VOGONS


First post, by mr_bigmouth_502

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I've never really owned a "proper" 3DFX rig before, and I would love to build one sometime. The thing is, most people would go for period-correctness, but I just want to build a beast machine that I can use to get the most out of the games I'll play. The games I'm thinking of playing on this include:

- Carmageddon/Carmageddon 2
- Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
- Unreal Gold/Unreal Tournament
- N64 games using the Glide64 plugin on 1964 or Project64 <--- main reason why I'm considering higher specs than a "period-correct" machine
- whatever other games have decent Glide support

I'm aware that I could probably play most of these on a "normal" machine with a Glide wrapper, but it just wouldn't be the same. 🤣

Reply 1 of 42, by NitroX infinity

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If you use a PCI Voodoo5 5500 you can go for a Core2 (Duo/Quad) system with WinXP.

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Reply 2 of 42, by ratfink

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I think a p3 around 900mhz-1.4ghz is fine for a Voodoo 5.

You can go higher - I use an athlon xp2000 on an asus a7m266 - but I'm convinced it's too fast for Diablo2 LoD. And I still get slight loading lag on new levels - I reckon that's down to the Voodoo5 being slow loading textures compared to [say] an FX5200 or Ti4 [it could be the hard drive speed or bus speed, except that my nvidia system would have beren the same on those scores].

I think you can probably never get a completely smooth D2 experience on glide like you can on nvidia, though imo glide looks better [and there are some minor things you only see in glide]. But like everything you can turn this into some never-ending quest for the perfect machine - LoD on a V5 with a P3 900 was fine. Pretty sure I tried twin xp2400's and it was no different, nor was a v3500 which has a slightly faster clock.

There was a P4 board with 3.3v AGP [P4S533] and of course there's PCI cards, but I really don't see the point - I think the main reason for using faster glide boxes [athlon faster than xp2000 etc] is flight sims, which I don't play at present.

No idea about the other games you mention.

Last edited by ratfink on 2013-02-14, 10:57. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 42, by d1stortion

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I have to warn a bit about the N64 emu thing, since I tried this on my machine as well. I couldn't get the latest version of this plugin running at all, only some really old one, the emulator itself or using offical/unofficial drivers doesn't seem to matter. That said, I only have a V3 and can't say how it works with V5.

Reply 4 of 42, by elfuego

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mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
- Carmageddon/Carmageddon 2 - Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - Unreal Gold/Unreal Tournament - N64 games using the Glide64 plugi […]
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- Carmageddon/Carmageddon 2
- Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
- Unreal Gold/Unreal Tournament
- N64 games using the Glide64 plugin on 1964 or Project64 <--- main reason why I'm considering higher specs than a "period-correct" machine
- whatever other games have decent Glide support

The games you listed work perfectly also under K6/3 and Voodoo 3/4/5, but I never used N64 games so I cant tell for sure. But what I can tell is that the best possible 3dfx-only (AGP) rig would be an Epox KT333 + overclocked Barton and some decent amount of DDR400. If you go for PCI version, then I guess only sky is the limit (my Z77 board also has PCI slots, so why not use i7 3770k overclocked to 4.5-5Ghz?) 🙄

Reply 5 of 42, by mr_bigmouth_502

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I myself was actually thinking of using an early Athlon 64-based machine with AGP or a Socket 478 Pentium 4, since that's around the upper limit for Windows 98 compatibility while still providing good CPU performance for N64 emulation. As for the model of Voodoo I'm using, I'd love to track down a Voodoo 5 in either AGP or PCI. I know they're expensive, but I just remember reading somewhere that Glide64 was practically optimized for the Voodoo 5 architecture.

Truth be told, without Glide64 being thrown into the equation, this would be a much simpler question. I'd probably go for something like a Pentium III Tualatin or even just one of the higher-end Coppermines. Without Carmageddon and possibly other DOS-based or Win9x-reliant glide games being thrown into the equation, then I would probably just throw a PCI Voodoo 5 into a semi-modern machine of some sort.

Reply 6 of 42, by NitroX infinity

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Note that a 3dfx Voodoo4 4500 AGP board is an AGP4x 1.5V board so if you get that, you can get a more modern board supporting Prescott (perhaps even Core2) or Athlon64.

If you're getting any other AGP Voodoo you're stuck with motherboards that have to support AGP2x 3.3V boards. The best P4 board supporting that is an ASUS P4S533 (not the X version) which supports a P4 Northwood @2800MHz with a 533MHz FSB and the best AthlonXP board is an Epox 8K3A+ which supports an AthlonXP 3200+ with 400MHz FSB.

*Voodoo4's from other vendors are 3.3V cards.

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Reply 8 of 42, by NitroX infinity

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Chance, Evate, Meditech, PowerColor & Speed. Mostly Asian brands.

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Reply 9 of 42, by fillosaurus

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IMHO, do not use nVidia boards. They are only AGP 8x, and, in my testing experience, do not work well with Voodoo2. The testing samples were only 2 boards, though. A Gigabyte which is in my 2nd rig and an Epox.

