Oh my goodness!!!
Written: May 22 '01
Pros:Good speed,FSAA,compatibility with all
games,64Mb memory,minimum performance hit at higher resolutions
Cons:Faster cards available,future support
questionable,FSAA too slow on higher resolutions,no T&L
The Bottom Line: More expensive than other cards,the Voodoo5 is not the product for the average consumer.However,
its rich features and well above average speed make it hard
not to recommend this card.
I had a Creative Geforce2 MX on my computer and eventhough
it offerred blazing speed at a resolution of 640x480,it still lost a lot as I upped the resolution.Unfortunately,I
pay a lot of attention to eye candy,and as most of you probably know Deus Ex looks much better at higher resolutions.My best friend has a Geforce2 GTS and is able to
play the game at 1280x1024 very smooth,and I mean VERY smooth.I tried forcing FSAA with my Geforce2 MX.Man it was
slow.Then my brother told me that a friend of his was selling his "old" voodoo5 for a Geforce256 SDR board!!!
So,I saw the chance arising.I would give him $60 plus my Geforce2 MX board for the voodoo5.
Receiving the card I had no problems fitting it inside my case,eventhough the board is quite big.Driver installation
flew by,and I was soon playing Deus Ex at 1024x768 with 4xFSAA in Glide mode.Man,the visual quality this card
offers is simply amazing.
I tested the card with several of my other old and new games
and I was really surprised.Earth 2150,in the setup mode recorded a score of 315fps at 640x480 in Glide while the geforce2 mx could only manage a "measly" 137fps in either
OpenGl or D3D.
Final Fantasy VII which didn't support 3d acceleration with
my Geforce2 Mx as it doesn't support 8-bit paletted textures
was blazing fast in 4xFSAA.
Also,it kicks around the GF2MX in resolutions other than 640x480,as the GF2MX has a serious lack of memory bandwidth.
The V5 offers 5.3GB(166MhzSRDx128bit bus x2 paths) while the reference MX only 2.7 while my Creative GF2 MX
was running at 143MhzDDRx64bit bus which is around 2.2GB
The Voodoo5 was even able to beat the Mx at resolutions 800x600x32 and above in 3DMark2000,with the MX using T&L.If you have a graphics card with T&L,you know how much is the performance gain in 3DMark2000,which is heavily optimized for T&L.
Needless to say,without T&L enabled,which is how tests should be done in my opinion,as only 5% of games out there support hardware T&L,the Voodoo5 sweeps the floor with the
MX with minimal resistance.Its a shame 3DFX had to close.The
3DFX rampage would have been something else.
Recommended: Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 60+GF2MX
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