Three words kill this card: DDR
Written: Jun 13 '00 (Updated Jul 23 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Good benchmarks with Direct 3D games, FSAA looked pretty good on old games, cheaper than GeForce 2 based cards.
Cons: 64 Megs card is really two 32 Megs separate cards put together, questionable T-buffer feature, SDR memory slows it down, too big card.
|
|
|
| duke_nuker's Full Review: 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP |
3dfx’s days of glory are definitively passed and gone. The days when game-maker companies would pay thousands for the license to use the infamous “Glide mode” are in the memory of just a few.
And I’m one of those few. I remember having to play games like Hexen 2 or Die by the Sword in the awful software mode just because the game didn’t support Direct 3D. Of course, 3dfx’s own, private mode Glide, performed much better in any situation back in 1998. But at least they should have considered the part of the audience who didn’t have one of those cards, allowing us to play another version rather than the too pixelated software render.
But in the end, Glide proved to be just a fashion of the moment, and the creation of new technologies like OpenGL and Direct 3D, capable of doing the same things and even more than Glide did, but being freely distributed, just added more points to the “public domain gaming standards”.
So now the Empire strikes back, trying to reclaim what was once their market with a new (and over-hyped) card: the Voodoo 5.
I know it’s not the only one, there are other versions of the card (PCI version, 32 Megs only version, etc) but the Voodoo 5 5500 is the most advertised of them all. I want to state that I haven’t bought the card, but I went to my fishing companion’s house when the initial release (this relationships prove to be useful when least expected). Just kidding! I want to thank you (he didn’t want his name to appear here) for helping me test the card, without him this article couldn’t be published.
Now let’s get a bit technical. The card configuration is as follows:
*64MB (two 32MB cards “put together” actually)
*166 MHz memory speed.
*Two VSA-100 processors
*128-bit dual-pixel pipeline
* 24-bit bandwidth Z buffer
Basically you have two 32 Megs cards put together (that is not the same as one 64 Megs only card). There are two VSA-100 graphics processors; each of them controls 32 Megs memory. Now you have 32 bits option that gives you some more millions of delightful color. Also, the 128 bit dual-pixel pipeline is going to speed up the frame ratio but I think there are going to be some serious bottlenecks if you don’t have the fastest Front Side Bus (133 MHz by now).
But what the hell does all that mean in real gaming performance?
Well, I won’t put benchmarks of my own, mainly because there are too many sites on the net which have already done so, and I don’t have all the games that are most used for the job (I don’t have Descent 3, for instance). If you wanna see tons of benchmark results go to CNET Gamecenter and check the Voodoo 5 vs. GeForce 2 shoot-out.
You see, in all charts I have seen (both by visiting web pages and by testing myself), there is a comparison between the new Voodoo and a GeForce 2 card. But it’s clear the GeForce based cards outperform the Voodoo in frame per seconds (fps) by an impressive margin. And for me this is possible for just one thing: DDR memory. DDR is a technology that doubles the speed in which memory is read and written by the clock counting the same cycle twice, as if it was two. So if the card’s memory has a speed of 150 MHz, with DDR it is multiplied by two, so you have a 300 MHz card really.
But putting it in simple terms, the Voodoo 5 didn’t perform as well as expected. It’s somewhat ironic, but Direct 3D games (Glide’s worst enemy in the past) ran better than OpenGL based titles (like Quake III). I tested Unreal Tournament and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed in Direct3D mode.
About the FSAA (Full Screen Anti-Aliasing) I have to say I’m impressed. The annoying “jaggies” found on NFS: Porsche Unleashed cars are nowhere to be found but the FSAA is not an excellent thing if you can go up at resolutions such as 1,200 by 1,024 or more. At this high resolutions the jaggedness problem almost fixed itself. The card comes with two modes to reduce jagged surfaces. One puts two samples of the image to reduce the “jaggies” while the other uses four. The first one performed quite well while the second one rendered most games unplayable (the frame-per-second ratio dropped like Microsoft shares after the breakup announce). Besides, FSAA is aimed at old games that didn’t support high resolutions (from 640 by 480 up to 1,024 by 768). So unless you have a monitor made in 1995 or are willing to spend $299 to have Half-Life looking a bit better, this feature has no serious use.
And what about the so hyped T-buffer? This thing is said to allow programmers to create movie-like visual effects such as Deep of Field Blur and other beauties like soft shadows and soft reflections. Everything fine, but have you ever heard of a company who is going to implement it on its games (at E3, for example)? Well, I haven’t, so a long time will pass till we can test the real use of this feature.
As a final note, it isn’t possible to upgrade this card, so when the card gets old the only “upgrade” is a total replacement (Voodoo 2 users know what I mean).
Also, some web sites say the card is big. Sure, the card is huge, I have seen that myself, but remember, the Titanic was huge, and it sank anyway.
*** SYSTEM USED FOR TESTING ***
Pentium III 600 MHz
128MB SDRAM
10GB hard drive
Windows 98
Both sound and vertical sync (Vsync) were turned off to alleviate the CPU from performing unnecessary tasks.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 299.99
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
duke_nuker
|
|
Reviews written: 77
Trusted by: 85 members
About Me:
I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more
specific.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.