g200 + Voodoo2

[moreau]

Anybody use g200 AGP with a voodoo2 board or two. A store here in town is selling the Voodoo2 1000 boards for like $30US, and I thought it might be worth the money to add a pair in SLI mode for the glide games and OGL stuff.

That leaves me with a couple of questions:
Are there any new games that will need hardware accel. things that the voodoo2 can't do?
Is the VGA pass through as big a hit to image quality as I have read elsewhere?
Does the SLI setup still use the G200's ramdac, or does it bypass that completely?

I'm curios. 60 bucks is a lot cheaper than replacing a card that I don't want to get rid of. I'm kinda digging my g200!


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G200 16MB SG
PD 5.25
Bios 2.6
Celeron 400(500 oc'd)
Asus P3B-F 1.01A
Bios 1.003
256MB PC100
SBLive Value
Microsoft Intellimouse USB (IntelliEye, baby)

[carlmeister]

Moreau, 2 VoodooII in SLI are similar in performance to a V3 2000, and this is still a viable card. It should be about the same speed as your G200 in D3D, but in Glide or OpenGL it will do very well. Yes, eventualy the there will be games that won't work on it very well because of small texture limit the card has, but I also don't see that alot of game makers cutting there own throats by having large installed base of cards (V2 and V3)that will not be able to play their games because of large textures. I have a G400 and still have 2 Diamond V2 installed in my computer. The reason being that nobody else seems to actually support any 3dNow enhancments (performance wise)like the V2 does. Anything that give me a 40% frame rate increase by using the 3Dnow SIMD instructions in Q2 is great by my book. I just wish that other card makers would come up with some real 3Dnow enhancements (hint, hint, Matrox, Turbo GL maybe?). On quality loss on the pass through, I haven't seen any thing. I also only run my monitor at 1024 x 768. At higher res you will probably get more interference.

[IceStorm]

Unless you want to shell out for a G400 MAX and a PIII or K7/Athlon, a V2 is a good move. They coexist with almost any other video card.

I had a V2 SLI rig in my machine back when I used a G200 and Millennium II for my 2D displays. I still have the V2 rig in my machine, and it'll stay there until I REALLY need the PCI slots.


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Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 2x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. V2 SLI rig. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM, 10/100 5-port Linksys Ethernet switch (30~40MB/min under Win98SE)

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!), Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 4x64MB EDO Parity RAM, Millennium II, Intel Pro/100+ client NIC, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

All specs subject to change.

[The PIT]

It's a combo that I used to use yep definatley worth it.

[Agent31]

If the Voodoodle 2 cards you buy come with a good thick passthru cable, then you probably won't notice much quality loss until you start hitting the higher resolutions on your desktop... I found that I could see a difference in 2D quality at 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 was totally unusable, 1024 seemed fine, but I had the Diamond Monster 3D II passthrough cable, which was really good quality.

[Zwisch]

voodoo 2's in SLi will be faster but the image quality will not be as good. I here use a G400 MAX with 2 overclocked Canopus Voodoo 2 in SLI and I still use them from time to time..

[moreau]

thanks, guys.

I'm going to go check out prices, and see how they shake out.

If it sounds good, I'll do.

CEM

------------------
G200 16MB SG
PD 5.25
Bios 2.6
Celeron 400(500 oc'd)
Asus P3B-F 1.01A
Bios 1.003
256MB PC100
SBLive Value
Microsoft Intellimouse USB (IntelliEye, baby)