Thank you for the replies.
A standard DVI->DSUB converter can not be used. Although the connector on the card looks like DVI, it is a bit longer. F**k.

Those blue pods do appear on Ebay from time to time, but they usually cost as much as a whole high-end Pentium 3 PC with a Voodoo 3 in it

I'll hunt for a complete Voodoo 3  3500TV set.

Hello,

I have a chance to get a Voodoo 3 3500 TV AGP for very little money, but without any cables.

This card has a special VGA+video connector, and it originally came with a big fat blue "breakout" cable.

Could I use some other converter cable for this card to enable attachment to a standard VGA monitor? Maybe some cable from Matrox G550 or their QID cards?

If I must have the original breakout cable, than this card is useless without it.

Thank you very much! This question is now cleared.

But I have one more question. And I doubt that I will find an answer for it unless I run onto an ex-3Dfx SST-1 engineer

The question is - how do two Voodoo cards receive textures when they are in SLI mode? Since both cards have the same TMU RAM contents in every moment, that would implicate that each texture has to be sent twice over the PCI bus. If this is true, that means that the PCI bus may be the limiting element for the SLI system.

But are the textures sent twice, or how else? I doubt that PCI multicasting is used, because AFAIK the "ordinary" PCI bus does not support multicasting.

Thank you very much for participating here.

If I understood you well, the card's horisontal pixel count is intentionally limited, although it could render a "wider" resolution otherwise (because it has enough FBI RAM in SLI mode).

Does that mean that my assumption about FBI RAM's contents when the cards are in SLI, is correct? I mean about this:

Quote
Now, as far as I understood, in SLI mode, every card renders alternate screen lines, whan in effect means that each card renders only half of the screen lines - meaning half of the resolution. In a case of 800x600x2x(2+1), each card would be rendering in 800x300x2x(2+1), right? I am not sure if the z-buffer is halved, but I assume that it is.

If this organisation is the one in practice, then the conclusion would be that, for two Voodoo 2 cards in SLI mode (each card with 4 MB of FBI RAM), there is 1792 KB of unused FBI RAM in each card when that system is rendering at 1024x768x2x(2+1). Is this true!? (calculation: {1024x384x2x(2+1)}/1024 = 2304 KB, what is 1792 KB less than 4096 KB).

I am not sure if I made my question and doubtness clear. Plese ask me for additional explanation if it was not.

One more thing - do you know the reason for that horisontal limitation of 1024 pixels?

Thank you for this link, but I still have not gained information which I need. I guess that waiting is all I can do.

Thank you for that information. I just hope that somebody will give an answer as soon as possible.

Since there were no replies to my questions, can somebody at least point me to the right place for this sort of topic. I suspect that this was not the proper sub-forum for this topic.

Hello,
I am investigating the Voodoo 1/2 (SST-1) architecture for some of my own designs for some college research.

I am currently analyzing the nature of SLI connectivity. There is one thing which puzzles me, and that is the content of each card's frame buffer when it is in this mode.

---

First, let me summarize the memory usage for a single card when it is not in SLI mode. AFAIK, in the case of a common Voodoo 2 (with 4 MB of FBI RAM), the maximum resolution is 800x600 (16-bit color depth is always used so it is assumed, and I also assume double buffering and 16-bit z-buffering).

The custom formula to calculate the memory usage for frame buffering is [width] x [height] x [bytes_per_pixel] x ([number_of_buffers]+[number_of_zbuffers]).
So, { 800x600x2x(2+1) } / 1024 = 2812 KB, right?
The mode of 1024*768*2*(2+1) can not fit because it requires 4608 KB.

---

Now, as far as I understood, in SLI mode, every card renders alternate screen lines, whan in effect means that each card renders only half of the screen lines - meaning half of the resolution. In a case of 800x600x2x(2+1), each card would be rendering in 800x300x2x(2+1), right? I am not sure if the z-buffer is halved, but I assume that it is.

I have read many times on numerous places that the maximum resolution for two Voodoo 2 cards in SLI mode (each with 4 MB of FBI RAM) is 1024x768 (16-bit color, double buffer, 16-bit z-buffer).

