Old but worth it
Written: Feb 14 '01 (Updated Feb 14 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy installation, very good graphics, fast, great for those on a small budget
Cons: Outdated, limited graphical depth
The Bottom Line: Even though this card is outdated, it's performance is still quite good. It is a good investment to anyone looking for an upgrade who is on a limited budget.
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| sidious81's Full Review: 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 PCI |
Earlier this year I purchased my Voodoo3 2000 at a local Computerfest. I had been running on the Intel 82810 graphics adapter, which although was tolerable, over time came to be just too little. Being on a small budget, I could not afford a newer, expensive video card, and having read the specs on this card plus seeing the ticket price of $70, I jumped at the idea of buying it.
The Voodoo3 2000 provides Directx, OpenGL, and Glide support. It boasts 16 meg of SDRAM, which although in comparison to newer cards may not be very much, for the price I paid and the effectiveness the card had this was plenty. The chip has a RAMDAC speed of 300MHz, and it's core speed is 143 MHz.
Installing the card was not a problem at all, and I never ran into any of the problems people speak about when installing a video card on a motherboard outputting graphics from a chipset.
After installation, I did run into some minor inconveniences right away. For one, my brightness settings were far too dark for the desktop, and soon I ran into similar problems in games when I took advantage of Directx, Glide, or OpenGL support. Even though in the advanced options of the video card's driver there are settings for brightness, contrast, and gamma for all three, changes to these settings seemed to do nothing. The video settings within games still worked, but even so the final result just didn't seem right. Even after updating the drivers for the card, I still was faced with the same problems. After some tweaking of settings, however, I finally was able to get a respectable look in games. (When I say respectable, I am comparing the Voodoo3's rendering to that one may see on a more expensive card. It was still a tremendous improvement over what I had been accustomed to).
Unfortunately, along with these problems, another limitation took light. Even though the card supports 32 bit color, the quality of the color is not as good as newer cards.
Despite all of my ranting about problems with the card, they really pale in comparison to the great improvement I saw after looking past all the problems. The graphics are quite rich in both color and detail. The make-over I was seeing in games was truly breathtaking.
Outdated as this card may be, it is still definitely worth it, and a good option for those who may not be able to spend $300 dollars on a new video card.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 70
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Epinions.com ID:
sidious81
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Member: Joe Kesler
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 5 members
About Me:
I'm a college student attending the University of Cincinnati, majoring in Computer Engineering.
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