB version was not reasonable priced, the 12 MB version was over 600 DM when the card was sold in Germany. With 520 DM you could buy 440l of fuel for your car in 1998 For the same amount of fuel you have to pay 856 EUR today.

[@salvatronprime9882]

@@helloweener2007 yea, a dual Voodoo setup was NOT cheap. And you still needed an extra VGA output for 2D windows processing. People are huffing the nostalgia glue.

[@ps4games164]

@@salvatronprime9882 As much as i remember Vodoo 2 was like 100-150$ back then. I guess the inflation in 1998 was -60% counted backwards from just before Covid. So roughly 150+60%=240$ of 2020 value. Around 10% of standard salary in U.S for a video card that would last no more than 3 years. I remember how the much more powerful Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra 32 MB combined with 733 mhz CPU was sweating on Quake 3 Arena on 1024x768 everything max. 30fps max. And Quake 3 is from 99. Voodoo 2 is from 98. Now middle class GPUs lasting 5 years. Maybe more and the customers in any case enjoying great visuals. Lets say the life span of the present day GPUs is double therefore twice as expensive. Still 480$ for top GPU while the price was triple in 2020. Yeah. The GPUs today are terribly overpriced.

[@salvatronprime9882]

@@ps4games164 Voodoo 2 debuted $299 per card, that's gonna be $600 plus another VGA 2D card to output the graphics if you wanted the top-end performance of the day. You also needed a specialized dual AGP mainboard which is an extra $100 compared to normal boards. Quantum3D was a partner company for 3dfx and they developed a single-board SLI configuration for Voodoo2, and that was $1600. Quadro, Oxygen, and FireGL cards for workstations were starting around $1500. Nowadays, workstation and gamer GPU's have been consolidated. Essentially today we are getting workstation quality GPU's. If you look at the upcoming AMD XTX for $1000 it's an exceptional value. If not for Covid and the economic problems of today it very well could have been $800. That would be lower cost than Voodoo2 in today's dollars.

[@salvatronprime9882]

@@ps4games164 another thing to consider is the much wider array of available performance today with older GPU's still being viable on the market. In 1998 the technology was raw and advancing rapidly, which meant that a top-end card would be choking on average games just 2 years later as API's and games were adding tons of new features and complexity. Today you can get a 5-year old card and still have acceptable performance on new games. The thing that makes today's cards seem unreasonably expensive is that you are basically forced to buy a workstation GPU and there is no low-end options. But that relates back to what I said previously - if you want a low-end budget GPU you just get an older top-end GPU from previous generations. You can find an acceptable GPU that still performs well on today's games for $300. The Nintendo Switch mobile GPU is nearly 8 years old and they are still making new games that look good. When you look at the full spectrum DX12 and Vulkan compatible cards available right now, the value spectrum is wide and the prices are good. The 1998 market is no comparison at all. Not even close.

[@stealthsock]

Back in late 2000, I was running Alien vs Predator on my Voodoo 2 at a friends house where we set up a 3 pc LAN. For some reason, the Voodoo 2 couldn't render the cloaked predator effect so they were completely visible on my screen. The other two pc's each had GeForce 1 video cards, which were capable of showing cloaks. As a workaround, I had to play predator while the other two picked anything but predator.

[@buttonman1831]

The Voodoo 2 changed everything. I went from a 2 meg accelerator to adding a 3d accelerator Voodoo 2 and it was like advancing 2 generations. The difference was so huge, it was unbelievable.

[@sibzilla]

Diamond stealth to Voodoo2? I remember it cost £120! I got two and admitted it to hardly anyone. That would be like spending £300 of todays money. Could you imagine spending twice that? Crikey. Thank heavens for mass production and corporate benevolence things are so much better now.

[@nickwallette6201]

I went from a Mystique (2MB and very simple 3D support - barely better than software) to a Voodoo 3 3500. The first thing I ran was XLR8R - a MadOnion 3D benchmark tool, before it became 3DMark. It was actually hard to believe what I was seeing. I had been hearing and seeing things about 3D acceleration, but it all seemed too good to be true. Running that demo blew my mind. I was giddy.

