Voodoo4 4500 PCI Video Card on a Pentium Pro

[owensdj]

Does anyone know if a Voodoo4 4500 PCI video card will work on a machine with a 200MHz Pentium Pro processor? The FAQ for the Voodoo4 says the minimum requirement is a Pentium MMX-200MHz. The 200MHz Pentium Pro is faster than the Pentium MMX-200MHz, but the Pro lacks MMX instruction set support. I'm concerned that the drivers for the Voodoo4 might use MMX instructions and so not work on a Pentium Pro. Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[odog]

i seriously doubt 3dfx hardcoded any MMX enhancements into thier drivers.... but regardless of the MMX any 200Mhz cpu is gonna really bottleneck that video card.

if your looking for a fast PCI video card... your best bet is a PCI V3 2000.. try picking one up in the FS/FT forum... you can prolly get it for ~$50.

 

[pcmark]

I threw together a pc at work for doing some gaming during our spare time. It's a dual P-Pro200 with 192mb ram and Windows 2000. Most games don't take advantage of the second processor anyway. I'm running a PCI TNT2 M64 in this machine and it's suprisingly smooth! I've run UT and Quake3 on it. The lack of MMX doesn't seem to slow it down. Maybe I'll run 3Dmax on it and see what kind of scores I get.

 

[BFG10K]

It's nothing to do with MMX at all (I don't think Pentium Pro even had MMX). The Pentium Pro is the first in the P6 core which featured write combining, which speeds up sustained graphics transfers. Therefore it will run games better than a normal Pentium 200 MMX. However the low clock speed will really hold you back.

 

[FaultCode]

If the 3Dfx drivers needed MMX that would mean that anyone with an AMD K6 or K62 cpu would be SOL. I'm sure it will work for ya'.

 

[odog]

i'm absolutely sure that both the K6 and the K6-2 had MMX

 

[Viper GTS]

The AMD K6 had full MMX support from day one. If you'll remember, they came out with the K6 233 before Intel came out with their own 233, & the Intel 166's & 200's were already MMX capable.

Viper GTS

 

[FaultCode]

<knocking myself in the head with a brick> oh yea, what was I thinking? Must have been thinking about SSE. Thanks for setting me strait.