But, if I use my assumption that the resolution in each card is only the half of the final resolution, it turns out that they COULD display 1280x960 (16-bit color, double buffer, 16-bit z-buffer)!
Here it is: { 1280x480x2x(2+1) } / 1024 = 3600 KB, what fits into 4096 KB which each card has.

If this had been true than somebody (3Dfx would be the first) would have mentioned it in its documentation, so I assume that I realised something wrong.

Can somebody explain me where my mistake is and tell me how is each card's FBI RAM organised when the card is in SLI mode?

Hi to every reader.
I have got an offer from a friend of a friend. He offers me a second-hand LCD monitor, Eizo FlexScan L675. The price is 190EUR, what is a very fine price for such a thing in my country.

I have to decide fast, or someone else will buy it. The problem is that I know very little about LCDs, so I need advices from people whos knowledge about LCDs is profound.

In short, can you check this monitor's specifications and tell me what is good and what is bad about it? I will tell you what I want out of a monitor:

I am looking for a high-quality LCD monitor, and I suppose that Eizo is a candidate for that. I really appreciate quality above all. I don't care much about the features like USB hubs or so (however I would need a dual video input). But physical quality and screen quality is crucial. I DO NOT want ghosts and dead pixels and whatever else.

My "interaction" with PC consists mostly of:
1) Reading literature (PDF, HTML, etc.) and programming, so it takes about 60-70% of the time. I really read a lot.
2) I also occasionally do video editing from my DV camera, and I watch DVD movies, so count that about 20-30%.
3) I also regularly play a game every day, at least a half an hour per day. So that takes only about 10-20%, but I don't want to chase screen ghosts in UT2004.
4) I often visit DOS, BIOS, Win95 in Safe mode and other low-res environments. But I suppose that is fine for an LCD?


Now here are a couple of links to get you started. If you could figure out in which year(s) this monitor was actual, I would also appreciate that info too.

http://www.eizo.com/Support/discontinued/lcd/l675.asp

http://www.eizo.com/downloads/brochures/pdf/l675.pdf

http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/Eizo_Nanao_Flexscan_L675_Black/4507-3174_16-8263944.html?tag=nav

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/21199

http://www.tomshardware.com/newsletter/vol2/12/g550_flexscan.html

I am also surprised by the success, but in the other hand, the game could also run with a software renderer, so you could run it even with S3 Trio 64v+ if it has enough RAM for the resolution and color depth.

And I suppose that the software version wouldn't be any uglier than this Voodoo2 version. So, my principle is, stick with Vodoo2 sutiable games and enjoy them. All of them really look great on that card, especially UT.

That was not my purposely intention. I was a bit in a bad mood to.
In fact, I was browsing some older topics on the forum, so I read some pretty ludicrous attempts to use old 3Dfx hardware with very stuff (I especially noticed the "DooM 3 project" - I really hope that nobody actually plays that).

And finally I bumped onto this HL2 story so I wrote my reply under such an impression. I apologize if anyone feels hurted. I am a "3Dfx lover" too, but I am realistic.

The most common misbelief among "population" is that, if the graphic card has enough video RAM to run a particular game, that it wil ACTUALLY run it. That is dead wrong!! I'll just give a few examples:

1) Kyro II has 64MB of RAM, and so does Geforce 4 Ti 4200, but just think about even trying to start DooM 3 on Kyro 2...
2) Once I saw some S3 card with passive cooling and blazing 128MB of RAM. The card was very ****ty, performing like TNT2, maybe even worse.
4) Anyone remembers the ATi Rage IIc with it's incredible 8MB of RAM? That "3D" card had 8MB of RAM when virtually no other 3D card had more than 4MB, but it fared worse than S3 Virge. I know that, I am one of the suckers who bought it back then.

Of course. The monitor has a dedicated button for instant input switching. Thank you for confirmation.

Do not be offended - the statement I made was nothing personal to anyone here, its goal was just to see what will the reaction be.

You will see such statements from me no more.

I intent to acquire a CRT monitor with dual VGA inputs, so I thought to connect one input to my Matrox Millennium II, and another to the Voodoo 2. But in this setup the pass-trough cable from Millennium II to the Voodoo 2 is surplus. So, will V2 work without it?

You 3Dfx fanatics really make me laugh. Why don't you just try DooM 3 with Voodoo 1??