Preview of 3Dfx Voodoo3

2D Performance

I ran Winstone99 with Voodoo3, RIVA TNT and Rage 128 at 16 bit as well as at 32bit color. The results weren't even worth making a chart. If you run the tests about three times on each graphics card you will find out that at 16 bit as well as at 32 bit desktop color depth the Winstone99 results are absolutely identical. Voodoo3 is as fast as the other two top 2D-performers, but it's the only one with a RAMDAC of 350 MHz, which enables highest desktop resolutions on high-end monitors. For me with my excellent Sony-monitor this is an important aspect, which is why I won't hesitate putting a Voodoo3 into my system.

3D Performance

Before I started comparing Voodoo3 with other graphics card, I decided to compare the different versions of Voodoo3 between one another. To get a good measure of the performance of Voodoo3 2000 and Voodoo3 3000 I 'underclocked' my Voodoo3 3500 to lower chip clocks. However, I did not 'underclock' the memory clock as well, so that the results of the 2000 and the 3000-version displayed here will be a little bit higher than what a real Voodoo3 2000 or 3000 will score. The difference is not too significant however.

The Three Different Voodoo3s - Quake2 Crusher

The first benchmark I used was Quake2 and the Crusher.dm2 demo from Brett 'Three Fingers' Jacobs. This demo is pretty tough and thus not showing as high frame rates as 'demo1'. However, it is a much better measure of the real performance a system offers, because it's an example for a worst case scenario. The frame rate in Quake2 should hardly ever drop underneath the result scored in 'Crusher'. This makes 'Crusher' the best benchmark for the hard core gamer, who doesn't want to know how high the frame rate can go, but how low it can drop.

Crusher is so tough that the frame rate never excels 53 fps. Voodoo3 3000 is not a whole lot slower than Voodoo3 3500 and this is measured in a Pentium III 500-system. The CPU-limitation is of course even higher with a slower CPU, so that this test makes you wonder if the Voodoo3 3500 is that much of an advancement over Voodoo3 3000 after all. Voodoo3 2000 performs significantly worse than its two bigger brothers.