Is 3dfx the only way to go for PCI gaming?

[yellowperil]

I'm returning my Radeon SDR PCI because I can't get it to work with my mobo (and the RMA replacement didn't work either). I want to upgrade my Voodoo3 3000 PCI but I only have PCI slots available. Should I be looking for a Voodoo5 5500? I've read that ATI and nVidia's drivers for their PCI cards aren't optimized for 3D gaming so even my V3 will beat them in that area. Any suggestions? BTW, I want to keep this below $100 if possible.

 

[rbV5]

For the best bang for your buck, upgrade your cpu. I think the V5 is a great PCI board, but your 466 celeron will be holding you back. P3 750's are under $100. After that, get a V5 or upgrade to an AGP board.

 

[vlieps]

I would say the same. I had Banshee and Celeron 366, upgraded to Voodoo5 and nothing happened, same speed in almost all games. Then I switched to P3 800 EB, and that was a real kick-ass thing. Everything is flying now.
Stay with Your V3 until You get a decent CPU.

 

[yellowperil]

edit: sorry, my mobo won't support Socket370 FC-PGA PIII's

 

[Rifter]

then i would say your best bet is to stay with the V3 or do a mobo/proc upgrade, i would recoomend the mobo/proc upgrade.

 

[TravisBickle]

sorry but your config isn't worth more than a V3 right now. if you are serious about games you'll need a processor upgrade. even something in 2D like Baldur's Gate II can use a faster CPU than yours. the V5 starts to really fly near 1GHz. PC chips and ECS are doing very cheap boards.

 

[Deeko]

The Voodoo5 is by far the best PCI card, T&L does not work well with PCI at all. Now, while they are right about your CPU, that will be holding you back, getting a Voodoo5 might work out well with that. You won't get much higher framerates, but you will be able to use full FSAA without any slowdown.

 

[Teasy]

You could get a PCI Kyro II board which will be released by both Hercules and INNO3D soon. The Kyro II has an advantage with PCI as it doesn't need to pass as many textures over the PCI bus. The reason for this is it doesn't texture unscene parts of the frame so in an average game it will need to upload less then half (even less then a third most of the time) the amount of textures as a traditional card for the same scene. This is why the 64mb Kyro II cards don't use AGP texturing, because they don't need it.

 

[yellowperil]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I'll probably get a new laptop in 12 months so I can live with the Voodoo3 (not that laptop gaming will be much better...or will it?).

Thanks for the heads up on Kyro II PCI, Teasy. I didn't know they were releasing one. The Kyro is more CPU dependent though, isn't it?

 

[Teasy]

Yep it will be more CPU dependent then a HW T&L card, but no more CPU dependent then a Voodoo5, What CPU do you have BTW?

 

[Dark4ng3l]

<< I'll probably get a new laptop in 12 months so I can live with the Voodoo3 (not that laptop gaming will be much better...or will it?). >>



Hmm I highly sugest that you dont try gaming on laptops. The heardware(3d chips) eat batery life, are expensive and slow too. Not to mention that tiny keyboard thing in the laptop sucks for gaming, the screen makes my eyes hurt too.

 

[BFG10K]

Get a new mobo and processor. It's a waste of time getting a new video card in your current situation.

And forget about getting a laptop for gaming. Laptops generally sux0r for gaming plus they cost much more than desktop systems.

 

[kmmatney]

I agree with almost everyone else. The V3 3000 is a perfect match for your celery. I don't think the Radeon SDR would have been much of an improvement. By the time you get a laptop (12 monthes) you'll easily be able to get one with a good video card for gaming (2nd or 3rd revision of the Geforce2Go, ATI radeon mobile, etc...).

 

[TravisBickle]

well the Kyro II might need less texture bandwidth, but are modern games going to be satisfactory on a 466/66 processor and bus? what about all that modern big polygon throughput and AI. go have a look at the minimum specs on the boxes at EB.

 

[vlieps]

>>>edit: sorry, my mobo won't support Socket370 FC-PGA PIII's

Neither did mine, just got an FCPGA-Slot1 adapter. Works flawless.

 

[Teasy]

<<<well the Kyro II might need less texture bandwidth, but are modern games going to be satisfactory on a 466/66 processor and bus? what about all that modern big polygon throughput and AI. go have a look at the minimum specs on the boxes at EB.>>>

Exactly how much is a HW T&amp;L PCI card going to help with poly counts when your pushing 64mb of textures over the bus along with the polys on a bus thats 4 times slower then AGPx2? In the end it will barely help at all so which would you preffer, a card that might be very slightly faster for a system at poly throughput or a card that will give the system much better graphics by being able to play games at high res and 32bit with EMBM, Dot3 etc and less stuttering in large textured games because of not needing as much PCI bandwidth? I know which one sounds better to me. Now if a HW T&amp;L card could really help the system allot and really show an improvment in most games through significantly better poly throughputs then that would be worth it but my question is does it really do that at all? Recently I installed a Radeon on a freinds Celeron 400 system and the T&amp;L unit really did nothing for his framerate at all. Yeah he could play at higher res and 32bit at the same framerate as his Voodoo3 did at lower res but this magical faster framrate thats supposed to come from taking the transform and lighting responsibility off the processor never really happened, and if its eye candy you want then in the PCI market the Kyro II will deliver the most.

 

[Wik]

I had a P3 550e and a V3, I upgrades to a V4 4500 with no FPS increase. I used that for a few months then got a V5 5500, still no increase in FPS, I then upgraded to a P3 1000 and then got a huge increase. So like the rest, don't bother changing out the V3.

 

[TravisBickle]

Teasy, no disrespect, I'm sure you know quite a lot about videocards but your answer if awful english and doesn't follow what I was saying even. i can hardly read what you wrote.
the point was that modern games have higher poly counts than old games, it is a trend. so now I presume there is more polygon bandwidth to add to texture bandwidth.
who mentioned T&amp;L? - do I care about T&amp;L? T&amp;L is only good if the software supports it anyway.
higher resolutions need more polygons unless you have been living in some other universe. it's not just a matter of card bandwidth at high resolutions.
no way can I recommend a Celeron 466/66

 

[bluemax]

I say hold out on ALL upgrades for a month.
Then, get yourself one of the new nVidia nForce &quot;Crush&quot; motherboards along with a Duron processor. You'll get both very nice upgrades in speed and video for a good price!

 

[Garion]

<< Get a new mobo and processor. It's a waste of time getting a new video card in your current situation.

And forget about getting a laptop for gaming. Laptops generally sux0r for gaming plus they cost much more than desktop systems. >>



I'd be a bit careful about that remark - Wait until we see our first laptop with a Palomino / Athlon 4 and a Geforce2Go!

- G

 

[yellowperil]

I just got HL today and it flies in WickedGL with the V3 (+ downloading CS now), so I guess I'll stick with this card. Thanks for the help