The FASTEST Voodoo3 Card available!
Written: Mar 10 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: TV Tuner, fastest 3dfx card available, one card does it all
Cons: 6-foot Pod may be inconvenient, proprietary monitor plug
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| gimlix2's Full Review: 3dfx Voodoo3 3500, (16 MB) AGP Video Card |
3dfx's Voodoo3 3500TV is an extremely nice card. It combines a decent 2D engine, the 3D acceleration that is 3dfx's fame, and also a TV Tuner.
I have both the Voodoo3 2000 PCI and the Voodoo3 3500TV and have benchmarked both using 3DMark 99 Max. The Voodoo3 3500 performs a consistent 10-20% faster overall in resolutions ranging from 640x480 to 1024x768. At 1280x1024, it performs a whopping 25% faster! Not too shabby.
The TV Tuner card is excellent. The picture is clear and the sound quality is awesome. The TV Tuner card is powered by a BookTree 848, which is basically the industry standard. I did not test the TV-out capability.
There have been no compatibility issues; all games and software run perfectly. The DVD software that comes with it is sufficient, and there has been a recent update on the drivers for Win9X.
There have been a couple of irritations that I found on this card. One is the extremely convenient, and inconvenient 6-foot "Pod". This pod allows you to hook up almost any device from TVs, VCRs, console game systems. It is extremely convenient in that it can be moved at will for the source and outputting to any of the previous named devices. However, this 6-foot blue cord is absolutely NECESSARY. This can be a pain because the Voodoo3 3500 does NOT use the standard 15-pin connector, but a proprietary one that is only found on the cord. So whether or not you intend to use the various video capture and output features, you may wish to consider the number of cables already behind your computer. The price may also be a tad steep, with the current retail going from $175+ USD.
The most definitive factor before you buy is what you want it for: if you want to play ONLY games, then perhaps a newer Geforce or TNT2 based card may be better since they are not only faster in most cases, but also support 32-bit (as opposed to the limitation of 16-bit to Voodoo cards). If you want to have TV-in capability on your computer, but already love your video card the way it is, might I suggest getting a separate TV Tuner card instead. Of course, if you want to have all the video in/out features as well as one of the most support video card chipsets for gaming, this is the card for you!
Hope this helps!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
gimlix2
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Location: Berkeley, CA
Reviews written: 5
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