Voodoo3 vs. 7600GT

[Kharohz]

I need opinions (Or facts for those who are badass enough to have a voodoo3 currently in their computer)

On modern day computer, (Say, AMD Athlon 64 +3200 and above)

Which would run Diablo2 better? And the 7600GT is allowed to use a Glide wrapper.

Go!

 

[Golgatha]

Native Glide ownz you! I'm badass enough to have a PCI Voodoo 4 4500 with an E2160 1.8Ghz@3.0Ghz running Windows 2000. It's my retro gaming and Folding@Home cruncher all in one!

 

[Kharohz]

Voodoo4 is close enough.

So what do you say, how much smoother would the game be on a Voodoo4?

 

[mwmorph]

Either should peg your FPS at maximum, but the 7600gt will be able to run other games as well.

 

[Kharohz]

I know the 7600GT would own in everywhere else. But I believe that the Voodoo3 would kill it in diablo2 in terms of general smoothness. (which oddly will have nothing to do with FPS)

I just remember my Voodoo3 on my p2 266 being smoother than it is now with a Athlon 64 +3200 with a 850xt.

(The reason I mention 7600GT, is a friend who has that video card is convinced that the 7600GT would own it no matter what)

edit: In otherwords, someone tell me I am wrong, because I am really tempted to call my brother up and have him send me a Voodoo3

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Kharohz
I know the 7600GT would own in everywhere else. But I believe that the Voodoo3 would kill it in diablo2 in terms of general smoothness. (which oddly will have nothing to do with FPS)

I just remember my Voodoo3 on my p2 266 being smoother than it is now with a Athlon 64 +3200 with a 850xt.

(The reason I mention 7600GT, is a friend who has that video card is convinced that the 7600GT would own it no matter what)

edit: In otherwords, someone tell me I am wrong, because I am really tempted to call my brother up and have him send me a Voodoo3

That doesn't make sense since the 7600gt/AMD64 has 27x the pixel fill rate, 20x the texture fill rate and 40.5x the shader operations and 26.5x more floating point operations, no matter how worthlessly slow glide emulation is, it should still be much faster.

I would look at other factors to figure out why it's less smooth. For example, back in 1998 I didnt have an antivirus program but now I have a firewall, antivirus, anti spyware, autoupdates etc and when those things kick on and use HDD I/O operations, my gaming gets choppy because the Hard drive is busy. Also, operating system overhead is much higher now, WinXP uses much more resources than 95 and Vista with Aero on can be a huge system hog.

I don't understand the Voodoo nostalgia, I mean, there's no good reason to stick a Voodoo3 into a modern PC unless you have to since there are so much better alternatives available.

You wouldn't pair up a Pentium II at 266mhz or build a system with just 64mb of ram to play Diablo II better than the AMD64 would you? It just does not make sense.

It's like sticking Stephen Hawking in the Olympic's 100m and thinking he'll runs faster than everyone else.

 

[SorryImLate]

Originally posted by: mwmorph

It's like sticking Stephen Hawking in the Olympic's 100m and thinking he'll runs faster than everyone else.

LOL

 

[Kharohz]

I don't understand the Voodoo nostalgia, I mean, there's no good reason to stick a Voodoo3 into a modern PC unless you have to since there are so much better alternatives available.

You wouldn't pair up a Pentium II at 266mhz or build a system with just 64mb of ram to play Diablo II better than the AMD64 would you? It just does not make sense.

It's like sticking Stephen Hawking in the Olympic's 100m and thinking he'll runs faster than everyone else.

IF (And this is why I am asking here) the Voodoo3 performs better in Glide (which nothing else can use) in Diablo2. Then yes, if my current game of choice is Diablo2, I would temporary stick a Voodoo3 in my system to play it. (Being how I have access to one)

It is a matter of compatibility, not a matter of full blown speed. Which is a non-issue due to the processor in use.

Diablo 2 Direct3d support is considered crappy at best, so the best option is a Glide wrapper. I guess the real question boils down to this:

Which is superior, Glide or Fake-Glide?

As for the Stephen Hawkings analogy:

Its more like:

There is a race track, the track has different lanes, Stephen Hawking's lane has a perfect non-slip surface, with nothing that would slow his progress. The other lanes are bumpy hazardous curve ridden nightmares, but at least the drivers have rocket boosters to get them to the end faster.

 

[Fenixgoon]

voodoo > * in diablo2/glide mode.

D2 was written with glide in mind.

i used to run a voodoo5 5500 PCI and X850XT PCI-E at the same time.

in diablo 2, the X850 pulled about 70-80fps. the voodo5 pulled 125. graphics API ftw for the voodoo

 

[v8envy]

And ATI opengl support has always been garbage. Tell you what, fire up diablo2 on a 7600GT and see what your frame rates are like. If they don't dip below 100 no matter what, you're good to go.

 

[Kharohz]

Other than finding someone with a 7600gt and a Voodoo3/4/5.

I think I have seen the light in this issue.

Edit: Very good point v8envy, I might be seeing issues on my x850 that my friend doesn't see with his 7600GT . I just figured since the two cards are fairly equal in performance, it was non-issue.... Never assume I guess

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Kharohz

I don't understand the Voodoo nostalgia, I mean, there's no good reason to stick a Voodoo3 into a modern PC unless you have to since there are so much better alternatives available.

You wouldn't pair up a Pentium II at 266mhz or build a system with just 64mb of ram to play Diablo II better than the AMD64 would you? It just does not make sense.

It's like sticking Stephen Hawking in the Olympic's 100m and thinking he'll runs faster than everyone else.

IF (And this is why I am asking here) the Voodoo3 performs better in Glide (which nothing else can use) in Diablo2. Then yes, if my current game of choice is Diablo2, I would temporary stick a Voodoo3 in my system to play it. (Being how I have access to one)

It is a matter of compatibility, not a matter of full blown speed. Which is a non-issue due to the processor in use.