[@teme007]

Ahh, so much memories. My first 3D accelerator was Voodoo1, then Voodoo2 and later Voodoo3 3000 AGP...Oh my

[@spooksy1982]

Will remember this era of gaming forever. So many happy memories of gaming from this time. Still remember the first time I fired up GL Quake. Wow.

[@macguy9]

I remember this card. I owned one and was literally blown away by the performance boost it provided. It’s sad what happened to 3DFX.

[@shootemupgaming5418]

I had them video cards and that sound card dam I'm old. And still gaming at 50 years old.

[@wischmopps293]

I remember I was on vacation as a child in France and a guy in the supermarket had it installed on his pc. While he helped my father with the laptop he had from his work, I clicked on it. Sound was on full and he got scared and closed the game quickly. But what I saaaaw... These incredible graphics. How the shots and exploding things illuminated the walls... I also remember when I saw command and conquer 1 first time... The tiberium collectors. In my memory it still looks awesome

[@BigMyo]

I remember getting this card for my birthday when I was around 13 in 1998. Smashing quake and the worms series man. Take me back.

[@uhohDavinci]

I still have my old Voodoo2, haven't had a computer that can run it in decades.. but it's such a classic piece of hardware. Gaming on that back in the late 1990's was a revelation when you could finally upgrade from softwear rendering. I remember a guy rocking up to a lan party with a brand new AMD k7 and his voodoo 2 setup, pushing 100fps in Unreal Tournament.. Minds were blown.

[@pettybird]

An 8mb version was my first 3D card. It was like what I imagined seeing color television for the first time in the 60’s. Absolute game changer.

[@EddieOtool]

The first ever computer I bought myself and ever owned was very, very similar to the one you're showcasing here: PII-300 MHz, 96 MB RAM, Matrox MGA-G200, and one 3DFX Voodoo 2 card. I remember that card would not like to work half the time and ended up being a deception, especially for the steep price tag I had to pay for it. Don't remember what brand it was, nor whether it was the 8 or 12 MB variant. I kept that machine working for about 15 years, of which 7 as my main, upgrading it little by little to keep it working (more ram, PCI expansion slot for IDE 133 MB/s hard drives, more storage, modem for the Internet which was starting to happen, CD burner, even more storage, 450 MHz processor with 100 MHz front side bus...) That's the computer I screwed up so many times in failed improvement attempts, and spent so many hours fixing, it single handedly learned me computer science. And that was before Google provided with all the answers, so yeah... had to figure a lot by myself. XD But what I learned fixing and improving that computer still drives me now, 25 odd years later, to be a reference amongst friends, family and coworkers upon those topics.

[@josephgospa4031]

I still remember back in the day as a teenager buying my 1st 3DFX Voodoo 2 which you still need a 2nd 2D video card to handle that monster. Got another job, saved every penny and got a 2nd 3DFX Voodoo 2 card and had a SLI setup which was the envy of all my friends. Having a soundblaster Awe32 or Waveblaster was another mortgage for me back then and still got it. Thankfully my parents didn't ask for any monetary contribution from me since I was still in school. Less than a year, I was selling my 3DFX video cards to buy a new motherboard with a new intel Pentium III CPU 866 and a Voodoo 3000 AGP video card. I really enjoyed my life back then, no responsibilities and everything I earned came to my PC hobbies.

[@LeeMc007]

Great video, absolutely the gold era of PC Gaming, the V2 was pretty amazing, played the heck out of all those games on my voodoo's, loved that you included NFS:HS and how you teetered on the edge of that cliff in Unreal, we all did that, amazingly generous of Alexander to send you that Voodoo 2, kudos, always look forward to your uploads. 👍

[@vswitchzero]

Thanks very much! Yeah, always loved that part in Unreal when you get out of the ship and see the waterfalls and cliffs :)

[@ChadeGB]

Ah, I remember the first time I played a game in 1024x768 using Glide on my Voodoo 3. Blown away. Good times.

