Vodoo 3 users please read!!!

[Kintoke]

Hello.

I have a TnT2 Ultra card (viper v770 ultra), and men!..I have 2400 points in 3dmark2K, 44fps on quake 3 on high details.. this is very slow, because I have a p3-500, 128 ram and sy-6vba 133 motherboard (via chipset with the latest drivers). So maybe I will sell my card and buy another one, but here, in my country, a "budget" card (like MX or radeon) is a very expensive card (MX: $200 dolars for example), so I have to go maybe to a vodoo3 3000 or maybe 3500.
So please, if you have benchmarks of your system using any voodoo3 Card, post it, so I can know if it is a good idea buying one .

thanks a lot
Bye

 

[Comp10]

I don't have any benchmarks to give you, but I used to have voodoo3 3k in my p3 450, and it was a pretty slow system, so I doubt if you would see much improvement by upgrading to a voodoo3. I would suggest that you just try to save up your money for a while and get a geforce MX or Radeon.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

That ultra is faster than any voodoo3. 3dfx just got bought like yesterday and I wont hold my breath for future driver support.

 

[Goi]

I have a Voodoo3 3000 clocked at 180MHz along with a Celeron 875.5(256MB CL2 SDRAM), and I get 3100+ 3DMarks and around 90FPS on a custom Q3 config(v1.17) at 800x600(image quality is somewhere between "Normal" and "HQ&quot, not too shabby for the $45 I paid for it.

 

[RichieZ]

Voodoo 3 scales like shi*, cause its limited by fillrate, and 3dmark heavily favors cards w/ T&L. I got 2916 w/ a voodoo 3 2000 @ 175, and 681X w/ a GTS 32MB at 220/400. Same exact system

 

[UsandThem]

Kintoke:

Where do you live at? Europe?

 

[Kintoke]

Well, I live in chile..a country near Argentina (yes, the long one). If I sale my card, easely I can get like 70 dolars, so maybe Is better if I bought a card via Mail from USA.. So somebody knows a good store (pc store), that is cheap, and can sell out of USA??. Thanks, and aslo please keep posting your results with V3 card, maybe if it is to expensive buying a card outside, I will stick with a vodoo3. I don`t know really why my card have so bad preformance (I think my spec are all right). Is better change it.

Thanks

 

[Sunner]

I'd stick with the Ultra and try to solve the problem if I were you.
Like someone said, the Ultra should be faster than any V3 in Q3.
Have you made sure you have everything setup correctly in the BIOS, latest nVidia drivers etc?

I've owned both a TNT2-Ultra and a V3-3K, ran them at 185/230 and 185 respectively, and the TNT2 was faster in just about anything cept Unreal engine based games.

As for 3D mark, never mind that, you cant play it, and its the worlds crappiest benchmark(well almost).

 

[Kintoke]

But I Did everything to try to get more preformance, but without luck!!!, so I don`t know what to do... there is an online USA PC STORE TO BUY THING FROM OUTSIDE usa???.

tHANKS

 

[RobsTV]

There is NO CHANCE in getting future 3dfx driver support. nVidia did not buy out 3dfx, but instead 3dfx has decided to close up shop and no longer exist, and also they have agreed to sell their remaining assets to nVidia. nVidia has already announced that they have NO intentions on supporting any 3dfx products, and have said all such driver support will remain 3dfx responsibility. With the asset sale, and the doors closing over the course of the next few months, the last thing anyone at 3dfx is going to do is look into drivers.

 

[RoboTECH]

RobsTV, WTF are you talking about?

nvidia bought all of 3dfx's core assets.

Otherwise, you are correct

3dfx tech support is dead, and left to the remaining users.

a sad day indeed....

 

[solpadeine]

Kintoke,
I believe the problem is your motherboard. I also used to have a soyo 6vba133. Using a voodoo 3 I would get about 35 fps in Q3, 1076 x 760 resolution. With the same components on an intel mobo I would get 45 fps. As far as I know there is no BIOS fix for this; the 6vba133 was
the early VIA apollo pro chipset. The later apollo pro A chipset gives much better performance. If you search the forum archives there used to be several posts about the slowness of the 6vba133.

 

[ndee]

Q3 Benchmark:
1024x768 maxed out everything

44.3fps

I hope that helps, you can see my rig in my signature.

 

[Kintoke]

So, maybe is the motherboard????...damm, I have to change it..mmm.. somebody have a similar problem??

 

[Goi]

Richie, on the contrary...with the right knowledge and settings, the V3 scales very well. I got about a 25FPS increase going from my Celeron 300@504 at near the lowest quality Q3 settings to a Celeron 566@875.5 at around normal/high quality Q3 settings.

 

[oldfart]

Kintoke, a V3 is not an upgrade from a TNTU. For that system you score doesn't sound all that far off. Keep the TNTU card.

Another thing, all this nonsense about not buying a 3dfx product because there is no more driver support is bunk. Its just another excuse for the 3dfx haters to put their last digs in. These same people had every reason to not buy a 3dfx product before they went under. You can use the drivers they have now for years to come. The hardware limitations of the card will be reached before the driver support requires you upgrade to something else. I just gave my old Diamond Stealth II S220 to a friend for his kids PC. Diamond and Rendition have both been out of business for years. The card still works great. The hardware limitation kicked in long before driver support did. People are still using Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 1 cards. When was the last update for them? People are still using TNT 1 cards. They swear by the OLD 3.xx drivers. All of the latest Nvidia drivers are geared toward GF cards, and offer a performance DECREASE for TNT based cards. So in essence, where is the TNT support from Nvidia? These cards still work just fine with "old" drivers.

If you can find a bargain on a 3dfx card, go ahead and get it.

 

[gplracer]

I have to disagree. I currently have a voodoo 5. It is a good card although I wish I had got a geforce 2 gts because it is faster. I am afraid that when a game comes out and my card does not work well with it there will be no one to update the drivers for the card. It works with all games that are currently out and will work with games that come out in the near future. What about when directx 9 comes out? This will probably be about a year off. I have a canopus voodoo 1. The canopus card does not support directx 6. So all games that support directx 6 or later will not work on it. At the time Canopus closed their doors in the U.S. I had to upgrade because there were lots of new games that I was unable to play. I think it would be a bad decision now to buy a 3dfx product. I have always supported them in the past, but now I am not sure. They say they sold the technology for the benefit of the stockholders and their customers. That is bull! They sold the technology for management and the stockholders. I did not buy my card but a few months ago and I hate it that this company would sell the technology and then tell all of theirs customers, "We have your money sorry no support too bad. Oh and forget about that lifetime warranty." If my card goes bad in two months I am just out of luck. I spent too much money on this card for that to happen. If you really want to do something for your customers allow the ones who do not like this to return the products they just recently bought. I for one would be first in line. They will not do this because they do not want to.

 

[Orbius]

The real question on my mind is whether or not Nvidia is going to release the V3/V5 drivers into public domain so they can be tinkered with and updated. My gut instinct tells me they won't in typical Nvidia fashion, but I see no real reason that they shouldn't. If they do there is enough fan support to ensure driver updates and tweaks for years to come.

 

[apacide]

I have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI (not a 3000) running on a PIII 667 with 256 MB SDRAM. At any time on this system, the only things I have running in the background are Explorer and Systray. My system resources are usually about 96% free. Here are the scores I got with 3DMark 2000:

Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
16-bit color, 16-bit textures, 16-bit Z-buffer, Triple frame buffer, using PIII optimization

640x480 - 3260
800x600 - 3107
1024x768 - 2618