Pros, Cons, a bit of both
Written: Dec 18 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great price
Cons: HUGE card, may not fit inside case
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| fatboy18's Full Review: 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP |
There's an amazing amount of bad press of the Voodoo5 around. Most of it I actually believed until I actually bought one.
Now, taking a little side trip, why would I buy a card I thought to be utter cr@p until a month ago?
It's very simple. The GeForce2GTS boards are beyond my reach, I'd have to live on bread and water for awhile just to slap one of those beasts into my computer... So that was out. And I wasn't too impressed with the GeForce2MX either, the performance doesn't quite live up. Plus I've been dissatisfied with ATi cards after owning 2 in a row and feeling cheated.
Anyway, so I ended up with a V5 in my hands.
I'm fairly impressed with the performance of it. The card was a breeze to install, although it did require me to move my hard drive out of the way to make room for its sheer bulk. The drivers are fairly standard in the ways of installation, and did not cause any trouble during install.
I was VERY impressed in how much the drivers allowed for the customization of the card on the fly. Things like FSAA can be toggled on the fly, AGP speeds can be changed without reboot, and nearly every imaginable option is adjustable. Kudos to 3dfx for good drivers.
Performance wise, the V5 isn't the king like 3dfx would've liked, but it's no lagger either. The performance I found to be fast, although no the fastest ever seen. This was a major dissapppointment to many people, as the V5 was promising speeds never achieved by a video card before.
Although no speed king, the V5's performance isn't bad at all. I clocked it at 90fps in Half-Life, with 1024x768 resolution, and 4xFSAA on! The 90fps seems to be a limit for Half-Life, as the speed did not break beyond that point at any time. Overall, 90fps is impressive for a game running at such a resolution AND FSAA on.
The greatest sell point of this card though, has to be its compatibility. With GeForce2's I often see incompatibility, with games running poorly, or not at all, and ATi cards are a bad joke along the lines of compatibility. I've never encountered any application that wouldn't run due to my video card with the Voodoo5. Very good indeed.
Conclusion: Buy it, buy it now! Er... If you need a new card that is. Especially now that the price is nice and low. Expect little updates though, now that 3dfx has been bought by Nvidia.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 180
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Epinions.com ID:
fatboy18
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Reviews written: 5
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