[@1leggeddog]

Had a Voodoo 3 2000 by the time of half-life and beyond until HL2 and it served me well

[@JohnOLooney]

As a 54 year old pc gaming enthusiast I smiled the whole way through this video. I’d had the spectrum and the Amiga but my first real pc was an Intel dx2-80 with a half my vga card, I then went on to a 2mb diamond stealth and that was eventually paired with a rendition verite 3D card and then a voodo 2, I remember we used to all go to a mates house every Sunday night with our rigs to LAN in his converted garage - it was awesome. I look over at my current rig (Strix 4090, 12900ks in an Asus extreme z690) and I wonder what we will have in another 10 or 15 years.

[@SuperSkandale]

This was all the rave back then. I remember it as if it was yesterday. Everyone wanted one of these.

[@m4rsianer]

Danke für die Spende Alex. Deine Karte hat schöne Erinnerungen bei mir hervorgebracht.

[@Guitarhero1000]

I saved every cent I could muster back in the 1990s to get the Original Voodoo card with $MB of memory. It transformed my Quake 1 experience!! It cost me $300 USD back then. A lot of money for a teenager. I was lucky enough to have a computer that could run it. Best memories ever.

[@shaunhall960]

I won a drawing for one of these cards playing at a premier game release of Command and Conquer. I was blown away by the card and the event. Thank you Westwood Studios!

[@anndimo3]

what a great time i had with the voodoo 2 card! My 2nd PC was a P1 166 including a matrox mystique. Damn, I wanted to play NFS3 so much, but that Matrox could only go by software render. In early 1999 I found a cheap Voodoo 2 (Miro HiScore 3D 2,performance and prices changed so fast) for 100 Deutsche Mark and built it into my PC. What a game changer! It opened so much more possibilities! And the best thing? It had analog Video out so I could attach it to a large TV! Take this, PlayStation 2! PCs came and go, but the Voodoo2 still has a special place in my nerdy heart. And guess what is built into a retro-PC in my living room: that very Voodoo2 card, along with a sister for SLI (of course it HAD to be a 2nd Miro due to the TV out PCB layout, a generic one would not work) and a P2 233 Voodoo2 and Slot- CPU, a dream combination

[@ralphrehcok]

Voodoo 2. 25 years old. Used to have 2 of them. This makes me feel old.

[@ScottGrammer]

Many years ago, when I still had a little hair, I had a pair of VooDoo2's in SLI. 24 whole megabytes of VRam! What power!

[@LamboPhoto]

My brother and I used to go to the Computer Fair on Tottenham Court Road, London every weekend in the late 90's. I can still remember the weekend that he bought the Voodoo and I bought the Matrox Mystique. Needless to say, I regret not listening to him. Mind you, in my defence, I'd just blown my budget on a 5.25" 4GB bigfoot, and recall thinking "I'll never fill this!" 😂

[@Samophlan]

I still have both my Voodoo 2 1000 and Voodoo 5 5500. I knew I was going to have the most amazing experience when seeing that 3DFX logo at the start of a game.

[@aaw7410]

I remember being 14(ish) and buying and installing my own Voodoo 2, feeling like a mad scientist. Good times.

[@bustertn2014]

I loved this time in computers. I ran Diamond Monster cards and my brother ran the Black Magic cards. We ran this while running Quake II. Clan Wars. Played an helped run the Nostromo server that was actually in a bank in Missouri. Was awesome. I remember editting the .config file in QII, changing the pitch and yaw rates, FOV, you name it. Then there were all he skins you could use. Good times. I miss Clan {GDI} and those clan war days.. Woohoo!! Amazingly, I still have my cards and my brothers cards along with the SLI cables. I just can't throw them away either.

