Riva 128 and Voodoo 2: advantages?

[DavidX]

I have an AMD K6-2/300 with a 4Mb STB Velocity 128 (nVidia Riva 128). I've been offered a 12Mb Creative Voodoo 2 card. Is there any point in adding the Voodoo 2 card to my system? Would it really make that much difference? Is there anything the Voodoo 2 could do that the STB Velocity can't already?

David

[RobRich]

The v2 card should actually help your setup. Your card only has 4mb of mem, which means it can't hold large textures, a definte need for 3d games/apps. With the v2, it holds your 3d textures, and your STB would then perform nothing but 2d calculations and Windows acceleration. The v2 will also destroy the Riva 128 on any benchmark.

[harddisk]

V2 can do multitexturing in single-pass

[BF]

The V2 is a generation ahead of the Riva 128, which was the best card of its time. Also, you can play games that use the Glide API with the V2.

BF

[DavidX]

Thanx for the replies.

OK, I understand that the V2 is much faster than the Riva128 - at least on benchmarks. But in the real world I have to say that I have run a few games (Turok2, Forsaken, G-Police, etc) on both and they run equally fast on either - no noticable difference in speed whatsoever. The Riva128 runs them just as lightning fast as the V2. The only difference I HAVE noticed is in graphics quality - the Riva128 is a lot better! Colours on the V2 look very faded by comparison.

Now maybe I need to try a far more graphics intensive (textures, etc) game to see the real difference in speed. Any suggestions? I have the Quake2 Demo (I don't particularly like it so I don't really want the full game). Can I measure FPS in the Demo? If so, how? (It's just out of interest. I'm not normally worried about the precise FPS; as long as the speed is good, that's fine by me.)

Basically, what I'm asking is: if the difference between a Riva128 and a Voodoo2 only shows up in benchmarks and not in real life gaming, what's the point in having both? Maybe the present generation of games aren't yet demanding enough to show the difference. If that's the case, I might as well wait until they are and then get a whole new 2D/3D graphics card. By then, the V2 will be ancient technology anyway.

Lastly, is there ANY game at all (worth having) that ONLY runs in 3DFX?

Thanx again
David

[ENVY]

hey r u running the latest drivers for the v2?the ones with dx6 and 3dnow?you should see way better speed and possibly better visuals with everything optimized.

[Boy]

you can also pick up a nother voodoo2 and run them SLI. that way you would get even better performance thasn the voodoo3 that has yet to be released. (some would argue that the voodoo3 is supposed to be faster but all the specs and reviews I have seen have commented that the 3 is slower than 2 voodoo2's SLI.)

-k-

[WhoKnowsWho]

Tribes runs in glide in opengl support is still being worked on. Unreal's opengl support is still buggy so Glide is where it's at. I am not sure about X-Wing alliance, I know it needs an accelerator, and I am pretty sure it is glide only also...