I found my Voodoo 2 SLI setup in the closet

[SemiCycle]

Man, I thought I had given these away. Nope, they were sitting in the bottom of a plastic bin in my closet. I think I'll try to install them so I can compare some games to my 9700Pro.

These are STB Black Magic 12MB cards.

http://members.cox.net/semicycle/voodoo/2.jpg

http://members.cox.net/semicycle/voodoo/4.jpg

[SemiCycle]

I found the 2 external cables, but not the internal SLi cable. Anyone got one or know where to get it cheap?

I also need some WindowsXP drivers, else I'll need to install win98 2 use these. Can anyone give me some advise?

[MaxPower81]

www.voodoofiles.com usually has all the drivers for the voodoo series cards.

[Aslan]

The only Voodoo2 Drivers that I have found to work somewhat reliably in Windows XP are the FastVoodoo2 (http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/3dfx/voodoo2/winxp.htm) drivers. The Direct3D and OpenGL support is still a bit flakey from my experience, but it's the only XP driver that I know of that supports SLI, and Glide works just as well as in Win98.

As for the SLI cable, try Ebay, or maybe ask around at the x3dfx forums. (http://pub43.ezboard.com/bx3dfx)

Edit: You can also make your own SLI cable using an old floppy cable as seen here. (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edwardbamford/temp/index.htm)

[Helgaiden]

let us know the bench results! :D

[SemiCycle]

Thanks for the linkage Aslan. I'll down load them know. Someone offered to send me a cable, so I'll have to wait a week or so for that. I'll post bench marks at that time.

[PoX Freak]

This i gotta see......two 3dfx cards, STI-ed, and running under XP.
Who would've thought anyone would use 12MB cards nowadays, even 32meg seems small compared to todays standards.....
Put up some 3DMark scores if you get em.
Also, the old floppy cable trick works fine...did it myself back in the day.

[AllenSmoker]

I found one of my voodoo2's in the garage about 6 months ago. Couldnt bring myself to install it tho, heh. Traded it in at a local shop for a Wing Commander game, and then sold the game on ebay for $100.

[bigemike]

yeah I found my 8 meg diamond voddo card in my upstairs today. got those 166mhzmmx computers were great weren't they. This card really brought tomb raider to life.

[wandl]

holy cow this is old school!

[cursor]

Ah back in the day... Had a buddy use his employee discount to get me a Diamond Voodoo II 8 meg for like friggin' $300. That was the ****znit along with my 8 meg All in Wonder 'Pro' (pre-Radeon days, don'tcha know). I think my in-laws still are running that setup on my old celeron 366@550. That was a computer filled with slockety goodness! I didn't have the bucks for going all out on SLI though. I DO remember that my card came with that freaky little 15-pin (?) IDE looking cable though.

I'll still pop in Rogue Squadron now and again. What a fine game that was (is?). Da bomb.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

[viper_va]

aw yes, those were indeed the days, when men were men, and women were scarce to us denizens of the cyber world. Voodoo2 sure was a great card. Used mine for 4 years, just had to have it after I played Battlezone on it in the Gateway store. Had mine daisychained through some ancient Nvidia 16mb TV-tuner card, then out to the monitor. That was the first PC my family had, a Gateway P-II 450, with a 21in monitor (size does matter). $4000, but good times.

[Damian]

PII 450? Old times? Heh, I do most of my internet browsing and posting here on my PII 233 Thinkpad.

[BmanG17]

Must s33 bencheis ASAP :)

[mtnbikerjerry]

Dang, that is a classic card. Collectors ITEM. Don't ebay it unless you have to, say if you have kids or something comes up. Put it up in a picture frame when you are done running some benchies. Is it possible to run 4 of these cards in SLI mode? Is there a cable that supports that?

[Samoyed]

Ya well I have a "Ark 2000" VLB card for a 486. It rocked back in 1996.

[john240sx]

Originally posted by PoX Freak
Who would've thought anyone would use 12MB cards nowadays, even 32meg seems small compared to todays standards.....


yeah, but back when the V2's came out 12megs was massive, putting two in SLI for 24megs would be the modern equivelent of putting a pair of 256MB 9800Pro's in SLI (not that it's possible but you get the idea).

[SemiCycle]

The drivers installed without a hitch. Thanks Aslan. No SLi cable yet though. Soemone said they woudl send me one, if it doesn't get here soon, I'll go to work and ruin a couple floppy cables. the games. Any suggestion on the games to bench?

Also, I'm running the V2s on the Athlon XP system in my sig.

[funnyperson1]

QuakeIII and UT Glide come to mind. Also try some newer games to see if it runs.

[BmanG17]

als0 try 3dmark01SE jsut for kicks....if it will run it.

[Chowdy]

SLI?

[XJ]

sounds like this SLI means linking them together, from what i understand. i may be wrong though. this was all a little before my (computer) time, but sounds cool nonetheless.

[Phoenix87]

SLI is when you linked two video cards together. Basically doubling your performance.

I still remember my Vodoo2 and diamond viper in SLI. Was finally able to play half-lfie :) .

[JigPu]

SLI - Scan Line Interleaving

Basically, SLI 'doubles' performance of a single video card by having each do only half the work (though everything I've read says it mainly impacts fill rate performance). Card #1 will do even number rows on the screen (row 0, row 2, row 4, row 6.... row 638), and card #2 will do all the odd rows on the screen (row 1, row 3, row 5, row 7.... row 639).

Once the 'half drawn' frames are drawn, they are interleaved and made into one frame consisting of all the rows 0-640 (or whatever you have your resolution set to.

It would be REALLY cool if you could SLI 3, 4, or more cards together, but 3dfx never allowed this feature, and the hardware didn't support it.

JigPu

[ThePCGuy]

Try a Trident 1MB PCI svga video card. I recently sold the card to a customer for use in his P133, 16MB ram system. Ahh, running windows 98se at 24bit color. Now thats a force to be reckoned with. Whats amazing is that card is about 6 or 7 years old if I am not mistaken. The card has been through about 4 different computer systems total, athough I am sure this is its final resting place.

- The PC Guy

[John Jr]

I still have a couple of Voodoo 2s. Cool to see them getting played with. I really did like the VooDoo products. Easy never an issue with them. Sad times when they left us...

[Bashar]

Well When Tribes2 came out I tried to use my 2 voodoo2 in SLI mode just to see how it would work against my newer card. It was crapppppppp it was like watching a slide show. I still have them in a box..... just cant get rid of them. They were my first really cool 3d card set-up and it ran games like Q2 and tribes so well.

[Aslan]

Yep, I tried to run Tribes2 on a Voodoo2 as well, it did work decently.......at the lowest possible resolution (320x280) and graphics settings. :D