[@matthewwiddows6319]

i was around in this era, these cards were next level, going from 2d on your 1mb cirrus logic or s3 trio's to having one these was nothing short of amazing. the smooth frame rates, the smooth textures and lighting of when you fired the rocket down the hall. i had the 4mb voodoo 1, then went to a pci voodoo 3 2000 pci. was allways jealous of my friend who had dual voodoo 2 12mb. quake1 and 2, unreal, monster truck madness, carmageddon 1 and 2

[@caseyryback6932]

Did you ever play Forsaken deathmatch back then…..Allways smiling when I think back😊😊

[@matthewwiddows6319]

@@caseyryback6932 no, but remember taking my 200mmx and 14" crt round to my friends house to play quake 2 death matches. Used to have 4 of us on his small dining room table.

[@caseyryback6932]

@@matthewwiddows6319 😀😀😀Yep! And spending 1/4 of the precious time debugging the network or my Operating System😀😀

[@kevin34ct]

I still have my 2 Voodoo 2's with a Matrox Millenium 2D card. They are sitting in a Pentium 200MMX with Creative Sound Blaster AWE 32 Vesa card. Also I have 4 MB on the sound banks.

[@BeardyBaldyBob]

Ahh, the days when you knew your irq and io numbers off by heart lol

[@Kaido_928]

The awe32 is one big beast of a card. Still got it in its original box.

[@tbrownz950]

Awesome video. You did a great job setting the scene and telling the history of this card.

[@vswitchzero]

Thanks very much! Really appreciate it 🙂👍

[@TheDirtyBirchTrails]

We sold so many of these cards in my computer store back in the day !! Game changer !!

[@FragManSaul]

I remember the day I installed my voodoo and will never forget it. I’ve never had that experience to this day and I’ve just updated my 1080gtx to the 4090rtx and it’s still didn’t give me the chills I had. The only thing that has come close is jumping in to modern day VR

[@vswitchzero]

Agreed! I don't think I've ever been as blown away as when I saw GLQuake running on the original Voodoo for the first time.

[@jamminwithmatt5313]

I had a voodoo and I bought Soldier of Fortune to test it out and it's a memory that stays with me to this day :)

[@WadeMade]

Yep, I remember that game. Blowing limbs off like never before. I don't believe there has been a game since that has captured that experience. The Deagle was awesome!!

[@frederickhandani6419]

That game has the best desert eagle

[@Dr.W.Krueger]

Thank you, this video re-activated a few dormant neurons. ;) Playing games like Forsaken, Unreal and Half-Life on a dual 12MB Diamond Monster 3D II setup was certainly something back in '98.

[@unsigned1138]

This is awesome. I still have my Voodoo2 SLI setup from back in the day. Was a real game changer.

[@_shaolinkaz6270]

such nostalgia!!! I remember purchasing this card, being 19 years old at the time and realizing it was the biggest purchase I've ever made for my PC build. What a time to be alive, so much gaming fun back in the day. All my friends were console gamers at the time and could certainly see why PC gaming was & to this day, leaps ahead of consoles. Unreal & Unreal Tournament, Quake II, Half-Life...countless hours of fun!!

[@adreanmarantz2103]

Somewhere.. in the attic, I still have my Orchid Righteous 3D in the box. I'll never forget the first time I saw accelerated Mechwarrior 2, the Timberwolf was so curved and smooth. It was like dark sorcery at the time. Tomb Raider also looked amazing. Now I'm waiting for Portal and Witcher3 RTX for my 3070FTW. We have come far.

[@titan90000]

Wow, this takes me back. I had two of these in my PC back in the day.

