[Person of Color]

I never got to experience the late 90's PC games, due to cost, and being like ten years old.

I want to play SiN badly. Badder than Obama's civil liberties record. So I ordered a P2-450 off eBay for like 8 bucks. I have all the other parts, but I don't know if they work yet.

I have prior experience with both these cards. A V3 3000 and a GF2 MX 400. Both are AGP. In my opinion, everything after the Voodoo2 was complete fucking garbage. 3Dfx made terrible products and there's a reason they're gone.

I know some games are Glide only. How much eye candy am I sacrificing with some older games? I've always heard the Glide renderers had better visual output. But then again, the Voodoo3 really is a pile of shit with no 32-bit support. Plus the image quality flat out sucks compared to Nvidia.

I know the GeForce 2 MX is faster but an overclocked Voodoo3 is still enough for shit like this. It basically boils down to compatibility and Glide.

Any takers?

[High Treason]

S3 Virge/DX all the way

Never had a good time with 3DFX, the all sucked. If you install one, good luck ever getting 3D to run after you remove it and that's if the 3DFX Uninstaller doesn't bork the windows install. I'm into the Demoscene and 3DFX stuff was laughed out of there, so it figures I wouldn't like them, I know of only a single demo that used their API and an MS-DOS demo from 3 years earlier in software did the same effects better at a higher resolution with lower system requirements. (To Be Continued for 3DFX, Dope for DOS)

My advice? Get a GeForce 4 MX440 (Or a Ti4200/Quadro equivalent) - will run fine in a Pentium II (I did it on a 300 with an MX4000 and an MX440, MX4000's should be cheap now) - then install a Glide Wrapper if you really want to use Glide software.


In case you are wondering, I only have one game around now that uses Glide; Interstate '76. It also has Direct3D (Not to mention Rendition, PowerVR and some other shit) and the 3DFX renderer runs like shit.

[Mark]

Back then I ran the upgrade train with the Voodoo, Voodoo2 and Voodoo4. It was so long ago I remember very little from the technical side of running them. I do remember lots of trial and error and mixed results running glide wrappers on other cards. But maybe now in hindsight, the quirky drivers are lost in history and the better ones have survived?

Viper said "I want to play SiN badly". Then drink a sixpack or two before playing.

[Forge]

under windows '98 i ran a Rage Fury Maxx which was a solid card, but XP fucked it up so i moved to a Geforce 256, which was a step up and also fairly decent.

the GeForce2 MX 300 was a colossal piece of crap so i stayed away from the 400
if you're dedicated to get a voodoo card, go with 2. 1 was buggy(er) and 3 and later are garbage.

[leilei]

Depends on your CPU bottleneck. If it's a 6th gen system (Penty 2's and K6's) I'd use the Voodoo3. I don't consider V3 as garbage (I used a V3 3000 AGP) and for the call of desperate measures, you've got these third-party hacks.

Also, Geforce2s tend to have blurry image signal output - even compared to the Voodoo3. That's not the same to say for Voodoo3's filtering in 3d though. What you'll really compromise are 32-bit textures (banding in q3 will be visible) and high-res textures (you can't run CoD!!1!!!!!). And there's that lack of stencil buffer, S3TC/DXTC, cubemaps, hw t&l and dot3 bumpmapping thing you're missing, screwing you out of potential 2002+ gaming.

A GeforceFX 5200 Ultra + Voodoo2 retro rig doesn't sound too bad on paper though (FX is crisper and also still does some legacy features despite being completely suck at ps2_0 - they're easy to find, and try to avoid the 64-bit ones!). My p2 300 is currently in a FX+V2 configuration (used to be V3+PCX2 and Savage4+V2+PCX2). The only real annoyance is some games' insistence to keep preferring the Voodoo2 if they detect it (such as RTCW)

Also, how do you like your 16bpp dithered?
Voodoo Dither+Filter
Voodoo Dither
Geforce Dither

There's also differences in the TV-out support between the cards. Voodoo3 so far is the sharpest i've used with regard to 720x480 and does VGA well, however it goes bonkers with certain DOS games. Here's how a FX5200 mangles 320x240.

It really depends on what you're going to play on it. The games that actually do take advantage of the Geforce2's features won't run well on that CPU anyhow.

[Striker]

I've been doing fairly well with an NVidia GeForce 6200 AGP with a Voodoo2 no problem on Windows 98. I use that for my classic gaming rig.

[Person of Color]

leilei, on 09 August 2013 - 01:20 AM, said:

Depends on your CPU bottleneck. If it's a 6th gen system (Penty 2's and K6's) I'd use the Voodoo3. I don't consider V3 as garbage (I used a V3 3000 AGP) and for the call of desperate measures, you've got these third-party hacks.

I just can't stand the rendering quality of those cards. Grainy and nasty.

