I might very well be in love!!!!!
Written: Jun 10 '00 (Updated Jun 13 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 32bit, 2 vsa-100 chips, 64mb ram, Crisp,clear, and beautifully rendered graphics
Cons: A little bit of a large board, requires external power
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| artic00cat's Full Review: 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP |
Finally after waiting and waiting for what seemed to be an eternity, my very own Voodoo5 5500 Agp arrived at more door early Friday morning. 3DFX has shipped there newest installment of their bloodlines to the general public and is available for the taking. After roughly 7 or so instances of reviewers claiming to have the product before anyone else have deteriorated the ratings of this fine product.
The Voodoo5 5500 Agp comes complete with not one but two VSA-100 graphic processor chips, separate cooling fans for each chip, 64 Mb of video ram , 4x Agp ,32 bit rendering(finaly), and a nifty little mouse pad with the Voodoo5 box shot imprinted on it. The Voodoo5 supports FSAA or Full Screen Anti-Aliasing in both 2x and 4x modes. Anti-Aliasing by the way is one of the more important and well publicized aspects of the V5. Anti-Aliasing to sum it up in a nut shell illiminates those annoying "jaggies" or tearing you see on previous genres of graphics cards.
Another major difference between the new line of Voodoo products and the old is the introduction of the T-buffer. The T-buffer produces numerous effects in games that can and will be of virtue in the future. The T-buffer introduces Digital Cinematic Effects such as Motion Blur,depth of field blur,soft shadows, and soft reflections. All of which will more than likely become more and more prevalent in games of the future. Below are a little more in depth descriptions from 3DFX on these four digital cinematic effects.
=====================Property of 3DFX=============================
Motion Blur:
Can be used to smooth motion to improve image quality or to exaggerate motion for special effects.
Depth of field Blur:
Enhances reality by rendering a scene as if viewed through a real lens. Enables artistic depth of field effects often used in cinema, such as blurring all but the most important objects in a scene.
Soft Shadows:
Adds soft edges to shadows to give them a much more realistic appearance.
Soft Reflections:
Enables realistic reflections from semi-gloss surfaces like polished wood or stone and stainless steel.
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First impression I had when I pulled this board out of the box was related to the size of this board. The Voodoo5 5500 is a big product in more ways the one. The board itself is simply put " huge " . I would have to say that it is almost a full 3 inches longer not wider than the Voodoo3 3000 is. When installed in the AGP slot of my Asus K7V it almost touched the back of the hard rive. Needless to say it required that I made some altercations to the layout of my cables and the routing through the case.
It installed easily as you simply remove the old graphics card and insert the new aside form the above mentioned cable routing in my particular case. The odd thing about the Voodoo5 5500 is that it requires an external power source to run it. It comes with a "Y" cable so that you can split the input you are currently using to power your floppy drive. However I recommend that you do not split the power feed if you have a free one available to use. Only split it if there is no free power lead. A warning on the pink sticker in the box and directly over the card reminds you of this need for extra power as well as in the installation manual. The drivers loaded with ease and Windows had no problems detecting the video card.
We all know what came next now don't we? Yup you got it time to load up a couple of games and see how this baby performs. I set the FSAA for 4x and turned on all other features of the V5 as well. Loaded up everyone's favorite Quake3. The V5 performed as expected, the play was beautiful. There was no Jerkiness in the movement and the FSSA sure did clear up those "jaggies". The performance did not seem to be affected in the slightest. The same proved true for Unreal Tournament. Now if any of you are like myself you might want to know how it performed in another situation like a RPG such as Vampire "The masquerade" (Which by the way I will also be reviewing soon). So I also purchased this game and loaded it up and began my testing. The V5 once again performed beautifully. No "Jaggies" smooth game play , beautiful graphics, Vampire displays some of the new T-buffer effects like soft reflection and soft shadow beautifully as well.
In conclusion 3DFX has done it once again! This card is by far the best they have produced yet, and will be a worthy predecessor of the Voodoo3 line.Although the price is another matter completely as it carries a hefty $299 price tag with it. 3DFX has also included software support for T&L as I am sure this is another big question on your minds. On last thought I would like to add about this graphic card is that it in my opinion produces the best image quality I have ever seen. The images are crisp and clear and with 32 bit color rendered beyond comparison. I have also seen recently that some of the other major hardware reviewing site seem to feel the same was I do about the image quality produced. If you are looking for an upgrade and can afford the price tag that comes with it, I am sure you will not be disappointed with the Voodoo5 5500.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 299.99
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Epinions.com ID:
artic00cat
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Location: New York
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