Is there anything bad to say about the voodoo 5500 against the radeon or Geforce2 GTS?

[loosbrew]

Hey All,
I know ive bothered you guys about vid cards before but im trying to figure which i will most happy with. my questions are as follows...

Driver support aside....
would the voodoo 5500 64meg agp be a agood choice for the next year or two against the Radeon LE and Geforce2 GTS?
i want good 2d and 3d, and dont want to sacrafice either. if i get a a GF2 GTS it will probably be an asus v7700 or visiontech as i been reading that visiontech has a good product. i dont want to mess with rfi filters and such. i just want a good card straight out of the box that will play almost any game and at the same time not give me headaches surfing the web. a friend has a tnt2 and it looks horrible, and im afraid that if i go with nvidia it will be a similar problem. so with drivers aside will the voodoo be better than a radeon or gf2 gts in win2k?

thanx for answering all of my questions.

loosbrew

[edit]i also do minor 3d rendering in bryce and lightwave.[/edit]

 

[loosbrew]

Anyone have any opinions on this?are there any sites that show any numbers between these three?

thanx
loosbrew

 

[potz]

driver support makes all the difference in the world. i choose gts. some games go THAT much faster because of the nv drivers in win2k.

 

[loosbrew]

from what i have been reading up, the voodoo has some great drivers for games...are the gts drivers that much better? i dont mean to contradict you in any way, im just trying to get the low down on these cards compared to each other

loosbrew

 

[loosbrew]

anyone else have anything to say about it?

 

[Imaginer]

I am pleased with my Radeon. No problems under Win2k so far.

 

[Shmorq]

The problems with the voodoo is that future driver support might be minimal after the buyout by Nvidia...
But 2D quality wise, the Voodoo is apparently much better than any geforce and similar to the Radeon. I don't have any of these video cards, but after reading these forums for who knows how long, it's what I've gathered so far...

 

[GoldenTiger]

The v5 r0x0rs... rocksolid drivers, good HSR support (from x3dfx.com's drivers), great speed, kickass FSAA quality and speed, and great 32bit color speed. The ONLY caveat is that 3dfx is defunct, meaning no warranty.

 

[Yoshi]

My GeForce and Radeon have nice stable Win2k drivers. Radeon's driver are a bit slower in Win2k compared to Win98. IMO the better image quality of the Radeon makes it worth it.

 

[Supradude]

V5 5500 is awesome! i'm thinking bout getting one soon as well due to its fast lowering price... my only concern is what happens when whistler or XP comes out provided i will actually upgrade OS...

 

[GoldenTiger]

x3dfx.com still makes new drivers they have been for awhile, and they enhanced the HSR in 3dfx.com's beta drivers substantially. They've already announced that once XP/Whistler comes out they will make new drivers if the old ones don't work, so I'm perfectly happy .

 

[loosbrew]

yea..im not too concerned about whistler or XP that much...i dont plan n upgradnig. future driver support isnt an issue in my questions. i wanted to know some good comparisons between the three. iknow how the radeon does against the GTS and such but i wanted to know how the v5 5500 does against these two. so far im leaning towards the v5 due to the 2d and 3d quality. for some reason my gut is telling me not to get a radeon.

loosbrew

 

[Big Lar]

I don't mean to step on any toes here, but I ran 2 different v5 5500 cards here, & quite frankly I was not impressed, I am not a major gamer, nor claim to be, but in just 2d.... it didn't cut it... just my $.02

 

[ahfung]

Agree with potz. You can't put the driver thing aside if you need a good card straight out of the box that will play almost any game. Regarding driver support, out of the three GeForce is currently the best. I have little expectation on ATI because now they probably have more interest on Radeon 2 than optimizing Radeon driver. Look at the sh!tty Rage/Fury drivers, they still haven't iron out the problems yet.

