Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

3dfx Voodoo 5 Review

Posted by Hemos on from the bleedin'-fast dept.

gnewt writes "The guys at The Tech Report have put together a pretty comprehensive review of 3dfx's V5 5500 AGP. There's a comparison against several NVIDIA products, including the GeForce2, on image quality, FSAA, performance, and mip mapping. Overall, a nice introduction to modern 3D accelerators."

5 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. 3dfx's linux support is something of a myth by Tridus · · Score: 3

    From page 10 in the article:

    "A note on Linux performance
    We managed to get pretty far down the road of testing the Voodoo 5 using XFree86 4.x with Linux before we discovered that 3dfx's current X drivers don't support dual-chip operation with the V5. That means no SLI mode and no FSAA, either. At that point, we decided to forego benchmarking the V5 in Linux until the drivers have some time to mature. 3dfx has committed to open source principles and to Linux support, and we have every reason to believe they'll continue their tradition of decent Linux support. But it ain't there yet."

    Gee, no problem, I'm only missing one of my two cpu's, and half the memory. I wonder if that means I still need the external power?

    So the v5's linux support is about as good as Win9x's support for a dual processor system, that being you only get half of what your trying to use.

    Funny how the GeForce2 GTS's Linux scores are within 99% of the Windows scores.

    But then, what do I know?

    --
    -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
  2. Re:Yes... by nakaduct · · Score: 4
    Above an average of about 40FPS, nobody notices anymore - they can't!

    As others have mentioned, the top end is probably closer to 60fps than 40.

    More important, though, is the headroom you get with a faster card. A game like Q3 has a standard deviation of about 7fps, which means over 15% of your frames are under 33fps, and about 3% are under 26fps. These are very noticeable slowdowns.

    At 80fps mean, your standard deviation may jump to 14 fps (it's not a linear progression in real life, but for argument's sake...), 97% of your frames are at 52fps+, and 99.85% above 38fps. So it's smooth all the time, not just when you're standing around with nothing happening.

    And that's why NVidia is still in business.

    cheers,
    mike

  3. Intro to modern graphics cards by Datafage · · Score: 3
    No, this is not an introduction to modern graphics cards, it's an outdated review. An actual introduction can be had at Maximum Hardware.

    -----------------------

    --

    Nicotine free Amish .sig.

  4. Time? by Frac · · Score: 3
    Isn't it time to fire the entire 3dfx R&D department, assuming they have one? I still find it very amusing that after 4 years (when I got my Diamond Monster 3d Voodoo1), 3dfx is still trying to squeeze the last drops out of the dying Voodoo architecture.

    VSA-100 is probably their biggest creation for a long time, but simplicity of the chip, and it's need for parallelism for multiple VSA-100s which basically amounts to SLI on the same card is suggesting that 3dfx should spend less money on those dumb commercials and spend more on actually making something good.

    Those little tricks don't work anymore when you're starting to become the underdog, with companies like nVidia and ATI nipping at your heels...

  5. Re:Yes... by TheTomcat · · Score: 3

    Above an average of about 40FPS, nobody notices anymore - they can't!

    Maybe not conciously, but it DOES make a difference. Ever seen an I-Max movie? They're shot at 48FPS instead of 24, and it definately makes a difference.