Well I guess I got off the Dark side a bit after all, I returned the MSI 7600GT card and picked a  Sapphire X850XT, here's the reason why :

1) The color saturation and sharpness are superior on the X850XT as well as on my previous X800XL agp. (using the analog out on a standard CRT LG monitor)
No matter what kind of adjustment with the Nvidia control pannel I did, the result was disapointing.
2) Roughly as fast as the 7600GT for $40 canadian buck less
3) Better performance in Oblivion (fantastic game BTW)
4) The Sapphire X850XT is not made by Nvidia !!!!!!!
I will hang onto this cheap card until the X1900XL price come down in Canada.

Thanks for the link Rolo01, I ended up using these new 6.4 Catalyst drivers without the damn CCC and MS program.

Hi Rolo1,
to my knowledge these are not the official drivers from ATI, they may work very well tough. I would have tried them but it's too late now for me.
Anyway the ATI option for me was the new x1800gto, not available yet at $60 canadian extra, and the 7600GT is a better performer(from all the reviews I could find)

I gave my soul to the devil today !!!
I bought today an Asus A8N sli motherboard and a PCIE MSI 7600GT video card....ouch.
I allways hated NVIDIA for the way they treated the 3DFX crowd after the takeover, and the way they quickly killed the 3dfx brand/legacy.
But since the NF4 is the best 939 chipset, and for $260 canadian the 7600GT is king of the hill, I had no other choice but to surrender.
Forgive me.....
In the meantime ATI should rethink their midprice strategy, start to use quality fan/cooler on their product, and scrap the CCP/MS .net framework combo.
I hope to comeback to ATI next round.

I'm curently playing with the idea of uppgrading my memory, from 1 to 2 GB. I know that Battlefield and Fear are supposed to be smoother with 2GB, but what about HL2, UT2004, ESIV Oblivion, COD 2 and Doom3 ??

My system :
MSI K8T neo2 F, Athlon 64 939 3700, 1 gig DDR 3200 Dual Ch (2x512), Audigy, WD 120 SATA, Antec Sonata case / 380w true power.

Haaaaaaaaaarhg ....... that's what I tought.
Well in that case I'll stick to Glide with my Voodoo 5.

thanks,
Steph.

Wow I just discovered this section.
Let's post our Q3 results !!!!!!!  
Stick to 1024x768 and DEMO 1/Quake 3 Unpatched if you can.

System :
Aopen AX3S mobo, Pentium III 1ghz, 256 PC-133, Voodoo 5 agp bios 1.18 with the last 3dfx beta drivers, Windows 98se, SB 128, HD 80 gig IDE 133 Maxtor 7200 rpm.
Gameport Disabled on the soundcard.

Here's my result :

Quake 3 1024x768 all visual settings at max, sound at low Q.
Demo 1 at 16 bits textures + colors 94.1 fps
Demo 1 at 32 bits                   71.3 fps

Same test and system, except P III 800 mhz instead of PIII 1 ghz
Quake 3 1024x768 all visual settings at max, sound at low Q.
Demo 1 at 16 bits textures + colors 87.3 fps
Demo 1 at 32 bits                   69.9 fps

Update : the small increased going from PIII 800mhz to 1ghz
is explained by the saturation of the Voodoo5 fillrate at 1024reso+32bits.
Going with an even more powerfull CPU at these settings will produce marginal increase. However at 16 bits and lower resolution, the V5 will have better scaling.

Update no 2 : I have replace my soundcard, the SB 128 was changed for a SB Live. The result are identical, or very tiny boost in favor of the Live and the sound quality is a lot better on the Live.

I already have UT 99 running in OpenGL+S3TC textures on my main PC (Athlon64+X800XL), but I would like to know if you can use the high rez textures in glide mode on a Voodoo 5 or you must play in OpenGl mode to be able to enable those textures. (and suffer a performance hit on the V5)

Thanks,
Steph.

By the way I was very surprised by the visual on my main PC, the combo Open GL + High rez textures is king of the hill for UT99, Glide in second and D3D rendering mode in third place (and UT99 D3D is ugly IMO)

Well apparently this thread is not popular..................humm no one is playing vintage games anymore ??
Anyway I have just finished Undying on my vintage system. Wow what a superb game, a slepper. And like I said previously the graphics are very good. HIGLY recomended

Now I'm moving to Deus EX and I should get Alice later this week.

I got my 1ghz PIII last week.
I did some benchs and I was a bit disapointed, I was expecting a higher jump in framerate going from 800 to 1000 mhz. Anyway my last change in my vintage system will be to replace my SB 128 for a SB Live, I should get it this week.

Now Quake 3 at 1024 full visual at max 32bits : 71.3 fps
same settings at 16bits (textures and colors) : 94.1 fps

''Voodoo 5'' please can you do some Q3 benchs with one of your PC (one comparable to mine)
Maybe we should have a sticky with benchs from all members :-), because apparently Tom's Hardware do not include the Voodoo 5 anymore in his VGA's chart hehehehe.

Thanks,

Steph.

Oups I forgot Rune, wich is very good if you can go past the early boring levels.
I need to find my copy somewhere.
Good call Voodoo 5 on American McGee's Alice, I definitly need to try that one.

How to run Screamer Rally on a Voodoo 5, if someone actually succeed please tell me how.
The game run but the menus are all messed up.
I never was able to run the game on Voodoo4-5 in 2000, but the game was working fine on a Voodoo 2 and 3 !!!!!!!!!!!
And it's the same situation with my new ''Vintage system/Voodoo5 PC''
I tried to copy/rename my glide system file in the game's 3d directory
with no result. This is driving me nuts !!!! (no pun)

Thanks,
Stephane

I was playing Undying yesterday and appart from being a superb shooter, I was shocked by how good the graphics where.
(1024x768 Voodoo5 PIII800 all effects at max)
I also played Wheel of Time last week, another great FPS, with great graphics (the characters/skins are not that great however).
Deus Ex would also fit in this categorie.
(3 titles based on the UT engine, wich we all know was design for glide)

Any other glide or GL titles I should try ?? lost gems ??

Stephane

Thanks ps47

I decided to go with ProQuake 3.50 (GL version).

Stephane

@ Voodoo5

I bought a brand new PIII 1ghz CPU yesterday on Ebay. :-)
(new old stock)
If I'm lucky I should get it at the end of the week.

Even tought I know that the Voodoo 5 is scalable (a lot)
I have no intention of running actual or futur game on it, my primary PC (Athlon 64/X800XL)
is here for this. I have HL2, Quake 4, Doom3, Far Cry, UT 2004 all running at max settings and I wouldn't do otherwise.
To be able to play Doom3 on a Voodoo 5 is a tour de force on such old tech, but the result is not adequate IMO. (no offense)

Now could you explain why the amigamerlin 2.9 are much better than the last 3dfx one.
Appart from support for new game, do they give a performance boost on vintage title such as Quake3 and UT ??
(I never tried anything else than 3dfx's drivers)

Thanks,
Stephane

I saw those adapter, but I don't want to spend much on my vintage system. I would need to use the 370 adapter to use a Tualatin processor on my Motherboard.
So I will hunt for a P III 1ghz and stick at that speed.

In the meantime I flashed my Voodoo 5  with the latest 3dfx 1.18 Bios, and got a tiny boost in performance.(+0.5% to +1% fps in Quake 3)