Plus that you need to do bryce and lightwave, GeForces are probably your only choice (for game and 3d apps). Choose a GeForce carefully. Someone said ELSA and Visiontek have good 2D quality. If you aren't satisfied you can always try the RFI mod. I just did myself. It was painless, I don't even need any soldering work.

 

[Wingznut]

It's really pretty simple. The current V5 drivers rock. If you figure (as I did) that by the time you NEED a driver update, you'll be getting a new card anyway...

Get a V5. It's an awesome card until new drivers are a must.

 

[SammyBoy]

i have 2 computer-not-so-genious friends and one has a geforce2mx and one has the voodoo 5500 (PCI) both are running standard off the cd drivers, (idiots wont let me get em new ones). I think everything about the geforce mx is better, although it is on a slightly better computer, but it does cost only 90 bucks at some places. If you want a geforce ocie.com is supposed to be good

 

[12Guage]

Hmmm ... where to start.

What a crappy time this is to buy a new vid card. IMO, no card on the market right now has all the bases covered, you're gonna sacrifice something.

the Geforce is undeniably the fastest card on the market. The drivers are good, stability and compatability is good too. Is the 2D really that bad? No, it's not like your eyes are gonna start bleeding from looking at your monitor. The V5 and Radeon do have better 2D though.

The Radeon is a good card too. Drivers have some issues. 2D is excelent and 3D is quite nice too.

The V5 used to be my pick as the best all around card of this generation. Excelent 2D and 3D. Compatability and stability are outstanding, throw in rock solid drivers and you have one damn fine card.

It's true , the Geforce2 and Radeon are faster than the V5, but c'mon, they all do fluid frame rates at hi rez. It's almost stupid to compare these cards based on their Q3 bench marks. It's compatability, stability, drivers and visual quality that matter now.

I think the V5 is the best card for games on the market right now. the other cards have more features, but I think their implementation will be kind of slow to really use once games are designed to take advantage of these features. Remember the first gen 32 bit colour vid cards?

So ... ? Anything bad to say about the V5? Since we're not considering the fact that the V5 will not be getting any new drivers, I don't have anything bad to say about the V5.

 

[BenSkywalker]

"would the voodoo 5500 64meg agp be a agood choice for the next year or two against the Radeon LE and Geforce2 GTS?

I bolded that portion in particular as it is a rather major portion of your question. Most of the comments in this thread have deal with current games, and overall the V5 does very well in that respect.

But, a year or two from now? I wouldn't consider the V5 if you plan on holding out that long for your next upgrade. Titles like Giants, Sacrifice, Black&White and Tribes2 for a few that are already out/coming soon put the additional features of the GF2/Radeon to very good use both for increased performance and increased visual quality. Some may say that they will be too slow to use the new features, hardware T&L is already showing a sizeable performance boost in some of the newest games, a trend that is likely to become a bigger and bigger edge as the year moves on. Between the Radeon and the GF2 features are somewhat a wash. In absolute terms the Radeon has the GF2 bested, no doubt. There are some features that the Radeon is missing that the GF2 does have however that seem to be more popular with developers(Doom3 is utilizing some features on the GF2 that the Radeon doesn't have according to Carmack).

Another comment of yours that stuck out to me-

"i also do minor 3d rendering in bryce and lightwave"

Bryce is pretty basic and should do well with any of the three boards though the GeForce based offerings will almost certainly be faster. Lightwave OTOH is another topic altogether. Here you may run into some issues with the V5 or the Radeon. I'm not saying you will, but at the very least with earlier driver revisions both of them had some issues ranging from mild to severe with Newtek's offerings. Here the GeForce based boards simply blows the others away, and it isn't close. Significantly stronger T&L and the best consumer level OpenGL support there is. If this is a minor concern for you, take it for what its' worth. If this is a more important factor this is one area that favors nVidia heavily.