Y2K box: AMD Athlon K75 (second generation slot A)@700, ASUS K7M motherboard, 256 MB SDRAM, ATI Radeon 7500+2xVoodoo2 in SLI, SB Live! 5.1, VIA USB 2.0 PCI card, 40 GB Seagate HDD.
WIP: external midi module based on NEC wavetable (Yamaha clone)

Reply 10 of 42, by mr_bigmouth_502

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NitroX infinity wrote:

Note that a 3dfx Voodoo4 4500 AGP board is an AGP4x 1.5V board so if you get that, you can get a more modern board supporting Prescott (perhaps even Core2) or Athlon64.

If you're getting any other AGP Voodoo you're stuck with motherboards that have to support AGP2x 3.3V boards. The best P4 board supporting that is an ASUS P4S533 (not the X version) which supports a P4 Northwood @2800MHz with a 533MHz FSB and the best AthlonXP board is an Epox 8K3A+ which supports an AthlonXP 3200+ with 400MHz FSB.

*Voodoo4's from other vendors are 3.3V cards.

I almost forgot about the voltage issue, thanks for reminding me. Anyhow, choosing between a 3DFX Voodoo 5 4500, and a PCI Voodoo 5, which would provide better performance in Glide games? Would it even matter in a system with a suitably beefy CPU?

Reply 11 of 42, by NitroX infinity

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Most Glide games should run fine on the Voodoo4.

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Reply 14 of 42, by sliderider

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NitroX infinity wrote:

Most Glide games should run fine on the Voodoo4.

The only problem with a Voodoo 4 is they're nearly as expensive as a Voodoo 5 so if you can afford a 4, you may as well go all the way and get a 5 instead. If you can find a V3 3500 with the adapter cheap, it would be a much better value for the money.

Reply 15 of 42, by swaaye

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mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

I know there is a resolution cap on the Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2, but what about the later models? How far can they go in Glide titles?

Voodoo3-5 can run at least 1600x1200. Some games have resolution limits.

BTW, Voodoo1 can not be used with AMD K7 CPUs. Voodoo2 needs a special driver to prevent lock ups.

Reply 16 of 42, by d1stortion

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A dirt cheap V3 overclocked to 3500 specs will bring adequate performance in most Glide games in 1024x768. Whether V5 is worth it is up to you, but you can expect to spend about $110-130 for it, with the PCI version being especially costly. At least that's how it goes in Europe at the moment. And V4 is pretty much worthless, it cannot distance itself from a similarly-clocked V3 yet boasts a hefty price tag nonetheless just because it's a collector's item. 32-bit color is irrelevant with the games of the time, instead you want all the speed you can get with these old accelerators.

Reply 17 of 42, by PcBytes

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I'd reccomend you this LX spec,even if it is LX it's good for gaming.
Motherboard:ASUS P2L97,it works very good,even if LX 😁
Video Card:Geforce 5200 would do it the best,even if I don't have it I heard good reviews about it
Sound Card:your choice
Memory:Probably you'll only get to have 384,maximum 512 MB of ram because of its limitations.
Processor:Latest 333MHz Pentium 2,or 333MHz processors that have clip mounting things (i.e Pentium 2 350MHz has one,you flip it to the left and you unlocked it)
System:depending on how much ram you'd use,Windows 98 would do best ob 384 mb,for 512 we can already use decently Windows XP.
DRU (disc reading unit):your choice again,but DVD-ROM would be better,since if you run out of CDs you can use DVD (i.e I used a blank DVD+R disc for Croc:Legend of Gobbos)

Reply 18 of 42, by mr_bigmouth_502

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OK, so far this is a rough idea of what I think I'll use for my build. I'm aiming for a balance of compatibility with older Glide/Win9x games, and performance for stuff like Unreal/Quake 3 engine games as well as the aforementioned n64 emulator:

- PCI Voodoo 5 series card <--- I want Glide64 optimization and 32-bit color, dammit! 🤣 Cost is not really an issue since I can easily get the the rest of the parts either freely or cheaply. 😀
- Nforce 3-based Athlon 64 board in either S754 or S939 <--- chosen for 98 compatibility
- 1-2GB DDR ram (will temporarily install 256MB to get Win98 working and patched)
- single-core Athlon 64, since a dual-core would be rather pointless for this setup 🤣
- Windows 98 SE dual booted with 2000 SP4 <--- would go straight 98SE, but I'd like to play Unreal Tournament online on anticheat servers, and this requires an NT kernel OS
- PCI soundcard with decent DOS digital sound support under Windows 98
- 80GB+ hard drive, preferably in SATA if there are 98 drivers for it

If this sounds like overkill, that's because I intend it to be. 😁 What are your thoughts?

Reply 19 of 42, by NitroX infinity

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Not sure, since it's been a long time but I seem to remember Socket 754 only supporting single channel ram and Socket 939 dual channel.

SATA for Win98? My vanilla WinXP cannot detect SATA hard-drives when installing so I doubt Win98 will. Just go with pata, maybe 2 drives in raid?

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