[@matthewkendall5235]

I remember buying my first Voodoo 1 card, then the two and then putting them on all my PCs with 19" monitors and running a network for my kids to play in 1024 mode and it looked crazy good (but expensive at the time). I went right up to Voodoo3 but stopped there and switched back to NVidia when the Geforce 256 and then DDR came out - and stuck on the NVidia upgrade path until the R300 came out with the 9700 Pro and then 9800 Pro. It wasn't until the 6800 and finally the 8800s came out that graphics took a mega jump forward...I think I must be on my 20th GPU by now - but still primarily use my 1080Ti as it is plenty fast and powerful enough for all I need. I am old enough to remember when 2D accelerators where the big thing!

[@_thechosen]

Nostalgia hits. Remember the moment in Unreal Tournament exiting the crash landed ship to discover open world for the first time with high quality stereo sound playing a music track that had no equivalent. Running in open terrain, looking at birds flying in the sky and staring into realistic looking water with graphics blowing your socks off. Before that I had 2MB Cirrus Logic video card and 8MB of RAM on Pentium-166. The game ran slow but the game was so new at that time that slowness didn't kill my curiosity. I had it burned on CD-ROM (they were expensive novelty back then) with other stuff among which was Winamp. The guy who gave me disc spelled "Game of the year" next to Unreal Tournament which it definitely was.

[@Turktien]

WOOO! Turkey Day vids. I had two 12MB Voodoo2s when I was a kid. System was a PII 400 with 128 MB RAM, a Savage 4 32MB card, and two voodoo 2s. I loved them for glide games (and glide was the best API for Diablo 2 back then for smoothness and no stutter/frame drops).

[@dyslectische]

Here to . I had 2 from creative 12mb sli. What a time is that . Later the voodoo voodoo banshee. Later voodoo 3 on the motherboard (packedbell) And the last is the voodoo 3000. After that i stop with it . The new cards from other are faster and more color . And that matrox g400 . Later nvidia GeForce 3 200ti @500ti. And after that ati radeon serie .

[@dannywholuv]

I had the creative blasters voodoo 2. I loved it. Pc gaming was so exciting back then, first person shooters were getting better and better

[@kenny3217]

The Voodoo2 was the first 3d card I ever owned, slapped it in my Pentium 2 233Mhz w/ 48 MB RAM. If I remember correctly at the time I was playing Quake and Xwing vs Tie Fighter and it blew my mind with how good it looked.

[@adcraziness1501]

I had two of these! Thanks for the quick trip to the late 90's! Seeing Unreal on SLI Voodoo2 was a core memory of mine hahaha

[@Netsuko]

I remember when my Quake2 clan gifted me a second voodoo for SLI. I’ll never forget how it felt to play Q2 and Unreal like that. Truly amazing.

[@IgorTFerreira]

I Had a Pure 3d VD2 good times! :)

[@guilt-toyracing3588]

I had one in 1999! Enjoyed this video, very good memories, thanks man! Voodoo2 dual cards! Was awesome back then!

[@youtubevanced4900]

I had a Canopus 6mb Voodoo 1. Later upgraded to a 12mb Voodoo 2. Then a 16mb Riva TNT. Really was the greatest age of PC gaming. Never has a bigger and more important change happened since those days.

[@tobalaz]

Unreal Tournament, Half Life and Quake made me completely obsessed with PC gaming back in the day. Man seeing this makes me wish I could have got a 3dfx card back then.

[@helloweener2007]

Bought my first PC in 1997(had an Amiga before), paid over 2,000 DM for it with the monitor. It already had a "3D card", a Matrox Mystique 220. The games needed special patches to make use of it. In 1998 I paid 520 DM for the Voodoo 2 on top, only the 8 MB card. But it was really a performance upgrade. Many games were playable with over 30 FPS which was considered as smooth these days. "Ultimate Race" was a nice game that came in a bundle with some cards. And my friends and I had all bought the same bundle and when we bought the PC's in 1997 and 1998 we all had network cards installed. It was a hassle with the BNC but we had great times with different racing games and 3D shooters. Still have the card and one that a friend of me gave me later.

[@michaelkennethbamba2069]

Thanks for making this video! Really appreciate the nostalgia here. My favorite was the Voodoo 3 with 16mb memory if I remember it correctly. Had fun with a lot of good games with that card.

