Upgrading Voodoo 3 3000 for Asus ATI Radeon 9200SE 128MB

[mrpolly]

I have an old baby AT based PC that I'm upgrading for someome who does not want to throw out his old system. Its a socket 7 based system (TMC AI5VG+ board) with a K6-2 (450 MHz) cpu and a Voodoo 3 3000 (AGP2x) video card. The whole system is around 6 years old and he wants to upgrade with a better video card to get a bit more use out of the system before total upgrade in about a years time.

I suggested a Asus ATI Radeon 9200SE 128MB AGP8X graphics card which costs less that $50 and I believe was introduced around 2 to 3 years ago, but still much newer than his current Voodoo card. According to the ATI website the card will work with an AGP 2x slot.


Is the Radeon 9200SE likely to give him a significant performance (3D) boost over the much older Voodoo 3 3000 card?

mrpolly.

 

[Malladine]

uh huh

 

[tuteja1986]

well sort of ... but don't expect it to play any new games

 

[selfbuilt]

Hmm, I guess that should work in this case. I know the original 1X/2X AGP took 1.5V or 3.3V signalling voltages, whereas 4X AGP accepted 0.8V or 1.5V, and modern 8X only takes 0.8V. That's why modern 4X/8X cards will work on older systems. But most 8X cards won't run on a 2X mobo ... the 9200 series is an exception. Of course, we are only talking backward compatibility here, not forward - that Voodoo3 3000 was 3.3V, so it won't run on a modern mobo.

So, the 9200SE should run on a 2X AGP - if so, it will certainly be quite a boost. Back in the day, I had a similarly equiped system and upgraded my trusty Voodoo3 3000 to a 4X GF2-Ti and saw a huge increase at the time (the 9200SE is likely to be marginally faster than that old GF2). And of course, the 9200SE supports DX8 which my GF2 didn't. Still, I wouldn't expect to play anything that came out in the last couple of years. As I recall, UT2003 was a real struggle on the GF2 ... ah, memories

 

[mrpolly]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986
well sort of ... but don't expect it to play any new games

As long as it performs much better than the current Voodoo card.

mrpolly

 

[selfbuilt]

Originally posted by: mrpolly

Originally posted by: tuteja1986
well sort of ... but don't expect it to play any new games

As long as it performs much better than the current Voodoo card.

mrpolly

I've dug out some old numbers for you.

First off, a 64MB 9200SE on a XP1800+ system scored 4620 in 3DMark01, compared to 4835 for 64MB GF2-Ti on a similar XP2000+ system. So I think we can safely assume your 128MB 9200SE should be at least are fairly comparable.

Secondly, that 64MB GF2-Ti on a AMD Duron 1.3Ghz scored 7390 in 3DMark00 compared to 2800 for a Voodoo3 3000 on that same test bed. So it seems to be at least 2.5x faster on that fairly well-matched system for the time ...

... but, that Voodoo3 3000 only scored 1130 on 3DMark00 when run on a K6/2-400 test bed (compared to 2800 on a Duron 1.3Ghz, about the same as original Athlon 1GHz).

So, it seems you were clearly CPU-limited on that K6/2 system even with the Voodoo3 (and that's by 2000/01 gaming standards!). I doubt you will see much of a benefit to the 9200SE on that setup - but at least you could crank up AA/AF without a performance hit.

Hope that helped ....

 

[ElFenix]

voodoo 3 ran at what? 166/166?

i really want to go dig through my old parts and put together a win 95 box to play old games. GL quake ftw!