Tepid Pixel Pump
Written: Mar 09 '00 (Updated Mar 09 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Mediocre speed/ Price ratio, Works well on Linux and BeOS, Good for Glide based games
Cons: Middle of the road card, 16mb ram in a 32mb world, No frills at all, Poor visual quality, Product has a short lifespan until relative obsolescence, Better options out there, 3DFX should be stuck with a fork, 16 bit color depth in 3D
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| eeks's Full Review: 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 |
I am not so pumped about this Pixel Pump, which has been my main graphics squeeze for 9 months out of the last year. Hmm, where to begin. The Voodoo 3 is a boring, mediocre computer 2D/3D video card. 3dfx, the manufacturer of Voodoo 3 video cards, is a company several steps behind their competition at this point.
Description
The Voodoo 3 3000 is a 2D/3D graphics card designed around gaming and around the concept of providing maximum fill rates. It has 16 megs of sdram and a TV Out. At its release, the Voodoo 3 3000 was the fastest card on the market. That status lasted very shortly as nVidia released in succession their TNT 2, TNT 2 Ultra, and Geforce designs, and Matrox released their G400.
Installation
This should be extremely easy for anyone who is not afraid to pull the hood off their comp, know which slot is their AGP one, and knows how to find/install the latest drivers. If any of these are beyond you, then e-mail me and I will help.
Pros
It used to be the fastest card on the market, but now it offers mediocre performance in the speed department....and its speed is its best quality. This card is streamlined for gaming - game performance is put first via fill rates. It has ok support and has a reputation for working well across different OS's. It uses PCB board that is a nice shade of green - matches my eyes.
Cons
Deja Vu? "It offers mediocre performance in the speed department....and its speed is its best quality." It lacks the advanced features of its competition; it does not support environmental bump mapping, 3D color depth beyond 16 BPP, textures larger than 256 * 256, or multiple monitors and it only has 16mb of ram - a rather big limiting factor.
It's visual quality is poor and due to its vanilla featureless status, it does not have the longevity as a graphics solution that its competition has.
In my use, I have had 3 huge problems with the Voodoo 3 3000. One, for the first three months I had it, the released drivers did not allow alt-tabbing in StarCraft - alt-tabbing would automatically cause StarCraft to freeze and crash. If you play StarCraft, you know that being able to alt-tab to check ICQ/IM's or do other stuff while in chat is essential. I have had this problem verified by other Voodoo 3 owner/StarCraft players. They fixed that problem, but it irked me a great deal.
Secondly, the Voodoo 3 3000 is damn hot - you can sizzle eggs on it. I would not want to run this in any case that was either small or poorly cooled/circulated/ventilated. Luckily, I have 5 case fans, so its not a problem for me. Most people do NOT have 5 case fans though. I recommend picking up a slot cooler (it is meant to be used in the slot below the graphics card), if you buy the Voodoo 3 or any video card - they are "tres" cool.
Thirdly, within 2 months of its release, I already felt its competition was blowing it away. Stinks to buy something that goes from top of the line to middle of the pack so close to its release date.
Conclusion
The most compelling thing about the Voodoo 3 3000 AGP? Read this snippet from www.TechDeals.net:
"Circuit City (the brick & mortar store) is advertising the 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 AGP video card for only $99."
At $99, the Voodoo 3 *might* be a good buy for you, if you are waiting to see what the future holds in the graphic card technology market, and don't want to go all out on a TNT 2 Ultra or for that matter a Geforce in either SDR or DDR flavor. I use that word "might" for a reason though; I paid $105 for my Creative Blaster TNT 2 Ultra (again the Eek net deal savvy factor) and it is unequivocally a much better card in every area.
Note on 3dfx: This company is on the way out. Is anyone excited about them at all? Glide based games are becoming scarce, vaporizing 3Dfx's biggest advantage. Their upcoming bunch of cards is just a few Voodoo3s strapped together, and *gasp* 32Bit color in games. Yay! I'm excited... really...
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
eeks
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Willy Holt
Location: Boston, Mass
Reviews written: 58
Trusted by: 157 members
About Me:
Wow--looking back on this half my articles were atrocious and embarassingly titled--all for the bling-bling.
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