Compatibility problem between Voodoo3 PCI and K6-2 system

[simonstre]

Hi all!

A customer of mine has problem with a computer... Here are the specs :

K6-2 450 mhz
192 mo ram
Voodoo 3 PCI, I don't know how much memory
13 go HD
Currently, no audio card nor modem/network card

I've tested a few OS on it (Win98, WinMe and WinXP Pro) and it is always unstable. When it comes to games like Descent 2, wich should run ok, I got a BIG lag... and a BSOD most of the time. WinXP Pro told me that he has problems with the video card... Is this possible or not?

Any related known problems with this configuration?


Thanks for your help!

 

[CougTek]

From what I found with a quick search on the Web, the driver v1.07 is the latest for Win 9x and the v.1.03 is the latest for Win2K. WinXP support is probably inexistant since 3dfx went bankrupt before its release.

 

[time]

It might help to know the brand and model of motherboard, and the chipset used.

And the history.

 

[CougTek]

From what he told me on IM, he doesn't know what's the motherboard's brand and model, but the motherboard doesn't have any AGP slot, so it must not be very recent. I'm going to take a look at it tomorrow, but if any of you would has suggestions on the possible instability causes that a Voodoo 3 PCI (2000 almost certain since there's apparently no heatsink on the GPU) can have on an aging SS7 platform, it would be much appreciated.

 

[Sol]

I'm pretty sure there are third party drivers available for voodoo cards which are more recent than the official ones. I imagine that ther would also be some winXP support from unofficial channels. 3dFX would have to have had one of the most fanatical following of any hardware manufacturer ever.

 

[Cliptin]

Could it be power related; like the problem Nvidia had a while back?

 

[NRG = mc²]

2000 almost certain since there's apparently no heatsink on the GPU

no heatsink on a V3?? That might be the problem by itself... All voodoo 3's I've seen (2000 included) have had a heatsink but have overheated anyway - they get extremely hot and smelly some times (I've seen a melted PCI slot once on an old Pentium system...)

 

[Mercutio]

I installed lots and lots of V3s and yes, they all had roughly 1" by 2" silver heat sinks on them. They work just fine under every version of Windows including 2000 and XP. If that one doesn't, I'd say get a heatsink on it posthaste.

I believe XP's 3dfx-related complaint has something to do with DirectX.
... and yes, there are very good 3rd party drivers for Voodoo cards online. A quick google search should turn those up.

 

[Tannin]

A K6-2/450 board with no AGP slot just has to be either (a) something horribly old and overclocked or otherwise running out of spec, or (b) one of those not-very-nice MVP4 things with integrated video. NRG's point that the Voodoo should certainly have a heatsink and probably a fan is a good one. I can't imagine an actual compatibility problem - Voodoo IIIs were brilliant for compatibility, no problems at all, not even with Ali chipsets.

I can imagine a resources issue. Step 2 is try a different PCI slot to change the interupts around. (Step 1, of course, is to give it some cooling.) To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a Super 7 (i.e., 100MHz capable) board with no AGP slot, barring cruddy MVP4 integrated video stuff. The card, by the way, will be 16MB - all Voodoo IIIs had 16MB.

 

[simonstre]

Well, thank you all!

In fact, there is no silver heatsink, only a black thing that gets very, very hot in 2 minutes. We tried to put it in a different slot, and it still doesn't work. I don't really know what should I do to solve the problem of this machine, but anyway, I think that it is too slow to be of some utility to solve it. I guess my customer wants something good enough to run Warcraft 3 faster than a frame per second So I will recommend him to change the box instead. The other 3D cards I saw are all AGP stuff, and there's no such slot on the current mobo!

A K6-2/450 board with no AGP slot just has to be either (a) something horribly old and overclocked or otherwise running out of spec, or (b) one of those not-very-nice MVP4 things with integrated video.

In fact, there is an integrated video card, but it has been disabled to let the 3D card makes the job. Thanks for your help!

 

[Sol]

Actually on a Duron 800 with a TNT2 War Craft 3 runs perfectly in 800x600 so on a voodoo3 I'd say it should do much the same even with only 450Mhz behind it. Of course War Craft 3 is pretty out of the ordinary in this sense so if it was just an example... But if thats all they wan't to run set them up with a 56K net connection and they could play online games with the big boys. Thats all War Craft 3 needs. (Well maybe stick a crystal orb or somthing on the video card first)