Building Voodoo 2 based machine

R

ring.of.steel

Guest
Hi,

I am building a old school gaming machine:

i am looking at:

733mhz pentium 3
128mb RAM
2x voodoo 2 in sli
20gb hard disk

is this ok? will only be playing old games.
 
yea looks good i might go with a Voodoo3 3000 over the SLIed V2s
with the V2s youll need a 2d card like the M400 from matrox

other then that maybe 256MB of ram imo

CPU looks good you might try finding an old 300a celaron and ocing it
 
why would i need a matrox card aswell as the sli'd voodoo 2's?

thanks
 
3dFX cards suck at 2d.

Gotta have a 2d and a 3d card back then.
 
ah okay, so how do the 3d and 2d cards work together?
 
oh i rerember i need that pass thru cable thing. what os shall i run on this thing?
 
You'll want to get an ISA Sound Blaster card, either a SB16 or SB64AWE.

I have a P3/600 system I use for older games and as a backup when my primary P4 system is doing something intensive, like rendering video. I have DOS 6 (w/ Win 3.11), Win98, Win2K and WinXP loaded on it. I installed them in that order and into diffferent partitions. WinXP's boot manager allows a choice between XP, 2K and 98, and the 98 boot menu allows one to get into DOS. It works very well.
 
can i use any old vid card with the voodoos?

got a sound card sorted sitting on my desk right now, an old SB16.

Shall i use windows 95 or 98 on this?

edit: now got a 350mhz pentium 2
 
the old Voodoo2s dont just "suck" at 2d that HAVE NO 2D AT ALL
thay were 3d only cards the Voodoo3 was the frist 2d/3d card that realy worked well thay had one called the Voodoo RUSH but it kinda sucked it was slower then a Voodoo1 and had so so 2d

but all in all a Voodoo3 3000 would be best
as for sound get an old SB Live! if you can find one

try to get some thing faster the 350s wernt very good OCers ether
imo that 733 would be best if not an old Slot-a Athlon 700 or so

i ran a 700 Athlon with a Voodoo3 and 256 MB ram for a wile and it was one of the best PCs i have ever had

use 98se on it
 
I just got the following together (not all in the same machine):

1 Voodoo 5 5500 64MB AGP card
2 Voodoo II 12MB cards with the SLI cable and the video patch cable
1 Asus A7V mobo
1 AMD Athlon 1 GHz CPU (not an Athlon XP, but an original Athlon)
768MB of PC133 RAM
80GB 7200 rpm ATA133 hard drive
1 SoundBlaster AWE64 PCI
Assorted goodies

I'm going to build me at least one old gaming box designed specifically for Quake 1, 2, and 3 since that's all I really give a damn about.

The other poster was correct: the Voodoo II series (and the original Voodoo I series hardware) were 3D accelerators only - they worked as a pass-through video device for anything except 3D stuff which then kicked in as required.

Until the Voodoo Banshee series cards came out - the first 3dfx cards with 2D and 3D support, meaning they were "normal" video cards for their time - all of them from all the various vendors using 3dfx chipsets were simply pass-through cards. And way back then they were called 3Dfx; they adopted the 3dfx name later on when the Voodoo 3 series first appeared.

When the Voodoo 3 series appeared, they gave it their best shot - and the cards weren't even using AGP texturing since 3dfx never believed in it for serious purposes, and neither did I for that matter. Then the mythical Voodoo 4 never materialized and they jumped clean to the Voodoo 5 series with two primary cards and then the "King of the Hill" which never went into serious production: the 6000, monster freakin' card that it was (and still is for those that are lucky enough to own one).

As far as 2D quality is concerned on their cards that supported it, 3dfx cards were widely regarded as the second best 2D cards on the market - squarely behind Matrox who still rules in that territory on non-DVI video hardware (aka analog).

