ATI Rage 128 Pro vs 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 (Old Hardware Question)

[random424232]

Sup guys, I have an old hardware question. I'm currently building a late 90s gaming PC and I have two old cards laying around that are both dated 1999. Since I'm too lazy to do the research myself, I was hoping some of you older school gamers could help me.

The first card I have is the ATI Rage 128 Pro with 32 MB of RAM (that's all I know) and the second one I have is a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 card with 16 MB RAM. That's honestly all I know about these cards. If anybody could help me on finding which one of these two would perform best with older games (Half Life, Quake 3, UT 99 to name a few) that would be awesome!

Oh, and it's not that I'm entirely lazy, but a lot of the older hardware reviews are 404d because they are so old.

Anyway, thanx for the help!

 

[willard]

The Rage 128, I believe. That card was a monster in its day.

A quick trick for a lot of the really old cards is simply comparing their VRAM. The card with more is generally faster.

 

[Deemo13]

I used to run a Rage128 in my 90's gaming computer. Worked perfectly fine. If I remember correctly, it was one of the best graphics cards of the time.

 

[random424232]

Best answer selected by cyanghost109.

 

[random424232]

The Rage 128, I believe. That card was a monster in its day.

A quick trick for a lot of the really old cards is simply comparing their VRAM. The card with more is generally faster.

Thanks for the info. As far as I know, it was also ok to guess how well the CPU will perform by simply measuring the speed as well, but I wasn't entirely sure if the same went for GPUs. Anyway, thanx!

It's just amazing how technology improves which is why I'm so fascinated by it!

 

[IInuyasha74]

I know I am like a year late for your thread, but I wanted to let you know the other card will give better performance actually. Vram is important, but it mostly comes into effect when playing at higher resolutions. Here are two reviews to help.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/voodoo3-2000.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/272/17
http://www.anandtech.com/show/389/9

Going by these you can see that at worst the Voodoo3 is equal to the ATI Rage 128. In several tests the Voodoo3 is shown to surpass the ATI Rage 128 and the ATI Rage 128 Pro. This may be slightly less on the side of hardware, because the Voodoo3 cards had 3dfx Glide which gave a much better look and faster performance on several games such as Quake, but since the ATI cards are not capable of running Glide the Voodoo still wins.
I have a Voodoo3 3000 for a old gaming rig I built at the beginning of this year so I have done all sorts of research on this.
Sorry if it seems silly to re-open a dead thread, but if nothing else if someone else finds this thread while trying to build an old rig they will have a bit more information.

 

[random424232]

I know I am like a year late for your thread, but I wanted to let you know the other card will give better performance actually. Vram is important, but it mostly comes into effect when playing at higher resolutions. Here are two reviews to help.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/voodoo3-2000.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/272/17
http://www.anandtech.com/show/389/9

Going by these you can see that at worst the Voodoo3 is equal to the ATI Rage 128. In several tests the Voodoo3 is shown to surpass the ATI Rage 128 and the ATI Rage 128 Pro. This may be slightly less on the side of hardware, because the Voodoo3 cards had 3dfx Glide which gave a much better look and faster performance on several games such as Quake, but since the ATI cards are not capable of running Glide the Voodoo still wins.
I have a Voodoo3 3000 for a old gaming rig I built at the beginning of this year so I have done all sorts of research on this.
Sorry if it seems silly to re-open a dead thread, but if nothing else if someone else finds this thread while trying to build an old rig they will have a bit more information.

Hey dude, that's not a problem! However, I tried both cards and the Rage 128 killed the Voodoo card easily in terms of performance. I couldn't even enable 32 bit on the Voodoo card. The framerates on Quake III and UT 99 were also pretty low with the Voodoo card. Also, doing some research, the voodoo 3 2000 went for about $100-120 whereas my Rage 128 card still has a price tag on it listed at $218.19.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Really? That's interesting. Did you have Glide turned on?
Maybe there was some sort of compatibility issue or something cause Quake was supposed to be like the big game to play on a 3dfx card, or perhaps the driver support for the ATI Rage 128 really gave the card a boost.

Well its good that it is working well for you

Btw, while your here just wondering what version of Windows are you using? 95/98/98SE/ME?

 

[random424232]

Really? That's interesting. Did you have Glide turned on?
Maybe there was some sort of compatibility issue or something cause Quake was supposed to be like the big game to play on a 3dfx card, or perhaps the driver support for the ATI Rage 128 really gave the card a boost.

Well its good that it is working well for you

Btw, while your here just wondering what version of Windows are you using? 95/98/98SE/ME?

Hmm, could be. I wasn't aware of needing to turn on Glide or anything like that. It could be my CPU, too. It's a Pentium III 450. I tried Need For Speed: High Stakes and that gamed lagged badly with both cards regardless of graphic settings. The Voodoo card also ran really freakin hot. I just about burned my finger by touching the heatsink, lol!

I am running Windows 98 SE. I'm thinking about adding a 32 GB CF card to load the OS on and then I can dedicate the 20 GB drive to my many games.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Really? That's interesting. Did you have Glide turned on?
Maybe there was some sort of compatibility issue or something cause Quake was supposed to be like the big game to play on a 3dfx card, or perhaps the driver support for the ATI Rage 128 really gave the card a boost.

Well its good that it is working well for you

Btw, while your here just wondering what version of Windows are you using? 95/98/98SE/ME?

