Quake 2 - 3DFX Voodoo 1 vs. Software Rendering

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rockalyte@reddit

I had the pleasure of attending a 15 man lan party at a friends house and being the only one there with a Voodoo2 playing Unreal multiplayer with everyone. Very soon after everyone else bought their voodoo cards as well.

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

It's a competitive advantage!

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odar420@reddit

That back in the era where a p200 rendered better than a 3dfx.

Retest on a last model 486 with PCI. You will see the benefit then.

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

I hear what you're saying, but I'll believe it when I see a video of it from your system. Personally I've never seen my p200 run 3D games very well without any 3D acceleration.

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odar420@reddit

Let me post a vid, I have a voodoo 1 laying around and a p166mmx on the shelf.

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

Please do. I'd love to see it.

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Sad-Author-729@reddit

I ran a few GLQuake timedemos on my P200 system and in DOS at 512x384 I got 19fps and in windows 98 with the voodoo1 card I got 38fps. https://imgur.com/a/fmXvGFU

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

Thanks, that's validating to hear. These claims that my P200 should be performing better than it is and that it's too strong to need a Voodoo 1 are making me question my sanity.

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Sad-Author-729@reddit

I have played GLQauke on a P200 and on a highend 486 (in my shuttlehot 433 board) with both an AMD 5x86@160MHz and a Cyrix 5x86@120MHz. The Voodoo does improve performance on the 486 but the P200 gains more. The Voodoo2 is also faster than the voodoo1 in the 486

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odar420@reddit

I agree. No need for a voodoo 1 or 2 on a p200.

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Accomplished-Camp193@reddit

Now test it with a GF2 MX400 costing what? 5 dollars plus shipping? Suddenly the overpriced and overrated voodoo looks like garbage.

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Phayzon@reddit

Woah woah hang on now. You mean to tell me a graphics card from 2001 outperforms one from late 1996??? This can't be!

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to3cutter@reddit

Gf2mx in pci flavor are very rare and expensive.

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

Good point. The PC in the video has only PCI slots and no AGP.

Also, I saw the other user's comment before it got deleted. In response I say that ironically yes, I agree, 3DFX is overrated. An Nvidia Riva TNT or ATI Rage Pro play 98% of everything from the year 1999 and back just fine for way less money.

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maokaby@reddit

I had voodoo 1, it was quite cool for it's time.

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

Owning a Voodoo 1 in 1997 would have been like owning a Neo Geo AES in 1991.

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Tranbert5@reddit

lol… no not quite. I had a Voodoo1 in 97.. a Canopus Pure 3DLX… it came with an extra 2MB frame buffer so you could play at 800x600 and it was only $300 at the time. A Neo Geo was still $600

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MechanicalTurkish@reddit

I had one of those. I think I got it on sale in 1998. I don’t remember what the price was, but it was temporarily same (or a little bit cheaper) than other Voodoo 1 cards with only 4MB total. It blew my mind at the time.

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Tranbert5@reddit

They were great cards and the extra texture memory gave them some extra legs… I ended up getting a Diamond Monster 3D2 Voodoo2 just a year later and traded the Canopus to a friend for a 4GB hard drive that I desperately needed. That card carried him all the way to the end of 2001 playing Quake, Quake 2 and Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight

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to3cutter@reddit

Voodoo 1 was revolution and therefore it deserves to be expensive this days too.

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laffer1@reddit

I remember comparing a Voodoo 2 vs 3 vs Ati rage 64 vs intel i740 back in the day at work. We all brought our pcs in for a lan party after work on quake 2.

The voodoo stuff had a lot going for it but looked yellow compared to the ati rage 64. Same monitors and we even tried swapping them. Red looked better on ati

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Phayzon@reddit

ATi has been praised or at least acknowledged for having superior image quality almost always. Everything from simply cleaner VGA output in the early days to more accurate color and not 'cheating' with degraded texture/model quality in the DX9 era.

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budrow21@reddit

Is there built in FPS benchmarking you can run?

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SmurfTaters@reddit

I used to use 'timedemo demo3' and it would run through the demo super quick and give you an average frame count.

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Phayzon@reddit

Isn't it "timedemo 1" then "map demomap.dm2" or something like that for Quake 2? I think Quake 1 was the only one to simply use "timedemo demo[#]"

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budrow21@reddit

Yes! That's what I was thinking of. Obviously doesn't capture differences in visual acuity, but it's nice to have an idea of how much faster it is.

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

I mean I have a old version of Fraps on a CD-R, but when it comes to 90s PC games I prefer to benchmark based on vibes. Meaning I obviously see with my own eyes whether the game is choppy or smooth. For some reason 2020s PC gaming is where I'd rather examine performance with a fine tooth comb.

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Staiden@reddit

My dad walked in on me playing Final Fantasy 7 in quarter screen mode because my graphics card was old. He went out and bought me a voodoo 2. It changed everything.

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mr_dfuse2@reddit

i remember dropping my jaw when i got my first voodoo and played tomb raider. nowadays i prefer to play quake without the washed looked of bilineair filtering though

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grateparm@reddit

I teared up playing Homeworld after upgrading from a nothing SiS to a Voodoo3

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postmodest@reddit

for me it was Unreal that was the game changer.

I honestly prefer the pixelated look of the software renderer fo Homeworld.

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Sad-Author-729@reddit

You can disable the bilinear filtering. Running Quake with a voodoo has higher brightness by default but that can be adjusted also

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VoltronHemingway@reddit

Dude I remember when the Monster Voodoo 2 was coming out. People were so mad we did not have them in stock. They weren’t even released yet! I got accused of holding one back to buy it. Ya I was too poor. Did get a Tyan dual SL2W8 with SLI Monsters in it eventually in a trade from a guy that was tired of running NT because he didn’t know how. 👍

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

I really want to try Voodoo 2 SLI in the 2020s, but it's prohibitively expensive now. That's neat that you got to try it closer to its heyday.

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2raysdiver@reddit

Why is it prohibitively expensive? I have two voodoo2 cards (and possibly a third). But by the time I had been "gifted" the second card, I had already moved on to a graphics card that was better than the VD2 SLI option.

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ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)

In the 2020s, a sort of collectors' mania has overtaken 3DFX cards, so now a pair of matching Voodoo 2s for SLI cost upwards of 500 USD on Ebay.

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2raysdiver@reddit

Yesh, I just checked ebay. I am sitting on a gold mine.

This thread made me think I might want to try digging out some of my old kit and building a late-90s era PC just to try SLI out.

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For Quake 1 my favorite way is accelerated but with bilinear filtering disabled (GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST)

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Sad-Author-729@reddit

Try GL_NEAREST. Mipmaps get disable too, more like Quake in DOS