I can't wait to get all this hardware up and running, and get all my Quake games fired up and running under GLide, the way they were meant to be played. :)

There are several places online for 3dfx information nowadays, you would do yourself well to check them all out:

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/ <<<--- Collection of photos of tons of various 3Dfx/3dfx hardware over the years, great stuff and a trip down memory lane for a lot of us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx <<<--- The great wikipedia page for 3dfx with a ton of links at the bottom for further exploration

http://www.3dfxzone.it/index.php <<<--- Great site and forum with updated drivers written by people still serious about 3dfx hardware even years later

http://falconfly.de/ <<<--- Another forum similar to the 3dfx Zone just mentioned

Good luck, and happy gaming...

ps
The Matrox Millennium is widely regarded as the best 2D only video card ever made, actually, so yes, it will perform just fine with the Voodoo II cards as long as you have all the proper cabling. If not, you can probably just use one card and still get great results.
 
thanks for all the info guys,

i now have
2x voodoo 2 sli cards will all cables etc
1x slot 1 mobo
128mb sdram
733mhz p3
400mhz p2
matrox millenium pci

would this be ok to play need for speed hot persuit, unreal tornement, doom, quake etc.
 
SLI.. nice ;) the rig looks great..
I once had a Voodoo 3 2000 on PCI, and the 3Dfx logo when starting glide game was really priceless.
As for the voodoo 2 and no 2d support, there actually was a Voodoo 2 Banshee which was supporting 2d :)
 
ring.of.steel said:
thanks for all the info guys,

i now have
2x voodoo 2 sli cards will all cables etc
1x slot 1 mobo
128mb sdram
733mhz p3
400mhz p2
matrox millenium pci

would this be ok to play need for speed hot persuit, unreal tornement, doom, quake etc.
Click to expand...

More RAM, more RAM, more RAM. :D That's the only thing you really need to improve on that machine, get more RAM, at least double what you have now, more if possible. But it looks good to me. I'll get mine up and running soon, maybe we can compare benchmarks... hehehe
 
TheMostWantedPolishTwin said:
As for the voodoo 2 and no 2d support, there actually was a Voodoo 2 Banshee which was supporting 2d :)
Click to expand...

I covered that:

bbz_Ghost said:
Until the Voodoo Banshee series cards came out - the first 3dfx cards with 2D and 3D support, meaning they were "normal" video cards for their time - all of them from all the various vendors using 3dfx chipsets were simply pass-through cards.
Click to expand...

:p
 
yeah my pentium 2 is gona pwn your athlon :cool: hmm i can spot two 128mb ram sticks on my shelf, they should do. i am really looking forward to getting this machine setup.

what shall i do for a case guys? i want to keep this as original as possible.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
Then the mythical Voodoo 4 never materialized
Click to expand...

They were selling those Voodoo 4's like crazy, even after they went out of business. They were a single VSA-100 chip with 16MB of RAM. Not sure on the RAM amount, someone correct me if I am wrong. Powercolor was selling them as well.
 
Wow, I never knew they actually made it to market. Interesting. I had a Voodoo I, one 12MB Voodoo II (now I have 2 after all these years, matched Creative cards), a Voodoo 3 3000, and now a Voodoo 5 5500. Can't get it working for shit under XP though, none of the GLide apps work even with the official 3dfx drivers, so I'll be putting 2K back on here later on today to see what I can do with it.

Never saw a Voodoo 4 on the shelf anywhere, hence my comment about it never materializing. Weird...

Sitting here listening to the soundtrack on the Quake 2 CD at the moment. Brings back a lot of memories. :D "Quad Machine" always got my heart racing on maps...
 
hmm do you think i got ripped off on the voodoo's. i payed like 21 dollars for two cards new & boxed.

​
 
bbz_Ghost said:
Never saw a Voodoo 4 on the shelf anywhere, hence my comment about it never materializing. Weird...
Click to expand...

I saw them sitting on the shelves at our Best Buy here. When I said "selling them like crazy" I should have said "tried to sell them like crazy" cause they were being pushed hard, but I don't recall many people ever buying them.

I knew when I saw this new company called Powercolor selling Voodoo3 and 4 cards, that 3dfx was on it's last leg since the whole reason behind buying STB was to do it themselves.

