On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 18:33:28 +0100, "Ben Nealon"
wrote::

Hi,
I have a computer that is of the following spec: Duron 700Mhz and 256mb
Pc133 Ram. The computer sadly only has a 2x AGP port. Now i have two
graphics cards:

Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 AGP
3DFX Voodoo4 4500 AGP

I want the machine to be used for game playing (this computer is a spare
computer i have put together) Which of the above graphcis cards do you think
i shoudl use in the machine. I obviously want the best compatability with
good/latest games - and obviously the maximum performance i can push from
the system. If you have any of these cards could you please also advise on
any 'Top Performing' Drivers.
I am using Windows XP Professional on the system,

Thanking you in advance,

Ben Nealon


You're going to be disappointed. If you use that video card and that
processor, you won't be able to run today's games. I'd say you've put
together a perfectly good system for playing classic 3Dfx era games,
but it's going to be too fast to play older stuff and FAR too slow to
play newer stuff.


P.S - Do most recent-ish games not supprt the 3DFX Chipset anymore?


Not officially. Nobody codes using GLide anymore (not since NVidia
bought 3Dfx out), so you'd be running in Direct3D or OpenGL if at all.

Also, it's been a while, so I can't be sure, but I think the last
Voodoo chipsets out the door didn't have support for Texture &
Lighting (T&L) effects. Many games that currently say "32MB video
card" as a requirement actually mean a video card with T&L capability,
and won't even run on a system with a card that doesn't support it.
There's an emulation driver available, but I don't have the URL and
it's reportedly slow (very x 10EXP10 slow). So slow in fact some have
actually thought the system had stalled but the game or demo was still
running.

Also, assuming for the moment that the game will even run on either of
those cards, you'll have to disable practically all of the effects.

All that gloominess aside, between the two, the Voodoo4 will be the
better performer. You'd be better served by getting a GeForce2MX400
with 32 or 64 megs, if you intend to run anything even remotely
recent. Still not a hotrod, but it's currently in the $30Canadian
range so it's pretty cheap, and it will do T&L -- perhaps most
importantly to you, it's a 2x/4x AGP part, so it should work in your
2x AGP slot.

The GeForce4MX boards in the 64meg range aren't much more expensive
than that right now and might be considerably faster than a GF2MX, but
I'm not sure about compatibility with 2x AGP. Some manufacturers
sites claim their GF4MX cards are 2x/4x, while others claim they're 4x
only.
----------------------------------------
Thanks,

MCheu