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put me out of my misery about the V5!

T

TravisBickle

Platinum Member
no i don't have a problem with it I don't even have one. I can get a V5 pci for under $150 new even with state tax on it. I have read reviews very carefully on it and the only problem seems to be with a high DVD cpu usage for which the pci bus doesn't help either. the advantage of a not-too-expensive pci card is that I can use it in my integrated board and have dual monitors. also I can have it in any board and in a year's time put some whizz DDR card in the agp if i need to

i like sims mainly, anything demanding. 800x600 is alright, I would like to max the detail and get rid of funny crawling jagged lines and things like that. is the V5 for me? i oddly enough don't buy games that often so they are not exactly cutting edge (KA 52 I think is the most recent). is the V5 a good idea or am I missing something? i have seen bump mapping and it doesn't seem to add much. problem is I've never SEEN the V5 so I can only judge it by downloading screenshots. the fsaa better be better than the Radeon's.
how scared should I be of a lack of driver support now for the V5? do voodoo5 OWNERS actually like their card? experiences appreciated
whatever you play may the force be with you 😉
 
I have a V5 5500 pci..while it is not the fastest card in games the image quality is great with 2x fsaa at 1024x768...I have run it on a piii700@945 with 256 mg ram.

With the present dirvers I have no problems with fps ....speed is fine for me but I know it not 150fps...not sure on sims

The real issue is the driver support there will probably be none...I am putting together a new computer and did not want the Gefirce2..fsaa not as good and it is expensive...Radeon prices are better but I am not sure about the drivers..some say they are great others think they suck..so I opted to get a used G400 for the old computer my wife mostly does 2d...and move the V5 over

I love the V5 but this is my opinion only...I have never seen or used Geforce or Radeon..I am sure they are excelent options...but a new generation cards are 3-4mo away....

Just beware of the lack of drivers for games probably in next 6mo there will be little problems since they were being developed when #dfx was still around and there is a "large" base of voodoo cards...but over longer term probably not the best option
 
Everyone always talks about the horrible "jaggies" in flight sims. The only time you would ever notice them would be sitting on the runway, or in flight to a mission. In combat, never, unless your a coward and don't like to mix it up. However, the V5500 is supposed to have the best support for FSAA and at high res, decent frame rates and look good too. No I don't have one, and I would be concerned that if a game came out that needed driver support to fix minor/major problems that there would be none. 3dfx's demise is a sad thing for all of us.
 
but jagged lines do spoil the "virtual reality". so much care is gone onto textures and lighting, and then there are these grotty blocky edges. particularly a shame at 800x600 where some of my games only run.
 
Well at low res. I guess thats true. But I would much rather play at high res, with 32bit. You get much better smoke, tracer, bullet strikes with puffs of smoke, ect. that you don't get playing at 16bit. in other words, I would rather take the hit(FPS wise) playing 32bit, high res., than I would playing FSAA, 16bit low res. Just because of the special effects you'll see.
 


<< thanks Deeko, but have you compared it to the other mainstream contenders too like the MX and Radeons? >>


The Voodoo5 beats the MX in most games over 640x480. By a pretty good margin, thanks to the extra bandwidth. The Radeon is generally faster, but FSAA in simulations is incredible, trust me. It has to be seen to be believed. It is great in flight/racing sims, and simply phenomonal in sports sims.
 
Ive heard peaple saying that the Radeon was faster but when i had my radeon it wouldnt outperform my 5500 on anything but 3dmark2000.It was a nice card though.Also it was only a 32 meg ddr not a 64.
 
if you want fsaa get a voodoo5, I had a radeon 32mb ddr, overall my v5 is better card, with or without fsaa being considered. plus the v5 has glide a dead API, well tell that to all my glide games in my hardrive.

3dxtreme

The Pulpit
 
oh wow, all the bigtime voodoo players are here to advise me! in fact the commendations are so good I wonder if I can believe it! I always guessed that voodoo satisfaction amongst owners was high but this is remarkable... I can hardly believe my eyes! really? the V5 preferable to the Radeon? this commendation is in fact SO GOOD I have trouble believing it but mucho gracias folks. this video card cost 250% more only 3-4 months ago at most places.
 
Well im just telling you what i thought since i also owned a radeon at one time.I have the kyro in my system now but i love the 5500.I cant help but to swap them out all the time to compare the 2.The 5500 is the faster card but the kyro is still new to me.The main reason im using the kyro over my 5500 is heat in my system.The kyro also does dot-3 and environment bump mapping but the game that i play (giants) and bought the card for doesnt use it with that card.Planetmoon is working on it.So now that ive typed all this i may put my 5500 back in till i can use the features on the kyro.Thanks alot for the thread.Here i go card swapping again.
 