I have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card here. It was a awesome buy. I bought it around release time and they were priced at $100 for the 2000. It was sooooooo easy to overclock it to past Voodoo 3 3500 speeds and save a bundle on doing it. I did try to get it running a while back on XP with not much luck. I ended up using a Rage 128 Fury card instead for that machine :(

Oh and too people here that complain that video cards run sooo hot nowdays, you don't know how good we have it. My V3 2000 got sooooooo hot that you absolutely could not touch the votlage regulator on it, and the heatsink got blazing hot as well, but you could at least touch that for a second or two without feeling the pain!
 
didnt think so :cool:. matrox millenium is the next item to my doorstep. cost me 4 dollars shipped. 2mb video ram mmm.
​
 
ring.of.steel said:
didnt think so :cool:. matrox millenium is the next item to my doorstep. cost me 4 dollars shipped. 2mb video ram mmm.
​
Click to expand...


4 bucks? Now that is a good deal. :D

Oh, and a suggestion for ya, trick this thing out and post pictures of it in the case gallery. Act all serious about it just like if it were bleeding edge current hardware. All these "noober" SLI guys can eat your shorts when they see your old school REAL SLI!
 
haha good idea, stupid no0bs. cant wait to see 3dmark 06 scores :cool:
​
 
anyone got any idea on the heat generated off the voodoo 2's?

\asleep
 
wow....brings me back seein this. i used to have a diamond fusion 16mb sgram version of the banshee. was my first 3d card actually. played unreal and motocross madness on it lol
 
haha dont forget midtown madness :cool: oh and of corse fs2000 and plane crazy!

my all time faiv has to be 3d cube hopper
​
 
cheers mate.

hmm im still deciding on this pentium 2 450mhz or somthing else...

would like to stay with intel for this build :mad:
​
 
ring.of.steel said:
cheers mate.

hmm im still deciding on this pentium 2 450mhz or somthing else...

would like to stay with intel for this build :mad:
​
Click to expand...

id realy go with a Athlon over a P2 or P-III the frist Athlons were badass back then
700 slot-a would rock
 
hmm well i might have found a 700 athlon for about 7 dollars shipped...

slot a motherboards and cpus are a lot harder to get hold of in the uk then slot 1
​
 
I have a Voodoo 2 (mint condition ) if you want or need it ( I'll never do anything with it)
Back in the day 1996 I think I had it mated up with a ( It was called a #9 video card) for
all you old school boys out there ,for a short period of time in a PIII < I think the next card after that I had was Ti-4200 .
I just want to see what your rig is going to do (blast from the past ) Dos game killer .

I just noticed you asked about heat off it , It gave off a good amount (large size for a card of that era ) but no one had the
kind of cooling placement that we do now with fans ,plus we had 250 to 300 watt PSU (case's were small ) and back then
the only fans you had were off an old cpu cooler that you fashioned.
 
I think I might have the # 9 card ( I no it was a good performer for that era) just PM me with you address and before the weekend out I'll get them together for ya ,as long as the shipping not out there .I'll just send them .
 
Too bad gdonavon isn't here, he has a site full of info!! http://thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/index.htm

There was a bug in the hardware of the V2's that made them hot. I run 2 creative 12mb V2's with some Zalman HS's on them along with "the card cooler" which was 2 80mm fans that mounted across them to keep them cool. Since these were the days before GPU's all the 3Dfx, nVidia, ATI, matrox cards relied some what heavy on the cpu, go to say that it takes more CPU you can throw at them, the better, My old system runs a PIII- 1ghz coppermine with 768mb pc133 SDRam. If you get everthing configured, it all runs like buttahh.

And to straighten things out, the first 2d/3d 3Dfx card was the voodoo RUSH, then the voodoo banshee (i owned a Monster 3Dfx banshee 16mb), then all the voodoo 3 and up where 2d/3d.

If you guys need a good driver site, then go to:
http://www.falconfly.de/3dfx.htm

Win98SE is the BEST system to run these on bar none.
 
Blast from the past again .lol I forgot about the types ! I have the Banshee 16mb. card It probably has a month total time on it.
( I still have the hard jacket CD rom software that came with it).
It's still bad@ss looking with the Black PCB .Been awhile since I've seen it.
But when I put something away like that ,I always put the Desiccant bags in for moisture.
 
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