Have today a PII 266 ,Soyo LX motherboard and a Matrox Millenium II 8MB AGP videocard.
Want to keep good picture quality in 2D for Cad applications.
Needs hardware acc. 3D features and good 3D performance mainly in Direct3D for Flightsimulator 98.
What about adding a Voodoo 2 card?
Will it decrease picture quality much?
What about other replacement cards with following chipsets:
I have a P2 300 96 ram with a Creative labs Riva Blaster TNT, I play Q2 most of the time and get 50 fps with CL beta 4.03 drivers. Buddy has a voodoo card "Monster Fusion" gets 47 fps.
Either card is great, I lean to the TNT cause of the 32 bit feature, his seems to look brighter "Q2", and quicker in some games....Gee decisions...decisions...
With a slower (by todays standards) processor such as a PII 266, your best bet for performance would be a Voodoo3. While it wont give you image quality as good as the G400 or TNTs, it will give you the balance of performance and quality you need.
As to which one, you have a few choices. I really cant recommend the V3 3500. Its just too much money, money that could be better spent elsewhere. That leaves the 3000, and 2000. Honestly, in your case, id recommend the 2000. Theyre pretty cheap, but the performance is still great. You should be able to pick up a V3 2000 for ~$100. That way, if you have any money left, you can start looking at processor upgrades. The 2000 comes in both AGP and PCI, and which one you get really doesnt matter. Both will perform virtually identically, so if one is a couple bucks cheaper than the other, you may as well get it. Good luck choosing.
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"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies;
lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies;
lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
Yeah, I agree. Why tu buy 3000 or 3500? The 2000 version is about 9% slower than 3K, but its much less money. And you can overclock it and you'll have the 3K version, thats my opinion. Thats why I am tomorow geting V3 2000 on my PII 300MHz system. Friend has got Cel300A and TNT, but not so fast as voodoo cards, so, better hands off from TNT on slower CPU around 300MHz.
Do not buy any voodoo 3or TNT2 with your CPU.
I have Pentium II 300mhz + 128mb ram.
I had Riva TNT, I just bought Voodoo 3000.
How much performance increase you ask?
1 FRAME, i said and I'll say it again!
1 FRAME PER SECOND increase in Quake 2 crusher test in every rez setting.
Unless you are planing on getting faster cpu, go cheap with v2 SLI or Riva TNT.
YES I DO HAVE EVERY LATEST DRIVERS
[This message has been edited by ckkim (edited 08-10-99).]
[This message has been edited by ckkim (edited 08-10-99).]
Im not sure what your previous video setup was, but that certainly doesnt sound right. A V3 2000 should give higher framerates than a TNT, V2, or certainly, a Matrox Millenium II.
Also, performance is not the only issue, support is important too. My cousin had an older Matrox Millenium 8MB PCI card. It was still quite fast, certainly fast enough, but had no support for Glide, OpenGL, or D3D. Now, while it may have been fast enough, there are games out that that do not even offer software rendering support, which renders them completely unplayable, even if the card was fast enough. The V3 2000 will support Glide, D3D, and OpenGL, which will remedy that issue.
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"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies;
lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies;
lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
Something seems wrong with those Voodoo3 3000 scores. They should be higher than that. Also, you have your TNT overclocked, but not the Voodoo3. You could easily overclock the 3000 to 180/180, which would give you significantly higher scores. Its not legitimate to compare one overclocked, to another that hasnt been.
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"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies;
lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies;
lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
I know...
I can't think of what's wrong.
V3 should work fine even with slow CPU.
I'm going put two pent cooling fan on the oem heatsink then try to overclock V3.
It's too hot as it is.
Just picked up Celery 366(SL36C Mal yea baby!).
I'll try that on, and let you know if anything changes.
[This message has been edited by ckkim (edited 08-10-99).]
You managed to get your hands on an SL36C eh? Those are supposed to be hitting 550 quite easily now, good luck with it.
Youre right, in fact, on a slower processor, the V3 should perform BETTER than a TNT or TNT2. Once you start stepping up your processor speed, the gap closes a little. And dont go too nuts on the cooling either. The V3 3000 should be able to run 180/180 without any additional cooling at all.
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"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies;
lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
"In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies;
lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
My advice would be to keep the Matrox for your 2D, and add a PCI V3 2000. The V3 2000 should give you all the 3D performance your 266 will allow, and the Matrox will keep giving you excellent 2D.
I tried the V3-2000 on my gateway P2 300 and it locked up and crashed my machine 3 times. Could only boot to safe mode. Reformmated drive 3 times with no luck took it back to the store and got the TNT. Must admit, the 2000 did look brighter during the 20 seconds that it ran.
Wow, today I have bought V3 2K and instaled on my system. Its an PII on 300MHz and 96RAM. Damn this card rocks! O play Alien vs Predator at 1200x1000 and its excelent, I think its about 29 fps (I havent checked). I love it. King pin runs awesome at 1024x768, but swaping a bit on my HDD, cause I worked in Corel before, so RAM was full, maybe itll run also great in 1200x1000, but I havent tried, NFS4, Descent3, and every other game runs just great, nothing to debate.....
I think I know what's the issue with your bad results with Voodoo3.
You may be running Quake 2 in Default OpenGL.. you must install the MiniGL drivers for Voodoo3 (in 3dfx site you can donwload) and run Quake2 in 3dfx OpenGL mode...
The reason why you are getting poor scores is because crusher is processor dependent. The fps relies on CPU power. About your TNT drivers is very buggy... the ref 1.88 can reach 58 frames per second(demo1, 800*600). When you run the 640*480 is the results close to 800*600 for demo1?
If so change your drivers. Creative drivers are very undesirable.You would see more when you o/c the celery especially the voodoo3.
PS. Where did you get the crusher files???
[This message has been edited by joshua_web (edited 08-11-99).]
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The V3 3000 should be able to run 180/180 without any additional cooling at all.
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