[@ermoro100]

Amazing remembering! I had 2 of this in SLI behind a GeForce256... 90 fps on Quake 2 @ 1024x768... nostalgic!

[@HacksawJimThuggin]

I remember running 2 of these in my puter. I had 2 of these plus an ATI 2D card. I was working at CompUSA at the time. The employee discount came in clutch when buying all of this.

[@TheSektor13]

I owned Voodoo 1 and Voodoo3 and Unreal 1 is my favorite game. Those were nice times indeed.

[@trekrich28]

that first i loaded unreal back when it came out on my voodoo 2! It looked amazing, this vid is bringing back so many memories!

[@mrdali67]

Remember getting Everquest in 99, and the Voodoo 2 was just making it a blast to play at 800x600. I think I had a Creative model and my friend had another, and I just had to try sli out so I borrowed his and they worked 1st time setting it up. It was an absolute blast to be able to play at 1024x 768 on my 21" Phillips Monitor. I remember paying a redicolous ammount for that monitor + our friend rolled eyes when we baught a Diamond Viper 2d card with 2mb Ram .. lol dunno where we got the money for all that gear. tosay I can hardly afford to buy a new graphics card like every 4'th year.

[@Dingo500]

Nice! Still remember when I purchased my Orchid. My brother was giving me a lot of crap saying it was a waste of money. Installed it, showed him quake and he surrendered to might of the voodoo 2. Happy days when you got the best of the best for 300$.

[@72twist]

Bulit my first computer back in '97 and bought the 4mb Voodoo card and an 8mb Matrox Millennium 2D card. Some time shortly after I purchased a pair of Voodoo2 cards. Man, Quake and Unreal looked amazing!

[@DEVILTAZ35]

i had the same Matrox card and ended up swapping it for a TNT 2 Ultra and Voodoo 2 instead. It was amazing for Pentium 2. Add in the awe 32 sound card and it was like heaven :)

[@pillepolle3122]

i want the prices from those old cards back !! those cards had like 100+ % performance boost. games with glide looked SO DAMN GOOD!! those were the best times of gaming.

[@imjody]

I remember buying a 3dfx Voodoo 2 or 3 for like $150 back in the day! 😍😍

[@cbowers318]

I had one back in the day. It was like getting a new computer when you slapped that bad boy in it.

[@ade-1772]

Great video 0mg you just took me back some yrs there I started gaming on pc in 93 with a dx2 66

[@tomphillips8739]

Great memories brought back. I had the same video card, sound card, and 12MB Voodoo 2's in SLI, along with a 21" Sony CRT for 1024x768 gaming. All my friends had to get the set up as well. Seeing was believing.

[@jannegrey593]

My first 3D accelerator! I didn't have anything apart from 2D Graphics card before that (VGA). I remember it changing the look of Quake 2 especially. And later there were games that wouldn't play without it. Funny thing is that the most beautiful game that I remember was "Forsaken" on Unreal Engine, I think. Just as we got Voodoo 2 the demo was released. My jaw dropped at beautiful lighting effects.

[@RoadRunner1980]

Nostalgic videos like these are like a drug I need on a regular basis and this was a good one. Looks like I found a new nostalgia channel for my collection ;-)

[@vswitchzero]

Thanks very much! :)

[@PhilLaird]

I used to work for 3dfx back during the late 90s. It was a very cool job. We even had a DecAlpha in the lab. Good times.

[@tomk3732]

This brought up memories! I got SLI Voodoo 2s at 2x 12mb mated to 8mb ATI card. Ah... 20 years ago.

[@SsgtHolland]

I still remember how blown my mind was after I installed this bad boy in my Pentium 200 Mhz MMX Compaq Presario. Man....memories.

[@Xbot4Life]

My friend had the 1st iteration and it turned his normal PC into a beast, i was never able to match his performance, this is back when we thought the soon arriving 500mhz PCs were way over the top.