Quote

Also, Geforce2s tend to have blurry image signal output - even compared to the Voodoo3. That's not the same to say for Voodoo3's filtering in 3d though. What you'll really compromise are 32-bit textures (banding in q3 will be visible) and high-res textures (you can't run CoD!!1!!!!!). And there's that lack of stencil buffer, S3TC/DXTC, cubemaps, hw t&l and dot3 bumpmapping thing you're missing, screwing you out of potential 2002+ gaming.

I've been noticing the lousy output on those cards for years. Used to work in a shop and every machine with a GF2/TNT was blurry as shit.

Quote

A GeforceFX 5200 Ultra + Voodoo2 retro rig doesn't sound too bad on paper though (FX is crisper and also still does some legacy features despite being completely suck at ps2_0 - they're easy to find, and try to avoid the 64-bit ones!). My p2 300 is currently in a FX+V2 configuration (used to be V3+PCX2 and Savage4+V2+PCX2). The only real annoyance is some games' insistence to keep preferring the Voodoo2 if they detect it (such as RTCW)

I recently gave away my Voodoo2 so this won't be an issue.

Quote

Also, how do you like your 16bpp dithered?
Voodoo Dither+Filter
Voodoo Dither
Geforce Dither

I'd rather run 32-bit.

Quote

There's also differences in the TV-out support between the cards. Voodoo3 so far is the sharpest i've used with regard to 720x480 and does VGA well, however it goes bonkers with certain DOS games. Here's how a FX5200 mangles 320x240.

Don't need TV out, plus my V3 lacks it.

Quote

It really depends on what you're going to play on it. The games that actually do take advantage of the Geforce2's features won't run well on that CPU anyhow.

I'm aware of that. It would be nice to crank everything though.

I think I may just go Voodoo3 because I don't want to dick around with drivers and settings like crazy.

[leilei]

Viper The Rapper, on 09 August 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:

I'd rather run 32-bit.

Most older games don't give you that choice.

Viper The Rapper, on 09 August 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:

I just can't stand the rendering quality of those cards. Grainy and nasty.
...

I think I may just go Voodoo3 because I don't want to dick around with drivers and settings like crazy.

If you value clean image output over anything else, you could go Matrox... they're overpriced for that. However that isn't without compromise - Commander Keen Goodbye Galaxy / Bio Menace will stutter like hell.

[High Treason]

Matrox's seem to run fine with a VBE TSR loaded.

[Tea Monster]

Matrox cards always had a great picture.
I got a TNT 2 card at the time and never had any problems with it.

[Gambini]

lol I feel like necroposting a 13 years old thread!!

A Pentium 2 with a gfoce seems dispair. Pentium 3 used to run with TNT2. I remember my last rig, prior to disconnecting from the wolrd for almost a decade, was a Pentium 3 700 with 128mb of ram and a TNT2. I could run RTCW with everything maxed out, let alone Sin which was three years older.. Sin ran alright in my previous Pentium 233 MMX, 64mb, S3 Virge and Voodoo1 4mb (I could even run NFS Porsche 2000).

The good old times!

[The Commander]

MX440

[Person of Color]

leilei, on 09 August 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

Most older games don't give you that choice.



If you value clean image output over anything else, you could go Matrox... they're overpriced for that. However that isn't without compromise - Commander Keen Goodbye Galaxy / Bio Menace will stutter like hell.

I have a G400 lying around. I also have a TNT2 M64. This isn't going to be used for DOS games, I built a seperate rig for that years ago.

I found an MSI BX Master motherboard in my closet I totally forgot I had, hence why I'm doing this now.

I got the processor in the mail today. Holy shit! Look at the size of that motherfucker! I gotta go to the hardware store tomorrow and get an allen key so I can put some fresh gel on it. Something tells me I won't be needing a fan.

Oh, and that's not an erection. That's the denim scrap I use to sharpen my razors.

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[Person of Color]

Alright. I got it all up and running. I had to use the Geforce, the Voodoo was dead. Anyway, 98SE, DX 8.1b, nvidia 41.09 drivers.

The ritual logo comes up, but the intro doesn't play. The I'm game lighting also seems so cause massive framerate drops. Any ideas?

[Forge]

are you still talking about SIN? can that card handle it?

here's a page, maybe you can use the custom resolution patch (if it's still there)

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/SiN

[Person of Color]

I fixed the issue. Just needed a defrag/reboot and some settings scaled back. I would fuck with the settings and nothing would change due to the fragmentation. I have to run dual Bigfoots, so the hard drive access sucks on this thing. Runs fine at 800x600 with some frame drops (I should probobly stick a P3 in this bitch)

The missing intro movie is because I have the censored rerelease distributed by Xplosiv. I ordered an original disc, Unreal, Tribes, and Theif in a lot for $6 off eBay.

Oh yeah, SIN FUCKING ROCKS.