Everything I could ask for... a shame they went out of business :(
Written: Feb 24 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy installation, nice options, games look beautiful.
Cons: Rather large card (length wise). Anti-aliasing isn't what I expected it to be.
The Bottom Line: I love this card... no complaints. Easy installation. My games have never looked better!
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| JKalmbach's Full Review: 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP |
Oh why, oh why, did they have to go out of business?!?!?!
My story is rather simple. I was using an old TNT2 PCI video card in my system, and I wanted to free up a PCI port and hook myself up with an AGP graphics card. I've heard good things about the GForces, but I never really found a great selection with them. I went to the story with the intention to buy a new card, but I wasn't sure. I was thinking of going with the Radeon 64DDR card, however a person I work with doesn't speak to highly of DDR (take that for what it's worth). I looked at the Voodoo5, noted that the only bad thing I've heard about getting it was that Voodoo went out of business, but I went with it anyway. The sales person said Voodoo was still offering warranty service/technical support for one year on their cards, so I took a chance and went with it. I have to say I'm not disappointed.
Installation of the card was easy, however, if you have a small system beware! If you're in a micro-ATX case, this might be a tight squeezing depending on what's in your system. The card itself is roughly 9 1/2" long (longer than any card I've ever seen), and I had to move my hard drive up a notch to make it fit. You'll also need to run power to the Voodoo5 (I assume to run the two fans on it), and so you'll need to plug a power cable to it. A Y-adapter comes with the board in case you don't have one available.
Setup was simple, no complaints there. The drivers are supplied on a CD-ROM... I'm running my system on a 800EB Pentium 3. Some software comes on the disc as well. There's a program called "3 Deep" which allows users to adjust their brightness to just the right amount. There's also a "True Internet Colors" program to help you get the best out of the card.
So what are the results? The picture is excellent, which rich textures in the games I play. The biggest one I play is Starsiege: Tribes, and I have to say it's never looked better! The weather effects are just amazing, and I'm finding new weather effects that I've never noticed before. I do have a DVD player in my system, and the images on my DVDs appear more colorful, which I assume is due to the "3 Deep" program I ran.
There're other options to play around with as well. You can select OpenGL, Glide, and DirecX for all the games, and each give you a different quality according to the game. I know Tribes looks better in Glide, while Final Fantasy looks better in OpenGL.
The anti-aliasing was one particular feature that caught my eye... it's the feature that smoothes out the jagged edges that appear in 3D rendering. You can play with the options here, selection whether you want all out anti-aliasing, devote only one of the chips to it, or what have you. I've played around with these options, but the feature wasn't what I expected it to be. It's the only feature of the card that disappointed me.
As for the other technical stuff about the card, I can't speck intelligently on it. Everything I would tell you would come straight off the box, so I'll let you read that for yourself.
But overall, I'm happy with my purchase. I've read there're newer cards on the way, like the GForce3, but my card runs great and I have no complaints. I should be set for a while with it. Just sad 3DFx is going out of business... I've always liked them :(
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 200
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Epinions.com ID:
JKalmbach
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Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 0 members
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