In Full Effect...Voodoo5 PCI for the Macintosh
Written: Jun 07 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great performance, great for the slightly older Mac
Cons: 3dfx are no longer around
The Bottom Line: Nice card, great performance. Software could have been fleshed out a little more but at the money I paid it represents good value for money.
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| adicarter's Full Review: 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP |
There are a couple of things you should know about this review before you go on. Essentially the card I am reviewing is the PCI version of the Voodoo5 5500 family and secondly the card I am reviewing is for the Macintosh and not the PC, just figured it best to let you know beforehand. Alas the categories I wanted weren’t available so these ones had to make do.
Another point I would like to mention is that I am not going into the unholy world of massive technical detail. The world of graphics cards can be a perplexing one when people starting throwing big maths around as they try and describe how one card outperforms the other.
If you want that kind of stuff you are in the wrong place, I don’t do maths but I do on occasion play games.
So why did I buy the Voodoo 5 5500 PCI (Mac) card ?
Well the answer is simple, it was cheap. 3dfx the manufacturers of the Voodoo range have recently been acquired by one time rivals nVidia. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t realise it at the time but now that I do I’m not too worried. The amount I paid for the card means that even if every aspect of support ended tomorrow and I was left high and dry I wouldn’t be too worried.
Another reason for my purchase is because I wanted to give my ageing beige G3 a little performance and esteem boost. I’ve been soldiering on with the standard Apple graphics chipset since day one and figured it was time to fill up one of those PCI slots, so I opted for the Voodoo. This wasn’t a hard thought out choice this was pure and simply dictated by price alone.
So I got home with the card and unwrapped the box, within you get the card (obviously) which may I say is a rather large looking beast. Armed with its fan laden dual processor array and 64 Mb of RAM I thought this looked like a card to be reasoned with.
You also receive an instruction booklet, for the most part it covers enough detail to be helpful to you. In the odd place it could be a little clearer but generally if you feel comfortable poking around inside your Mac then you should be OK.
Also included is a splitter cable for the power that the card needs this was a first for me, a graphics card that had the need to run some power from one your Mac’s internal drives. It doesn’t matter whether it be the floppy drive (pre Blue & White Mac) or the hard drive as long as it gets juice from one or the other.
There was also the CD which contained a somewhat minimal set of drivers to get the card up and running.
The first step was mounting the card, the most convenient place for me to locate the card was in the lowest positioned PCI slot in my beige tower. The card mounted fine although you have to make sure the screw that holds the card in place is tight. The card is surprisingly heavy and I’m sure without the screw it would quickly work itself loose from it’s slot (I know, I know it's common sense but I have worked on machines with these screws missing).
The trickiest part was getting power from my drive to the card itself. A beige G3 (like its blue & white successor) has the drives mounted pretty high in the case while the PCI slots are mounted a lot lower. I was fortunate enough to have a second drive fitted inside my machine so I had relatively easy access to a power source for the card.
Another good aspect of the card is the standard VGA output, this means I could finally do away with the clunky Mac/VGA display adapter I have been using on my current 17” monitor. There is also an output for the newer flat panel displays (although not the Apple ADC port).
On power up I was greeted with my new graphically improved system, I’d never had any complaints about the display before now but there was a marked improvement with the Voodoo5 card. The icons were crisper and any elements of shading they had were considerably enhanced. My only grievance was that the picture was very dark and despite having software to adjust the card it was minimal and didn’t help me out here.
I brightened up the picture via re-calibrating my monitor, things were back to normal yet with the additional bonus of my new razor sharp display.
It was time to take the acid test my friends...
Now I’m not a big game player anymore but I must admit one game I do like is Epic’s blood fest Unreal Tournament. I’ve always liked it partially because of its relatively low system demands. However it was time to check it out and see how the Unreal world looked courtesy of the new card.
Well all I can say is it looked absolutely incredible. All the detail levels were now running at their highest leaving me with some incredible levels of depth and shading (something which I believe the card is renowned for, see I told you I wasn’t going to hit the techie details).
When things got really moving there was no hint of the graphics breaking up under the strain, the movement and detail of the characters remained as sharp and aligned as ever. All in all the card made a great gaming experience better.
Further testing included getting a live stream from a web cam. I decided to hit Channel 4’s Big Brother webcam and see if there was improvement. I’m not sure how or if the card handles incoming streams in any way differently to my original graphics setup. However there does appear to be a marked difference in image quality. Another plus point to be considered.
Since then I have been using the Mac on a daily basis and found the experience trouble free graphically. Initial problems with the Voodoo software locking up were cured by upgrading to the latest and probably last revision of the card drivers & software package. Yet apart from that I have to say I have been really happy. This situation will probably inspire me to play more games & waste more time that’s about the only negative I can think of to apply to my latest purchase.
Oh by the way...last note : The Mac I installed on does a lot of music work, you know Cubase/Rebirth MIDI & Sampled stuff. There are often reports of graphics cards making life difficult for software like this to perform.
So far Cubase 3.5 / Cubase 4 / Cubase 5 and Rebirth 2.1 have all performed flawlessly with the card in place.
So there you have it, at the money I paid it’s a nice solution for the Macintosh community. Especially those with the slightly older machines.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 70
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Epinions.com ID:
adicarter
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Member: Adrian Carter
Location: Sheffield, UK
Reviews written: 101
Trusted by: 15 members
About Me:
A lifelong fan of anything electronic. If it goes beep, let me see it first!
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