Savage 2000 or Voodoo3 3000?

[Lehmann]

I was wondering which card would be better for a budget system that would probably only ever run Windows 98/ME. I'm aware that the Savage 2000 had a lot of driver problems early on, but I think it's significantly faster than the V3. It would be used on a system with a Duron 600-700 processor and 128 megs of ram. Quake3 is the most important game and framerates matter more than visual quality. Which one would be a better card for me? Thanks in advance.

 

[novice]

The Savage 2000 may be faster than a Voodoo 3 3000, BUT I sure wouldn't want to own a card with historically flakey driver support at best, and perhaps no future support at all. After all, isn't it a child of S3, who has decided to abandon the graphics card business entirely? The Voodoo 3, on the other hand, has had historically strong dirver support and is almost universally recognized as having few compatibility issues and installs/configures as easy as can be. I have been very satisfied with my 3dfx chipset cards, including 2 different Voodoo 2's, a Voodoo Banshee and 2 Voodoo 3 3000 PCI cards. Of course, I am biased, but my bias is based on personal experience with the 3dfx chipset cards.
Chuck

 

[oldfart]

Get the V3. You can find a good deal on them if you look a little. The visual quality is alot better than most people say. Get the 3000 over the 2000, Has a higher clock speed, faster ramdac, and a MUCH larger heatsink than the 2000.

 

[tonyou]

How about a GeForce MX?

Tony

 

[HotWire]

If you are talking low end.............less dollars spent........than the Voodoo 3000 is the way to go, I have seen it for as little as $70.00 on some sites whereas the GEForce MX is going to run you $120.00 (+-) and I second that stability and compatibility issue the V3000 is solid. It will be hard to find a game that doesn't run on it.

 

[HotWire]

Let me add over the past 4 years I have built about 100 systems using the VooDoo series maybe 30% with the 2000, 60 % with the 3000 and 10% with the 3500. Not once in all the years combined have I ever had to service any one of those systems for a video related issue. Each and every customer was satisfied with the quality and performance......that has to hold some weight. Congrats 3dfx for giving us a fine product for many years and although the technology maybe leaving them behind, I will always remember them for the very solid board they were.....and still are

 

[tonyou]

HotWire, now that you mentioned it. The Voodoo3 3000 I had for a year was very nice too. Like with all video cards, it still needed driver updates from time to time. Ever since nvidia took the 3D lead from 3dfx with TNT2 Ultra, it appeared that more games now come out running smoother and without problems on nividia chipsets.

But you are right about the price, $50 is a pretty big difference. I guess I was going by their retail prices, which is around $30.

Tony