Ok its a Vanta laugh your head off

[woodenman80]

Right peeps someone help me. Ive been offered an AGP Vanta 16mb for 10 quid , Ive got a spare pc Amd K63 450 oc 550 but only a measly ATI 8mb pci. Will the vanta be a big speed improvment and is it worth a tenner, also can you overclock these puppys and if so how fast :)... and what software...

Any coments a well appreciated

[Monaco]

Hey, grab it. They OC sorta well, and the 3d acceleration may be slow by todays standards but it works. As well as being AGP over PCI, that helps quite a bit with new games having tons of textures. It's not the worlds greatest card but hey its cheap and better than the ATI.

[Vovan]

Hey!
It is worser than ATi!!!
Anyway, look at RAGE128 or something... or just buy TNT2.
It is LOT faster. It is just like Bicycle and car completition - Vanta and TNT2.

[Monaco]

yeah, but it's better than his 8 meg PCI ATI card.
If he had somebody else offering a TNT2 to him for 15, I'd say get that one instaed. But he don't!

Or do you?? Vovan's right, bike versus car=Vanta versus TNT2. Maybe not that bad, but Vantas ARE purposely crippled to be less competitive with the TNT2.

[woodenman80]

Well my view is i will give it a go as he has offered to let me try it so im going to borrow it overclock the hell out of it with my lovely new water cooled system and if its ok will have it got to be beter than ati where games look dodgy in d3d and dont work in opengl due to crap drivers.. :).
hmmm may post how fast i can get it lol :)

Woodenman

"All cancer suffers in the world smile :) it could get a lot worse"

[woodenman80]

Is it faster than a voodoo to at 3d acceleration in your minds ?????????????????????????

[Monaco]

Check it- a Vanta is a crippled TNT2, and the TNT2 is usually accepted as being faster than a Voodoo2, but not quite as good as voodoo3.

TNT2 was replaced by the Geforce256. Then the Geforce2, and now the Geforce3. So, it's like 3+ generations behind the current top cards. The Vanta was purposfuly design to be weaker then the TNT2-in some ways by half! The Vanta is essentially a broken TNT2.

Don't expect a miracle upgrade; in Q3 I'd say it's probably worth an extra 15 fps but not much more then your current setup.

But every little bit counts to me!! Let us know if it works out OK when you use it-

[woodenman80]

Picked up the vanta today and got it home took the heatsink of quite a big one but no fan. and what did i find underneath a tnt2 m64 chipset and not the vanta. so bonus i got a better chipset.
This now cheerfully overclocks using nvmax well past its default of
core 125 oc to 175
ram 150 oc to 172
at this speed it is completely stable and cool with a 80mm fan out of a PSU blowing on it. im well impressed geting a cheerful 1850 3dmarks in 3dmark 2000 at 800x600 16bit. I know this is pants but for a dirt cheap card not bad. better than voodoo2 anyways and loads quiter now i dont need twin 80mm to scrounge an extra 5-10 mhz oc.
well this means that cheap aint always nasty lol

Woodenman

[adamtekh]

get a voodoo 3 2000/3000/3500 their cheap i have one , get an 80 mm fan to blow across heat sink and u can OC it to around 195 mhz depends on which model u get

note , only 16 bit color

[woodenman80]

Any 3dfx stuff is all well and good but it is a dead end even thought they can overclock well. 16bit colour for one thats not to bad but the fact that driver support now is 0 - dodgy for anything . so 3dfx stuff is ruled out unless a 5000 falls on to my lap. :)

woodenman

[joey_rjm5]

I was roaming around in the cyber deals forum one day and found a post for a place that was selling voodoo 5 5500s for 50 bucks. I ordered 2 sold one for 100 bucks and kept the other. I'd say that it pretty much fell in my lap. That's the best deal I ever got on anything.

Well, have fun with your vanta.:cool:

[woodenman80]

2 voodoo 5500 for how much 50$ a piece well all i can say is you lucky sod. :) and yes that is falling into your lap easily. Problem is hardware at good reasonable prices is hard to come by in the UK
:(


Woodenman

[DAppel]

Well, how hard do you think it is to find good deals here in Brasil ?

A cheap M64 costs U$55 !!!

The only way to get cheap hardware is tricking some unexperienced guy into selling you cheap. That is something I'm not even considering doing, as I'm sure you guys would not either.

[joey_rjm5]

Yeah, since then I've learned to check the cyber deals forum here and at Anandtech. You can find some pretty good deals. Sucks for all of you who live in areas where hardware cost and arm and a leg. I hope you find what your looking for w/o ending up in a wheelchair:D

[woodenman80]

Lol i complain about people being able to get vid cards for 50$ a piece I aint even got 50$ lol spent last of cash on water cooling bits :) :)

Woodenman