After the smoke clears...
Written: May 19 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good and fast gameplay at a budget price
Cons: None
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| STATIC3D's Full Review: 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 |
OK, it's MAY of 2000 and the GeForce2 GTS cards are starting to come out. The next generation of 3DFX Voodoo cards will be out soon too. These video cards boast the latest and greatest features ever seen. There is only one problem with these cards...cost. The "average Joe" gamer would be hard pressed to afford (or justify) paying $250 to $600 for a video card that will be used for just gaming purposes.
So, what is the "average Joe" gamer to do?...start looking at cheaper solutions. There are a great number of cards on the market that fall into the below-$100 to $150 range (not TOO hard for a gamer to justify). I have been playing games since before the days of the Atari 2600 (in arcades). Now, while that may classify me as a "hardcore" gamer, I still look for a good deal.
I have been around 3DFX cards since the Diamond Voodoo1. I used a Diamond Monster Voodoo2 12Meg SLI set up for about 1 1/2 years. And, I have also installed a Voodoo3 in a friend's machine. My friends and I have always received good performance and stability from 3DFX video cards.
After a bad experience with the Diamond/S3 ViperII Savage 2000 (check my Epinions review on that one), I decided to go back with "what I knew"...3DFX. The prices of the Voodoo3 3000's are getting cheaper since the newer Voodoo's are just on the horizon. I was able to find V3 3000's (AGP) online for $98 (+shipping & handling).
The features of the V3 3000 AGP are: (as listed on 3DFX website)
128-bit 2D, 3D and video accelerator
Voodoo3 graphics processor
16MB high-speed SDRAM
AGP 2x
MPEG-1, 2 playback
Connect to PC monitor or TV (S-video)
350 MHz RAMDAC
166 Megapixels/second
333 Megatexels per second peak fill rate
7 Million Polygons per second peak processing
2.66 GB per second peak bandwidth
Patented Single-pass multi-texturing
Supports resolutions up to 2046x1536
DVD Hardware Assist
Supports DirectX, Glide and OpenGL
Alpha-Blending
Single Pass, Single Cycle Bump Mapping
Single Pass, Single Cycle Trilinear MIP-Mapping
Programable Fog Tables
Sub-Pixel and Sub-Texel Correction
Gouraud Shading
Replacing my V2 SLI setup, that occupied 3 PCI slots (one 2D card and the two V2's), with the one AGP slot V3 3000 cleared out a LOT of space (and heat) in my case. The install of the V3 3000 was very quick and painless. In a matter of a few minutes I had everything up and running again.
Now came the real test...how did games run? The answer...VERY WELL! The V3 produced a crisp and clear picture for both the desktop (1280x1024 is my usual) and while playing games. The images produced by the V3 3000 were much smoother and cleaner than what the V2's were capable of producing. The TV-out, while running 800x600 resolution (the max for TV-out), also worked great on my TV.
The only thing that I had any trouble with was with the GLQuake game. The fix was as simple as setting my desktop color depth to "High Color 16bit" and re-launching the game (it's a GLQuake limitation to run on Voodoo cards at 16 bit). After changing that setting, I was able to crank GLQuake's resolution up to 1280x1024 and had gameplay as smooth as glass. I threw several other games at the V3 3000, and, it threw them right back with higher resolutions and better picture quality/gameplay (read: frames per second) that I was expecting.
So, if you are in the market for a good gaming card, and budget is of any concern, then I recommend looking towards the V3 3000.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
STATIC3D
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 2 members
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