Voodoo 3 or GeForce 2 MX?

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VGplay

Gawd
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Jun 12, 2006
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I'm rebuilding an old Compaq we have to be used as an arcade emulator for the bar we're building in the basement. It currently has an Voodoo 3 AGP in it, but I also have laying around a GeForce 2 MX. How much of a benefit would I get by putting in the GeForce 2 MX in place of the Voodoo 3? The computer has a 600mhz Athlon (no idea of what core, but we got the computer for Christmas 2000) and I'm planning on bumping it's RAM up to 256mb or 512mb depending on how cheap I can find RAM for it.

Like I said, the computer will be primarily used for running an arcade emulator (mostly games of the 8 and 16-bit variety). Also think the 600mhz Athlon will be enough?

Thank you.
 
The MX would probably be a decent upgrade, though for a 2D arcade machine it wouldn't make much difference since emulation is mostly CPU-dependant. The Athlon would do a pretty good job, but it might struggle a bit with some of the later titles.
 
The geforce 2 should be the faster card.. But if you like to play old glide games stick with the v3... You prolly would not ever notice a difference between the two just surfing the web, email, and other 2d stuff.. The geforce2 will prolly be better for the emulators.. And driver support for the v3 no longer really exists..
 
go for the gf2 if for no other reason than 32-bit color support and the FAR superior driver support.
 
I'd go for the Voodoo3 simply for the sake of your own eyes. The 2D engines on the Geforces pre-Geforce3 sucked. I remember alternating from a Voodoo3 to a TNT2/Geforce and my eyes would be killing me by the end of the day using the Nvidia boards. 3dfx did one thing right with the Voodoo3+ and that was to use a high quality 2D engine, and it was noticeable.

3d performance? Ya, the Geforce2 MX is going to be superior, no doubt. It's also going to have more features, support for 32 bit color, and it even has a T&L engine does it not? Driver support is also going to be vastly superior, but we're talking a pretty old machine here. As long as it works, right?

The 600mhz Athlon you're talking about is probably a Slot A design btw. It's one of the very first Athlons to hit the market, and they were bitchin' way back when!
 
I dunno, I have a GF2MX200 in a spare PC and the 2D quality is equal to my 9600. Even for the improved driver support I think it would be worth using the GF2. It does have a T&L engine (though no pixel or vertex shaders), but in this application it won't make a difference either way.
 
The 2d quality is probably going to come down to a card-by-card basis...in that regard the OP will just have to try both cards and see which one looks better. In all honesty they're probably gonna look the same though, especially if this is on an equally-old CRT.
 
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