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What was special about Voodoo cards versus the competition?

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computerdude92

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I don't understand why Voodoo cards are so highly collectible now and people love them so much they will pay hundreds of dollars just to have one. I was just a kid when the Voodoo cards were popular and I did not know much about computers. Were the graphics on a Voodoo5 better or the same as a Geforce2 Ti or Geforce3 Ti? Or were Voodoo cards faster? I don't get it. Please fill me in. Thanks.
 
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The Voodoo 5 is highly prized because it's the fastest Voodoo card they made. So if you want to play games that had Voodoo support, that's the best one. The first Geforce card didn't come out until after the Voodoo3, so Voodoo was already well-established at the time with plenty of developer support. Before the Geforce, Voodoo cards had the best performance, so that's the card that games targeted. Remember the Glide API? MiniGL? If you had a game that supported one of those, you wanted to be playing it on a Voodoo card.
 
kgober said:
The Voodoo 5 is highly prized because it's the fastest Voodoo card they made. So if you want to play games that had Voodoo support, that's the best one. The first Geforce card didn't come out until after the Voodoo3, so Voodoo was already well-established at the time with plenty of developer support. Before the Geforce, Voodoo cards had the best performance, so that's the card that games targeted. Remember the Glide API? MiniGL? If you had a game that supported one of those, you wanted to be playing it on a Voodoo card.
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I'm a noob when it comes to things like Glide API or MiniGL. What are they? I mostly play strategy games and role playing retro games that are only 2D. The only retro 3D looking games I remember playing are Lego Island 1&2, Lego Stunt Rally, Lego Rock Raiders, Carnivores 1&2, and Wolfenstein 3D.
 
The 3dFX Voodoo was the first full-featured consumer 3d gaming card. I have a Voodoo (1) and 2. They were add-on cards that worked with your existing 2-d video card via a pass-through connector. They could be overclocked quite well if you added a heat sink. They were great cards IMO.
 
I have two Voodoo 5's currently, but no AGP motherboards to use them with. I was thinking about selling them, but now I'm curious to give them a try in a future retro build and see if it will change my life..
 
The big thing about the Voodoo cards was that games were designed SPECIFICALLY for them. Even if a game can run on someone else's implementation or emulation, it probably won't look or feel 100% authentic. The GLIDE API was rather proprietary and relied on the 3dFX chip internals, so gamers really want the real deal.
 
Voodoo 3, 4, and 5 work very nicely in PCI equipped Amigas (read $$$). So that drives the price of those up significantly.
 
SomeGuy said:
The big thing about the Voodoo cards was that games were designed SPECIFICALLY for them. Even if a game can run on someone else's implementation or emulation, it probably won't look or feel 100% authentic. The GLIDE API was rather proprietary and relied on the 3dFX chip internals, so gamers really want the real deal.
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When several really early Alpha releases of Half-Life surfaced a few years ago there was a lot of chatter about how the early engines complained a lot if you were not running the GLide API.
 
SomeGuy said:
The big thing about the Voodoo cards was that games were designed SPECIFICALLY for them. Even if a game can run on someone else's implementation or emulation, it probably won't look or feel 100% authentic. The GLIDE API was rather proprietary and relied on the 3dFX chip internals, so gamers really want the real deal.
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Neato! In that case I'll keep my Voodoo cards and see once I get around to playing those games.

Will the Voodoo5 cards play all 3DFX games in the best quality, or should I hunt down an earlier card like a Voodoo2 to better play the first released games?
 
lyonadmiral said:
I have a dual Xeon AGP based Precision 450 if there is interest...
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Won't work.

Voodoo5 5500 cards are AGP 2x only and require an AGP 1x/2x board or a board with a universal AGP slot which can run in 2x mode. But the kicker is that the board only runs in 1x mode due to some weirdness with the VSA100 chips.

I have read from a 3dfx engineer that the card will run in a 4x/8x slot if you can remove the key from the slot, but I have not see anyone brave enough to try it. It would be safer to desolder the AGP slot and solder in a universal slot.

computerdude92 said:
Neato! In that case I'll keep my Voodoo cards and see once I get around to playing those games.

Will the Voodoo5 cards play all 3DFX games in the best quality, or should I hunt down an earlier card like a Voodoo2 to better play the first released games?
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The Voodoo5 5500 will run pretty much all Glide titles, bar the very early ones that use DOS/Windows 95. Some DOS games like Blood or Shadow Warrior have problems with it, as do some Windows 95 titles.

Games will look better on the Voodoo5 because it has 2k texture support, unlike the Voodoo1-3 which only supported 256x256 textures max. The Voodoo4 4500 is essentially half of a Voodoo 5 5500 and has the same 2k texture support. The Voodoo5 also has 32 bit color support, unlike older models which are 16 bit only.

If you have cash to burn, there is a modder in the 3dfx community which can upgrade your Voodoo5 5500 with Voodoo5 6000 VSA100s which run at 200 MHz, as well as upgrade the RAM to 256 MB. I've seen some benchmarks on these modded cards and they're extremely fast.
 
I suppose the Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 would be the best choice for a DOS rig, and likely a Pentium 1 or Pentium II...
 
computerdude92 said:
I suppose the Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 would be the best choice for a DOS rig, and likely a Pentium 1 or Pentium II...
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The Pentium / Pentium MMX really only has enough power to drive a Voodoo1. While a Voodoo2 will work on a Pentium 2, it really needs a fast Pentium 3 to operate at its full potential.

I did an experiment awhile back and tried to drive a Voodoo1 with a Am5x86-133 and it was painful to say the least, even at 320x200.

KC9UDX said:
I have several Voodoo 5 5500 in PCI form. They weren't only sold as AGP.
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I've always wanted one of those for my G4, but the price of them was always out of reach. They were more expensive than the AGP version when new and since fewer of them were made, they never really went down in price.
 
A few years ago I tried the Voodoo thing but I found it very frustrating / annoying so I dropped it. Too much hassle to get games to work with it.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
The Pentium / Pentium MMX really only has enough power to drive a Voodoo1. While a Voodoo2 will work on a Pentium 2, it really needs a fast Pentium 3 to operate at its full potential.

I did an experiment awhile back and tried to drive a Voodoo1 with a Am5x86-133 and it was painful to say the least, even at 320x200.



I've always wanted one of those for my G4, but the price of them was always out of reach. They were more expensive than the AGP version when new and since fewer of them were made, they never really went down in price.
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If I had a spare we might be able to wheel and deal. Unfortunately I actually have one less than I need, since I have two PCI systems to use them with and one card is dead...
 
GiGaBiTe said:
The Pentium / Pentium MMX really only has enough power to drive a Voodoo1. While a Voodoo2 will work on a Pentium 2, it really needs a fast Pentium 3 to operate at its full potential.

I did an experiment awhile back and tried to drive a Voodoo1 with a Am5x86-133 and it was painful to say the least, even at 320x200.
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That doesn't sound right. The Pentium III was a full year after the Voodoo2.
Perhaps the games you are trying to run are having no problems on the graphics side but struggling to execute CPU code fast enough? I know that Half-Life will run on a 166mhz Pentium system with a Voodoo2 without many complaints. Deus Ex on the other hand requires at least a Pentium II to be bearable.
 
Quake even with the Voodoo 1 runs like crap on anything 486 (needs a decent FPU). Even with a 3dfx you still need a decent CPU to feed the card data and part of the setup done in software. Some games scale better with a faster CPU up to the point the Voodoo is the bottleneck.
 
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