Diablo 2 Direct3d support is considered crappy at best, so the best option is a Glide wrapper. I guess the real question boils down to this:

Which is superior, Glide or Fake-Glide?

As for the Stephen Hawkings analogy:

Its more like:

There is a race track, the track has different lanes, Stephen Hawking's lane has a perfect non-slip surface, with nothing that would slow his progress. The other lanes are bumpy hazardous curve ridden nightmares, but at least the drivers have rocket boosters to get them to the end faster.

I'd still go with dgVoodoo and the 7600GT. The glide wrapper, with all the added horsepower will make up for the lack of native Glide support.

In other words, if we're using the racetrack theory, the track gets repaved first then the Formula 1 car starts going in it's race against a bicycle. In the end, the F1 car will still finish more quickly, even if it is on the outside lane and has to cover more ground per lap.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I play Diablo II on a lowly Radeon 9000 32MB (64bit memory interface) on a laptop. CPU is a Pentium M 1.7ghz. It never, absolutely never, slows down even a bit. There is no reason I can see that a 7600GT would have an issue with that game.

 

[BFG10K]

The 7600 GT will run faster and have better quality (because you can use AA, AF and 32 bit colour).

 

[Sheninat0r]

My 7600 runs Diablo II with absolutely zero lag... I can't imagine that the 7600 could be that much slower, as it's that much newer.

BFG10K, AA isn't an option in the D2 menu and can only be activated via the nV control panel. Resolution is also capped at 800 x 600, so I don't know if it would help that much. AF is used to smooth textures viewed at sharp angles, and D2 is two-dimensional... no angles to speak of.

 

[Insomniator]

Please, I dont even see how this topic has gotten this far, the 7600gt will destroy a voodoo 3 in diablo II regardless of the settings you use.

My 6600GT never slows down ever in D3d... neither did my 9800pro come to think of it.

I did however have a problem with D2 for a while where it would skip every second or two and be really hard to play; I turned anti-virus off and it
was fixed.

DII is an old old game but the V3 is just as old.

 

[dingetje]

slightly offtopic but fyi,
check this link out if you want to run diablo 2 in higher resolution than 800x600 (with bigger fov playing field):
http://www.edgeofnowhere.cc/viewtopic.php?t=352798
there are 2 tools in there that will allow to do that.
i love d2 and am still playing it. the only game that came close in gameplay imho is titan quest.

 

[Kharohz]

Weird how this subject did last this long. But FYI the 7600 just magically transformed into a 850xt.

The game does not run smooth enough for my expectations ^^. I have a voodoo3 on the way, and we shall see the truth in things.

And yes, I am retarded.

 

[Nathelion]

Voodoo 3 = the shit!

 

[Kharohz]

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
voodoo > * in diablo2/glide mode.

D2 was written with glide in mind.

i used to run a voodoo5 5500 PCI and X850XT PCI-E at the same time.

in diablo 2, the X850 pulled about 70-80fps. the voodo5 pulled 125. graphics API ftw for the voodoo

At least I have one person who tells me what I want to hear

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Kharohz

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
voodoo > * in diablo2/glide mode.

D2 was written with glide in mind.

i used to run a voodoo5 5500 PCI and X850XT PCI-E at the same time.

in diablo 2, the X850 pulled about 70-80fps. the voodo5 pulled 125. graphics API ftw for the voodoo

At least I have one person who tells me what I want to hear

Except a Voodoo5 5500 is between 2-4x more powerful than a 3 3000.

Have your brother send over the Voodoo 3, hell use it as a secondary video card even, but the 7600GT will be much smoother still. No matter the glide optimizations, it's not going to be more than 20x as optimized.

 

[BFG10K]

BFG10K, AA isn't an option in the D2 menu and can only be activated via the nV control panel.

And?

Resolution is also capped at 800 x 600, so I don't know if it would help that much.

I can assure you that 32xS does a lot to smooth those lego blocks.

AF is used to smooth textures viewed at sharp angles, and D2 is two-dimensional... no angles to speak of.

When D2 is in 3D mode it's sort of semi-isometric.

 

[Wurmer]

True, Voodoo 3 is old stuff but so is D2. I think it would certainly be interesting to see the game played in native glide. I tried a glide emulator for a couple of weeks a good while back and I certainly could see a difference. I was using a 6800 GT back then. Problem is that many of these emulators are buggy. At a certain time, I was also considering buying an old Voodoo just to see how it would play D2 but never got around doing it. Obviously, modern cards are much more powerful but I still think it's an interesting question because D2 was definitely designed and coded in the first place to be run under glide.

 

[Kharohz]

Well I'll give you a definite answer once I get the voodoo3.

Granted it is a 850xt vs. Voodoo3 and not 7600GT. But hey, we shall see.

Edit: And for those who are interested to see the difference between Direct3d and Glide, here is the wrapper I use. Has lots of nifty features.

http://www.svenswrapper.de/english/index.html

 

[Kharohz]

Ok, finally after getting the Voodoo3 (which I forgot doesn't use a fan, just a heatsink), stabbing myself repeatably due to the fact that there are no real decent winxp drivers. Eventually I got glide to work.

The current verdict is:

ATI wins

Reason: ATI has better image quality, performance is about the same overall.

A true test would to put together a winxp partition for the ATI card, and a win9x partition for the Voodoo3.

Then I think the Voodoo3 would do a little better, since it actually has mature drivers to rely on.

But I am simply too lazy ^^.... At least now I have a "working" video card that I can temporary use for a new computer, while awaiting a new video card. (Hell the only game I am playing right now is ... well... diablo2.. So I win)