[@Chris.Davies]

I still have two of these. In shadow frames. Hanging as art in my study. Along with around a dozen CPUs in small shadow frames. And some 8" IBM double-sided double density floppies. :)

[@heteroerectus]

oh man, quake 2 was so amazing when it came out. I just played through it again in vr on my quest 2 a couple months ago. what a crazy world.

[@sgtjarhead99]

My favorite video card of all time. I still have my Creative Labs 12mb Voodoo2 SLI in my Win98 retro box. Was one of the first to pick up it as soon as it became available at my local Gamestop.

[@SkaffenUK]

Great video, really takes me back. A friend and I both had 12mb Voodoo2 cards and a trip to local computer shop ended up with us both buying second cards for SLI. In Quake & Quake2 they were absolute beasts! I can remember someone at work in disbelief that anyone would have 24mb of video ram in their PC! I think I was even running a Riva TNT for 2d duties at the time.

[@binarydinosaurs]

I’ll never forget going from Quake to GLQuake with my first voodoo. My jaw hit the floor, and again when I got the voodoo II and SLI’d them to run at 1027x768 on the 17” monitor I’d ‘borrowed’ from work. Still have all of them 😄

[@vswitchzero]

Nice! I know exactly what you mean. GLQuake had a huge impact on me the first time I saw it. Thanks for sharing 🙂👍

[@simtaylor61]

Had one of those cards and it ROCKED. Its both hilarious and amazing how far things have come since then. I remember rocking my Voodoo 3 after my 2 and being blown away 🤣

[@combatwombat71]

I remember shelling out for an Orchid 3DFX card... amazing technology at the time.

[@The_Dee_Jay]

Great video! You sir have earned yourself a new subscriber all the way from the UK. Somewhere stashed away I have an old Compaq desktop PC with a pair of Voodoo 2 cards in it, was a 3D beast back in the day 😎

[@vswitchzero]

Thanks very much! :)

[@dmmultimediamx]

Good job! so much good memories.

[@chrisrudi7162]

I have two 12MB Voodoo 2 cards running together with a GeForce 7900 GT with Windows 98 Se in a Core2Duo E8400. The Voodoo cards are connected to the PCI Express bus via an external PCI bridge. They work perfectly with SLI. This PC is not time correct but you can run any Windows and DOS software with the highest performance. But I also have other systems which are timed correctly. Best regards, Chris

[@GraveUypo]

try playing alone in the dark in that pc and say that again

[@giornikitop5373]

dos? most dos games crap themselves with anything higher than pentium/ii 500mhz, besides, does your board have an isa slot or an lpc header? playing dos games without sound is not worth it.

[@Cronquist]

A trip down memory lane, for sure! Remember when me and my pal, both with a new Voodoo card, and we put both card in my rig. Unlimited power! xD It was a rush tho! Just being able to play QW in higher resolution was a blast!

[@NightSprinter]

I remember the one ad in PC Gamer in either 1997 or 1998, advertising the DIamond Monster3D-II and how much better Descent II was with it. I drooled so much over that ad due to how much I wanted the Voodoo2. Now (though the machine is in FL), I have a build that has a V2 12MB and is ideal for games of the late-90s. I just need a second card, and to get my GeForce 4 Ti-4600 repaired, and I'll have quite the kickass machine (as it also has a Diamond MonsterSound MX-300).

[@gamertechkid1490]

Oh man that NFS High Stakes footage really took me back. I was 12 and built my first PC, with an AMD Duron and Voodoo 2. Such nostalgia seeing these old games. Unreal Tournament, Quake 2, NFS High Stakes. Thank you

[@gamertechkid1490]

I had the same build! Voodoo2 and AMD Duron. Quake 2 with 3dfx was like seeing the future at the time

[@MG_Steve]

aaah, those were the days, playing quake online with 3DFX in my username, it was a badge of honour ;)