Does it still work? 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 in 2024
43I have two Pentium 3 computers I built myself 24 years ago, in the year 2000, I had my first job and saved money to buy a Pentium 3 733MHz, 128MB of RAM and a 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500, since then that desktop was upgraded to a GeForce 3 Ti200 somewhere in the year 2002 or 2003 and the Voodoo 5 5500 AGP was moved to another desktop I had in 2001.
First I want to see if the Voodoo 5 still works, so I started with this Pentium 3 600Mhz, 256MB RAM and the Voodoo 5 5500 still inside it.
Before I install the Voodoo 5 on the other Pentium 3 I need to be make sure it is working as it is right now, with the GeForce 3 Ti200.
Yes, it is working, Windows 2000 is booting up, just as the last time I booted this computer somewhere in 2010.
I even have all the games and 3dmark 2001 still installed on this computer, so before I check the Voodoo 5 on it, I will run the benchmarks on the Geforce 3 Ti200 and we can compare the results later when I test the Voodoo 5 5500.
First is 3dMark 2001
The Geforce 3 was famous to have "hardware support of "transform and Lighting" which 3dMark 2001 tested in it's benchmarks, that's why in the loading screen you see it says "Pure HW" which mean pure hardware support for Transform and Lighting.
3dMark 2001 score is 3996 3D Marks.
Quake 3 Arena on the Geforce 3 reaches 68.4 fps
Now let's uninstall the Nvidia video driver, shutdown the computer, remove the Geforce 3 Ti200 and replace it with the 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP video card.
Quake 3 test first, doing the timedemo command and running the demo to get the result of 41 fps, but I saw a lot of stuttering and I think the game ran out of memory, 128MB memory isn't enough for Windows 2000 and Quake 3.
the second benchmark run of Quake 3 results in 52 fps, a 10 fps increase. Ideally you should have at least 256MB RAM on a Pentium 3 with Windows 2000 and Quake 3 arena. The 52 FPS result is 15 FPS lower than the 68 FPS the Geforce 3 Ti200.
Quake 2 gets 60 fps, might be because of v sync of 60Hz, I don't remember if v sync is turned on or off
And The Voodoo 5 got 1398 3D Marks, which is much lower than the 3996 3D Marks the Geforce 3 had on the same machine.
And that's why the voodoo 5 failed, it was already too slow when it was released to compete again the Geforce 2 at the same year, and the Geforce 3 was quickly released to finally give gamers at the time a worthy video card.
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