Hmm, could be. I wasn't aware of needing to turn on Glide or anything like that. It could be my CPU, too. It's a Pentium III 450. I tried Need For Speed: High Stakes and that gamed lagged badly with both cards regardless of graphic settings. The Voodoo card also ran really freakin hot. I just about burned my finger by touching the heatsink, lol!

I am running Windows 98 SE. I'm thinking about adding a 32 GB CF card to load the OS on and then I can dedicate the 20 GB drive to my many games.

Oh yea Glide makes a huge difference. It made lots of things run better. Lol maybe there is something wrong with yours? My Voodoo3 3000 has all the same parts as yours but with a larger heat sync, and its clocked a good bit higher probably with some more voltage and it never feels warm really at all. Oh and I forgot to mention its technically only 16-bit color is why you couldn't turn on 32-bit. It used some weird way of getting around it and giving an appearance that is closer to like 24-bit color and still looks really good but no 32-bit unfortunately.

You should go for a CPU boost. I have a 1 GHz Pentium III in mine. You can get them for like $5 shipped on Ebay. I have a 533 Mhz celeron but I wanted the system to be the best it could be while still being nearly 15 years old lol.

I am running 98SE too but having some issues with it. I wanted to update it to be the best it could be, so I tried the unofficial service pack 3.1 and its not going so well. I am about to try the unofficial service pack 2.1 instead. I wouldn't bother, but the service packs help a lot of with USB support and being able to transfer data by Flash drive would help a lot.

Do CF's help? I have seen them before but never really used them. I've only got two 6GB drives inside and I am dedicating one to installation files and the other to holding game images and I hope it holds out.

 

[random424232]

Really? That's interesting. Did you have Glide turned on?
Maybe there was some sort of compatibility issue or something cause Quake was supposed to be like the big game to play on a 3dfx card, or perhaps the driver support for the ATI Rage 128 really gave the card a boost.

Well its good that it is working well for you

Btw, while your here just wondering what version of Windows are you using? 95/98/98SE/ME?

Hmm, could be. I wasn't aware of needing to turn on Glide or anything like that. It could be my CPU, too. It's a Pentium III 450. I tried Need For Speed: High Stakes and that gamed lagged badly with both cards regardless of graphic settings. The Voodoo card also ran really freakin hot. I just about burned my finger by touching the heatsink, lol!

I am running Windows 98 SE. I'm thinking about adding a 32 GB CF card to load the OS on and then I can dedicate the 20 GB drive to my many games.

Oh yea Glide makes a huge difference. It made lots of things run better. Lol maybe there is something wrong with yours? My Voodoo3 3000 has all the same parts as yours but with a larger heat sync, and its clocked a good bit higher probably with some more voltage and it never feels warm really at all. Oh and I forgot to mention its technically only 16-bit color is why you couldn't turn on 32-bit. It used some weird way of getting around it and giving an appearance that is closer to like 24-bit color and still looks really good but no 32-bit unfortunately.

You should go for a CPU boost. I have a 1 GHz Pentium III in mine. You can get them for like $5 shipped on Ebay. I have a 533 Mhz celeron but I wanted the system to be the best it could be while still being nearly 15 years old lol.

I am running 98SE too but having some issues with it. I wanted to update it to be the best it could be, so I tried the unofficial service pack 3.1 and its not going so well. I am about to try the unofficial service pack 2.1 instead. I wouldn't bother, but the service packs help a lot of with USB support and being able to transfer data by Flash drive would help a lot.

Do CF's help? I have seen them before but never really used them. I've only got two 6GB drives inside and I am dedicating one to installation files and the other to holding game images and I hope it holds out.

Then maybe I'm gonna have to throw it back in and try it. Do you enable it in the driver application?

I don't bother with unofficial service packs as I don't know what's all included in them. I did get USB installed along with some other things for my needs. I just don't want to clutter it up with junk I don't need.

I had a 6 GB Fujitsu drive, but the motor was beginning to act up so I threw in a 20 GB Western Digital drive and it's working perfectly! No bad sectors or anything. The motor isn't using a fluid dynamic bearings, so it's a little loud, but I like it for nostalgia. As for CF cards, I don't know. I haven't had any experience with them yet. They're incredibly cheap on Newegg, so I'm tempted to give them a try soon.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Usually you turn it on in the game settings I think. Honestly I haven't used it much yet. My favorite old games to play are Monkey Island, Freespace, The Seventh Guest, Diablo, Warcraft II, and out of all of those only Freespace uses the Glide and I haven't had a chance to play it yet. I just got the last piece to my system, a sound card, today.

Yea see thats what I am kind of thinking now. I don't think I can get my USB flash drive to work without it, but I would rather the whole system work a bit better and have less clutter than fight with an unofficial service pack. I am using unofficial drivers for my Voodoo3, but those work wonderful and were straight forward and well worked. The team from 3dfx who made it continued them for a while outside of work out of dedication. Thats what I am sticking to I think.

I have been thinking to get a larger drive for mine also. The main drive I am using is called a Quantum Fireball and its got some decent states but I just had to redo windows because it was bugging out. Couldn't write to the drive hardly. The other is a Seagate Medalist which belonged to my father. Despite being tossed around, and literally having a crack near the center where the drives are turned, it works better than the other one so far. Its just too small to use alone though.

Well good luck with the CF. If it works that would be awesome. Sort of like having a 98 SSD! lol