Need help selecting vid card.

[CanisLupus]

Running Win 98 on AMD K6-2 500 mhz bought 11/1999 from Circ. City. NEC Model GT 200, with Sis 530 vid. Just upgraded from 64 to 256 MB RAM now my games "stutter" even more than b-4. Guy at store suggested C.Labs 3d annhiliator, but had none in stock. Pricewatch has good prices,but not sure which (if any) to purchase. Is there a better card for under $150? I can get a voodoo 5000 for $200, but not sure about ongoing support since they are out of biz.
Haven't popped the case yet, so not sure about AGP or PCI, but will find out.

Please help, my games are suffering from lack of use.

 

[cmaMath13]

Based on your cpu, I would not go over the Voodoo 3 3500 or GeForce (original). Personally, I would go with Voodoo 3.

 

[Sunner]

Just get a Voodoo3.
They work very good with SS7 systems, and its performance will be good enough for your system.
Many "true" AGP cards such as GeForce's have problems with alot of SS7 mobos.

 

[CanisLupus]

Well, that's 2 votes for voodoo 3, I'll check into it. Thank you

 

[CanisLupus]

One more quick question. After looking @ pricewatch, I see a lot of different voodoo 3 cards, can you help by narrowing down the field some?

 

[Sunner]

Voodoo3-2000, lowest end of the standard cards, 143 MHz core/mem, 300 MHz RAMDAC.

Voodoo3-3000, mid range card, 166 MHz core/mem, 350 MHz RAMDAC, comes with TV-out.

Voodoo3-3500TV, high end card, 183 MHz core/mem, 350 MHz RAMDAC, comes with a TV Tuner, though supposedly its not that great.

Then there's a Voodoo3-1000 which is an OEM product, I think its clocked at 125 MHz core/mem and doesnt come with a heatsink.

And finally you have the Velocity-100, which is pretty much a 8 meg V3 though its not named Voodoo.
The core is the same as the other V3's, clocked at 143 MHz, but one of the TMU's is disabeled by the drivers.
It can be enabeled with a simple reg hack though, which puts its performance right below the V3-2000.

Im pretty sure all of them come in both AGP and PCI version, not sure about the Velocity and 3000 though.

 

[CanisLupus]

Okay. You have my sincerest thanks, I've been wrestling with this problem for over a week now.

 

[Biggs]

How about a Radeon 32MB DDR?

 

[Sunner]

A tad overkill for a K6-2 500 no?

And remember that alot of AGP cards have problems with SS7 mobos, while the V3's tend to work flawlessly since they're pretty much PCI cards with an AGP interface.

 

[Petro89]

Yep, Skt 7 has probs with AGP cards, but the Voodoo cards don't use AGP texturing, and thus, your best choice would be a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP. I have 2 of these cards, one in an Athlon 900 and one in a K6-2 500, and I love them. I've never had a problem with either. Don't worry about bad drivers either, the final release is awesome. Of course, the Radeon/GF/Voodoo 5 are quite a bit faster, but a K6-2 will not push any of these cards to the limit. The Voodoo 4 4500 may also be a good choice since you'd get Voodoo 3 performance with the added bonus of 2x antialiasing. However, these cards are about $125-$150, and you can get a used V3 for $60 or so. I'd go for a V3.

 

[ChurchOfSubgenius]

One of my buddys bought a NEC from Circut Chitty and it had 2 PCI and one ISA and no AGP bus and a HUGE case with no fans, no ventilation and no fan on the heatsink of the Cel 333.:|

 

[HappyGamer2]

get a voodoo4 if you can afford to spend a little more otherwise get a voodoo3. if you get a voodoo don't worry about getting a pci card instead of agp card, the pci models almost performe as good as the agp models. the voodoo4 will give you 32bit, large texture support, and 2x fssa, this better than a voodoo3. still don't expect the pc to be all that fast with some of todays high load games even with a voodoo4 becuase of the k6-2 cpu
checkout this site:
hardops V4

 

[BFG10K]

Ignore the Voodoo 4. It's really too weak for today's games, plus it still costs quite a lot of money.

 

[HappyGamer2]

Ignore the Voodoo 3. It's really too weak for today's games. but it sure is cheap.

It's best to just junk your whole system and start over with a p3 or thunderbird, and of course it must be a geforce card.

 

[TravisBickle]

i don't know if SS7 problems with agp are circumventable or no, but the Voodoo4 is overpriced in comparison to the V3 and the reduced V5 normally. $200 for the V5 is too much now.

 

[HappyGamer2]

true, the voodoo4 is worst bargin of the voodoo3/4/5 lines, well maybe not.
here are the latest prices from pricewatch, agp models oem, price includes shipping
voodoo3 2000 $65 note the 2000 is pci, 3dfx quit making 2000 agp long ago, but i'm sure can you find one somewhere
voodoo3 3000 70
voodoo4 95
voodoo5 135 plus

considering the v5 is overpower for his pc and he would have to have room for it and a power supply strong enough to power it, it looks like v4 maybe the best deal overall, i would pay the extra 30 dollars any day for the v4 over the v3, but that's me