Cześć,

In the forum members opinions, which were the fastest brand of Voodoo2 cards?  Creative, Diamond, Orchid Righteous, Guillemot, etc etc ... ?  :-/

What made the fastest Voodoo2 cards, the fastest?  Was it the MHz of memory chips?  Was there some other engineering advantage on the boards of a specific brand that made them faster than the rest?

* Btw, what was the fastest MHz on the memory chips, that you could buy on a Voodoo2? Was it 125Mhz or more?

And in your personal opinion, which were your favourite Voodoo2s?  8-)

ania3Dfx wrote on 28.01.10 at 13:59:06:

Cześć, In the forum members opinions, which were the fastest brand of Voodoo2 cards?  Creative, Diamond, Orchid Righteous, Guillemot, etc etc ... ?  :-/ What made the fastest Voodoo2 cards, the fastest?  Was it the MHz of memory chips?  Was there some other engineering advantage on the boards of a specific brand that made them faster than the rest? * Btw, what was the fastest MHz on the memory chips, that you could buy on a Voodoo2? Was it 125Mhz or more? And in your personal opinion, which were your favourite Voodoo2s?  8-)

I think standard Voodoo2 (like Diamond, Creative and so on...) were all the same. Yes some cards could score more of others in benchmark, but we are speaking of few points of boost.

Probably the most powerful Voodoo2 based card was Obsidian2 X-24 from Quantum3D, yes, 'cause of SLI, but I think we should consider it as single card ;)

You can find a lot of V2 with differents memory speed, 100, 110, 125MHz, but they are all clocked to as reference, 90MHz. So no real gain, unless you overclock the card.

I guess that if there are some little performance increase, probably they are due to memory timings. Also, you know, hardware is not all the same; some card could be more lucky than other, but they are essentially the same card.

Probably, my favourite V2 card is Magic 3D II from Skywell.

Czesc!

Cards like the Skywell Magic3D II or the Provideo Voodoo II are probably the faster ones around. I'm not sure about the Provideo cards but mine has a blue PCB with 110MHz RAM (but clocked at 90MHz).

Cards like the Gainward Dragon 3000 (probably a few others but most brands use the reference design) have a different PCB layout. I'm unsure about their performance (probably just the same) but overclocking is not what they like. It's been a while since I've tested the Dragon 3000 but back then it was disappointing compared to other normal boards.

If I'm not mistaken the Diamond Monster 3D II runs at 93MHz *if* you use the original Diamond drivers. The little speedbump doesn't have much impact in real-life gaming but in benchmarks the card will be higher.

Maybe it's interesting to give some of the Voodoo II's a go and overclock them. I wonder what cards like the Powercolor Evil King (with new 3dfx chips and RAM chips made in the year 2000) do :).

some of the Q3D cards also runs some MHz faster
also Q3D have a AGP Voodoo2 how should be a little bid faster if many textures are used

Thandor wrote on 28.01.10 at 16:12:27:

Czesc! Cards like the Skywell Magic3D II or the Provideo Voodoo II are probably the faster ones around. I'm not sure about the Provideo cards but mine has a blue PCB with 110MHz RAM (but clocked at 90MHz). Cards like the Gainward Dragon 3000 (probably a few others but most brands use the reference design) have a different PCB layout. I'm unsure about their performance (probably just the same) but overclocking is not what they like. It's been a while since I've tested the Dragon 3000 but back then it was disappointing compared to other normal boards. If I'm not mistaken the Diamond Monster 3D II runs at 93MHz *if* you use the original Diamond drivers. The little speedbump doesn't have much impact in real-life gaming but in benchmarks the card will be higher. Maybe it's interesting to give some of the Voodoo II's a go and overclock them. I wonder what cards like the Powercolor Evil King (with new 3dfx chips and RAM chips made in the year 2000 ) do :).

Well my both of my Gainward V2s overclock to 108Mhz flawlessly (if cooled actively by a fan blowing over the cards) - I wouldn't consider this too bad ;)

Tweakstone wrote on 28.01.10 at 19:27:40:

[quote author=1529202F252E33410 link=1264683546/2#2 date=1264691547]Well my both of my Gainward V2s overclock to 108Mhz flawlessly (if cooled actively by a fan blowing over the cards) - I wouldn't consider this too bad ;)

Interesting :). 108MHz isn't bad indeed.

I didn't use additional cooling and my card doesn't have the green heatsinks installed (12MB version with 25NS Mosel RAM). I didn't use additional cooling on the other cards I've tested, either. I'll try overclocking it in the near future and see what happens :).

Hmm ok, mine are equipped with 110MHz RAM and the stock passive coolings..

At one time I also oc-ed a Diamond V2 12mb (125Mhz rated EDO) to 108mhz but I added passive heatsinks and a side fan to cool it down could not push more because artifacts started to show.
I suspect that with newer dated chips higher clocks would be possible. I seem to remember a top of the highest oc achieved for V2s and it was about 115Mhz  :o
As to the V2 I like best well there are the Metabyte cards with excellent sw could even do mixed SLI, the black pcb Obsidian2s and the Diamond MegaMonster :)

ania3Dfx wrote on 28.01.10 at 13:59:06:

Cześć, In the forum members opinions, which were the fastest brand of Voodoo2 cards?  Creative, Diamond, Orchid Righteous, Guillemot, etc etc ... ?  :-/ What made the fastest Voodoo2 cards, the fastest?  Was it the MHz of memory chips?  Was there some other engineering advantage on the boards of a specific brand that made them faster than the rest? * Btw, what was the fastest MHz on the memory chips, that you could buy on a Voodoo2? Was it 125Mhz or more? And in your personal opinion, which were your favourite Voodoo2s?  8-)

My choice for favourite is the Canopus PURE3D II.

"Their (Canopus') cards were shorter than competitors' Voodoo 2 cards. Canopus also had a reputation for driver optimization, giving them a performance advantage over the other cards.

They were the cards of choice for Maximum PC's 1998 Dream Machine.

Canopus also released a version of the nVidia TNT (Spectra 2500) that offered a unique internal cable to connect the TNT card to the Voodoo2 based PURE3D II, as opposed to the standard connection with an external cable." source Wikipedia

Most other V2s just used the standard 3Dfx reference design.  And there was the WitchDoctor feature that performs reverse pass-through technology to raise the level of 2D quality by not having 2D video go through the 3D accelerator.

these are my favorite V2's which are still in use btw :)

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/6392/dsc02548tu4.jpg

one is connected to a television set and the other to a regular monitor.

boolean,
I agree with you:)  I also have Diamond, STB, but they all the same.
If I remember correct STB has different revisions with different memory chips. R A2 is the best?

STB used many different components and layouts throughout their revisions. Here are two quick-and-dirty pics of cards which use differently clocked memory chips despite having both the same REV ID.

http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/9310/dsc09824x.th.jpg

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/355/dsc09827o.th.jpg