Killrose,

You have to play it on a V5 to understand. In all honestly, only recently did I see Falcon 4 running on a GTS with AA. I was like OMG, the texture aliasing is soo crappy. I obviously knew that RGSS was better overall, but I was not aware how drastic a different it made on the textures and frankly I was rather surprised. So anway, if it is that bad on the GTS's AA it is REALLY bad without it.
 
I owned a 32MB GTS and a 64MB GTS &quot;Pro&quot;, as well as a v5-5500

My 5500's fans just died (I've surmised that the cat unplugged them. He's always fu(king around inside my case, the little dickhead), so my 5500 just fried.

To give you an idea of what I think of the 5500, I am FRANTICALLY searching all over the net trying to find a damn place that actually has the sumb!tch in stock.

What Dave said? He's right. You've got to see the 5500's FSAA to believe it. I can no longer play NFS-PU without the 5500. I have to get the RGSS back, or that game just...well...it's like going back to software Quake1. I just can't bring myself to do it.
 
Beleive me I wish I really could try it, wish I had a buddy with one just so I could look at it
in action. Are you able to play at 32bit and a decent frame rate?, because like I said, I've played at 16bit, and then at 32bit, and there are some neat effects that show up in 32bit that you just wouldn't see in 16bit. I've plyed a lot of Combat Flight 1&amp;2, and Janes WWII, and its pretty cool to watch your bullet strikes make tiny sparks/puffs of smoke as you walk your
bullets along the wing and into the cockpit in 32bit.
 
thanks guys, real nice info, I have been too stupid to notice the difference from 16-32bit color. I always thought that the 32bit hit was too heavy on anything but the Radeon. this reminds me of the bashing 3dfx used to get because they wouldn't implement 32bit colour with the voodoo3. now I guess it has moved on to a lack of T&amp;L.
what's that about heat? two 0.25micron chips running at ~180mhz really heats up? will this cause a problem in my micro atx system with the poor airflow and 150W psu(!)?
 
It depends on the game to whether there is enough performance to get 32-bit. Since you are averaging sub-pixels though, your 16-bit quality is lightyears beyond anything else, so typically you won't notice much a difference with 32-bit. I only run MDK2 in 32-bit out of everything I play, and that cause is simply for better Z accuracy.
 
TravisBickle:

I have read reviews very carefully on it and the only problem seems to be with a high DVD cpu usage

Yes, the Voodoo 5 has very poor DVD playback. It doesn't accelarate a lot of things that the competitors do.

for which the pci bus doesn't help either.

In the case of Voodoo boards there's no real difference between the AGP and PCI versions because they don't have a T&amp;L engine.

how scared should I be of a lack of driver support now for the V5?

In my case I couldn't bring myself to buy a card with no future driver updates, no matter how good it was.

Anyway the Voodoo 5 is a nice board and the existing drivers are rock solid. I have seen the Voodoo 5's FSAA and it did look very nice but I've always prefered higher resolutions to FSAA. I never use the FSAA on my GF2 MX anyway. But if you're a big sim fan this card would be perfect for you.

Dave:

You have to play it on a V5 to understand.

I have. High res looks far better than low res with FSAA.

your 16-bit quality is lightyears beyond anything else, so typically you won't notice much a difference with 32-bit

3dfx's postfilter is much better looking than normal 16 bit colour but 32 bit colour is much better than the Voodoo's 22 bit colour.
 
I would be concerned about future support.
nealh has suggested that due to the large customer base 3dfx voodoo series had, game support should continue for some time. Actually, the largest software developer, Microsoft, gave up on the Voodoo card way before 3dfx anounced they were closing up shop. While the V4/V5 are exceptions, the V3, V2 and older cards did not support 32bit color, and some MS games like Links 2001, required 32bit color for 3d hardware assist to work. In other words, they couldn't care less about a customer base, and simply go with what's current.

Seeing as the V5 is priced at the same level as the Radeon and GeForce2 GTS, it doesn't make much sense to buy the card that is discontinued, and does not outperform either card. If performance were equal, I wouldn't expect you should have to pay more than 1/2 the price, due to it's doneness status.

I have yet to hear what is going to happen for warranty service on 3dfx cards. From the looks of things, it is left with 3dfx all the way. That means even though you get a nice retail package, you basically end up with an OEM type card with perhaps a 30 day exchange warranty from the place of purchase. Just another &quot;what-if&quot; to consider.
 
Well, now you have heard from all the 3dfx &quot;zombies&quot;(😉), I'll give my take.

The V5 sounds like it was designed for nearly your exact type of useage. With the excpetion of lesser DVD playback support, the V5 should be quite a bit better then either the GF2 or Radeon for your uses. On top of the fact that it does have the best FSAA(Radeon is the poorest btw) it also has Glide support which for the types of games you play will give you an additional boost in many situations(the Glide API has less CPU overhead then either D3D or OpenGL so running in Glide mode gives you a slight performance boost even when you are CPU limited a great deal of the time).
 
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