[SOLVED] Voodoo vs. Riva TNT2 (?)

[Pee wee]

Hi guys,

I hope you are all well. Pls, I have a Pentium II at 300 Mhz and a "Riva TNT2" graphics card. But I never had a "Voodoo". I would like to know if is worth it a "Voodoo" or better the "Riva TNT2". What do you think?

I would appreciate any clarification.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Eximo]

Which Voodoo and which Riva TNT2?

I would say generally the Riva TNT2 would be the superior card for OpenGL, however, when you are looking at era appropriate 3DFX Glide titles, that may be the only way to get the superior image quality.

In my household at the time I had a voodoo2 12MB, a Matrox Millenium 2 8MB, and eventually both a Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 at various times. For most games, it made little difference, but some of the older titles had software rendering or 3DFX glide, and the image quality was much better with 3DFX, but once you got into the post Quake era, 3DFX cards had little going for them. Games like Unreal Tournament still worked well on Voodoo cards, but the visual quality was about the same.

 

[Pee wee]

Agreed!! Take note of your advice. I really appreciate your clarification, @Eximo. I owe you one 👍

Regards.

 

[Eximo]

Trying to think of some game titles I had back then.

Whiplash was one, the max software render was alright, but the glide version looked a lot better.
Need For Speed SE was better looking in glide, but I think the performance was worse? Can't quite recall.
Original GTA supported glide, that was an odd modification. road surface blurred out and the frame rate ran way too fast (frame rate was patched later)
Mechwarrior II Mercenaries was another, the highest texture quality was only possible through 3DFX
Shadow Warrior, I don't recall it looking different between the cards, but there may have been a boxed edition for 3DFX I never got.
Die By The Sword was about the same quality, and I recall the game looking smoother, but the software render looked better to my eye.
Unreal Tournament was about the same, though the 3DFX lighting was different as I recall
Quake and Quake II (I think Quake III supported it but by that time I had an Nvidia card) was
Diablo II looked about the same, pretty sure that was one of the last games I picked up before swapping out my Voodoo 3 3000 for a Geforce.
I recall trying to play Day of Defeat and the Voodoo 3 couldn't take it, of course it was still a mod for Half Life, probably wasn't optimized.

And there were a lot of Glide compatible titles out there.

Still have a Voodoo5 5500 PCI sitting in my dual Pentium II.

 

[hotaru.hino]

If you were planning to play games from the time period, I would argue the Voodoo card is probably going to give you better results because a lot of game devs focused more on glide support.

Though keep in mind Voodoo cards up until the 3rd version are 3D accelerators only, they're not full on GPUs. You need to have some sort of 2D card as well.

 

[Eximo]

I had my Voodoo 2 paired with a Paradise Pipeline 64 (1MB) card. And at some point I was running SLI, I think what happened was my brother had a friend with another voodoo 2 12MB, and he had access to several voodoo 2 8MB, we ended up swapping to make two working SLI configs. I was lucky the PSU in that old 486 was fairly good for the day. A shame we didn't keep that system, but who thinks of such things.

 

[5900x]

Ah the golden years of the dawn of computing graphics. Just reminiscing. As I remember, Carmageddon was the only draw for voodoo cards for me but the Riva TNT2 later pummelled it's way across the industry and the 3Dfx died. Personally I would stick with the TNT2 due to my experience.

 

[Pee wee]

Thank you so much @Eximo, @hotaru.hino, @5900x. Thanks once again @Eximo. I really want to thank you for your comment @hotaru.hino & @5900x.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Also check out Phil's Computer Lab on YouTube, he has a few videos on older video cards and has links to his website where you can find working drivers.

 

[Pee wee]

I found this channel very useful. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much @hotaru.hino.

Cheers!!