Drivers under Win2K are also another area that leans in nVidia's favor. Going back again to your intended length of time owning this board, I'm not sure that I would rely on ATi to still be supporting the Radeon on a regular basis at that point in time. Ask owners of any of the Rage128 series of cards how the driver support has been lately. Perhaps if the rumors of ATi moving to a unified driver model are accurate this may no longer be an issue but it would be another factor I would be thinking about.

If you do decide to go with a GF based board stay away from Asus. While they may make many high quality components they are fairly regularly associated as the worst offender of poor 2D quality out of all nVidia's OEMs. Visiontek or Elsa are likely better candidates for what you are looking for.

Not trying to bash any of the three products, I've seen that they have been well represented here and just wanted to throw out the other side of the story

 

[loosbrew]

you guys brought up some very good points....i thnk i may consider a v5 if the price is right or a gts if the price is better, like i said before, my gut is telling me not to buy ati. thanx alot for allof your answers.

loosbrew

 

[SonOfZeuz]

The gts and radeon are MUCH better than the V5

 

[nippyjun]

The voodoo5 right now is the best value in video cards. For close to $100 bucks you are getting a lot of bang for your buck. The drivers are very, very stable. If you play glide games: Unreal tournament, Undying, Rune, etc. then the voodoo 5 really shines. If you are more of a Quake 3 engine person, then the Geforce is the way to go (but you'll pay more).

 

[Innoka]

Now that the dust has settled over 3dfx's grave we can see that the Voodoo5 was a popular card almost anywhere except where they benchmark according to numbers foremost. Comments such as the Radeon, GTS and even MX are (much) better than the Voodoo 5 look childish and ignorant. Geforce2 is awesome. Radeon features are a little better though I believe their 3 texture capability with only two pipelines was a mistake, and it has disturbing Windows 2000 performance... but in the end it all comes down to price- otherwise you'd grab a Geforce 3. All the cards have their strong points.

 

[adamone11]

<< Look at the sh!tty Rage/Fury drivers, they still haven't iron out the problems yet. >>



Do you even have a Rage or Fury card? I have a Rage Pro 4mb, k6-2 350 and its still enough to 0wn in CS. I get 10-20fps most of the time in medium size games, even with integrated sound, and a junky memory system. The new special purpose drivers are awesome, and have brought new life to my computer. After the move from 7.1 to 1.0 I was toast until I tried out those new drivers.

In fact, DX8 includes new Rage drivers, specifically. I've never really had a problem with their drivers, and you can't really bash them for Win2k because Win2k isn't made for / Microsoft discourages 3d gaming.

 

[UKtaxman]

I think the problem your going to encounter is that NONE of these cards are going to be supported properly or offer much performance wise in a years time, never mind 2. What I do know is that 3dfx have the best and most stable drivers around AT THE MOMENT. People may bitch about 3dfx going out of business, BUT I've had 2 different driver revisions since they went tits up. The thing you will find with 3dfx cards is that they will work out of the box with just about anything you can throw at them. This is not something I have encountered with either ATI or Nvidia. Before you say it, YES I have owned cards from both those manufacturers. In fact I went from a Voodoo5 to GF2GTS to a Radeon32ddr and back to a Voodoo5. I couldn't believe what a shoddy product the other 2 were! I've got to admit I was really dissapointed with Nvidia as I used to own a Riva128 and it was marvelous! But then you pay your money you take your choice. They do all have advantages and dissadvantages.
Geforce2=fastest and most common.
Radeon=best features and great 2d,also great for dvd playback.
Voodoo5=best compatability,best FSAA, best current drivers.
Personally given the recent price crash I would rip their arm off for the Voodoo! It may not be the fastest, but it has the best mix of speed, features, quality and compatability.
Oh and if you play a lot of racers and flight sims, then it's FSAA can't be beat.

 

[ahfung]

<< you can't really bash them for Win2k because Win2k isn't made for / Microsoft discourages 3d gaming. >>



Do you know that the latest windows 2000 hotfix released just for improving game compatibility? I see no reason why MS should discourage gaming on any version of Windows.