GeForce MX + Voodoo 4 (pci) in one machine possible?

[Gstanfor]

Hi,

I currently have a Hercules Geforce2 MX in my main games machine and I am very pleased with its performance for the most part.

However I also enjoy playing several games that were written primarily or exclusively for Glide and don't perform at their best on nVidia cards because of this.

I was lucky enough to come across a local retailer selling out voodoo cards very cheaply, so I picked up a Voodoo4 4500 PCI for a song.

The question is will the two cards coexist in the same computer happily? - removing the GeForce is out of the question - the Voodoo4 is going in for the purpose of enabling glide based games to run well and for that purpose alone. I don't care about its 2d or D3D/OpenGL capabilities.

How do I go about doing it (software wise - I already have a video switchbox to switch between the cards on the monitor).

Quick rundown of system
AMD 1.2 gig T-Bird
MSI K7T Pro (the original model)
320 mb PC100 memory
45 gig WD HDD
50x cdrom
17" monitor
300W AMD approved power supply in large mid tower case
Windows 98SE

Quick and non-comprehensive list of glide games
Deus Ex
Ultima Ascension
Outlaws (stop laughing - I still like to play it)
Unreal
more...

Any help appreciated.

Greg

 

[js1973]

I love Outlaws. The cutscenes are awesome. As far as your technical question, I have no idea. I'd like to know myself.

 

[HappyGamer2]

Getting a voodoo5 agp will solve all your problems, or getting a voodoo5 pci would be a better bet, heck with a V5 there wouldn't be much reason to have a MX in your system. LOL

Now to answer your quastion, If you can get voodoo4 pci that cheap I would go for it, It should work, but you may have to play around with it some, Note depending on the other games you play you may want to just use the V4 as your main card, and have the MX for the few games that it really does give a noticable performance boost over the V4.

 

[Gstanfor]

Note I already have the voodoo4. At the price I paid, it won't be hard to find uses for it or offload it if this doesn't work out.

regards

Greg

 

[TravisBickle]

that's quite a classy little dual monitor configuration you have there going to waste! of course you know about setting the boot up slot vga in the bios but I don't know if win9x handles it without much fuss. I suppose you would have to disable the mx and shut down, then choose pci boot and restart the computer. I have seen windows get its knickers in a twist though.

 

[Remedy]

your going to need one of these

I had a Radeon and V3 3000 pci in the same system and it wasn't any fun.

 

[Gstanfor]

I already have the VGA switchbox.

Yes, the Voodoo4 is classy, but it's very difficult to find Voodoo2 boards nowadays (even second hand where I live). I could have gone Voodoo3 2000 PCI I guess, but they aren't that much easier to locate, and I wanted good performance.

My main concern was that the Voodoo4 would actually work in a 2 card system - some VGA cards will not, and the Quick Install manual was stating the Voodoo4 should be the only card in the machine.

Regards

Greg

 

[Wingznut]

Why don't you install the V4 and see how it performs in all your games. You may very well like it just as much as the MX.

Give it a shot, anyway.

 

[Remedy]

Its not hard to find a voodoo2. You can look in the for sale forum and find one for about 25 bucks.

 

[Gstanfor]

Remedy: I live on the NorthWest coast of Tasmania, Australia. (It's the big island to the south of australia). The NW coast is semi-rural and the retailers are clueless. There are very few Voodoo2's sold second hand yet, most people with one hereabouts would still be using it as their primary 3d card. A significant portion of the population don't have a home computer and those that do would have a machine around 300-400 mhz tops (unless they are a geek like me).

Wingnut: I'll let Anands' Voodoo4 review do the talking when it comes to performance versus the MX. Note I have a Hercules MX, faster than a stock MX.

Also I note you prefer Intel & 3dfx - I prefer AMD & nVidia.

If companies like Epic, origin, etc would pull their fingers out a little and write decent D3D drivers/engines in the first place it wouldn't even be necessary to have to add in a card to get the required performance out of an outdated and proprietary API.

Regards

Greg

 

[BFG10K]

Why don't you install the V4 and see how it performs in all your games. You may very well like it just as much as the MX.

The Voodoo 4 is a seriously underpowered video card and hence it has trouble supporting its own improvements over the Voodoo 3 (eg large textures and 32 bit colour). The MX will completely demolish a Voodoo 4.

 

[TravisBickle]

the Voodoo 4 states on the box it's only 25% more powerful than the V3, which issued a year later in the graphics industry is feeble progress compared to the rest...

 

[hans007]

go to the forsale forum. As of last month, a full 24mb SLI voodoo2 rig was going for $60 shipped.

 

[Gstanfor]

Well, I've got the two cards cooperating reasonably well so far with a few exceptions (Note I'm using the latest Omega drivers) :

Everything OpenGL has been hijacked by the Voodoo It also locks the machine and causes an explorer crash upon exit. :frown:
Same story for Glide - works then crashes upon exit.
The Voodoo4 refuses to recognise my monitor as PnP - changes it to a default monitor (It doesn't have an inf file)
The refresh rate on the V4 is stuck at 75hz no matter what (hztool, registry hacking etc) :disgust:
Direct3d works fine. Extended desktop works too.
I can't get the hub part of 3dxf tools to work - I can get the taskbar menu icon though.
I tried setting the performance tab back one notch (disables hardware mouse pointers) hoping that would fix the crashes on exit - no luck.

Any hints?

Greg

 

[Wingznut]

First off, I've never used a V4. So, I don't have any experience with it.

However, I've certainly learned over the years not to depend on website information for such decisions. If I had the opportunity (which you do), then I'd learn for myself. Often times, website's opinions differ from the actual user's.

But, whatever floats your boat.