How scalable is the Voodoo5?

[darkfalz]

I always thought my Pentium III 933 MHz was a very good match for my Voodoo5, but it seems that I'm actually still quite CPU limited.

In UT2003 which I put on this old machine, I actually get identical scores in flyby (the supposedly non CPU heavy of the benchmarks) at 1024x768 and 800x600! So this means it's still CPU limited.

A large reason for this surely is that fact that V5 has to do all T&L in software. This obviously takes out a hefty chunk of your CPU especially in a game like UT2003, but it must also mean that the Voodoo5 would actaully scale better than the T&L cards of the time with faster processors than were available at release.

So for those of you who've hung onto your Voodoo5 cards to put into Pentium 4 and AthlonXP systems, what would you say is the CPU speed needed to absolutely max out the potential of these cards? 1.5 GHz? 2 GHz?

I'm curious! I have a feeling that UT2003 would run quite smoothly on a Voodoo5 and 2.0 GHz processor! And as for the Voodoo5 6000, that would probably run like butter! Sadly I cannot try it myself because my P4 board doesn't support AGP 3.3 volt.

[InSomNiaN]

My voodoo 5 stopped showing increases after about 2.2ghz.  I originally upgraded from an Athlon xp2000+ @ 1.8ghz to a xp2800+.  After i started overclocking the 2800+ the voodoo5 went higher until about 2.2ghz.

[bloodworm]

upping your FSB may still increase speed on the V5 after 2.2Ghz.

[InSomNiaN]

I had upped the FSB from 180 to 190 and there was minimal difference....

[darkfalz]

2.2? Wow.

I might try to get a hold of a second hand P4 2.0 GHz board with DDR266 or to replace the Pentium III in this other system.

[bloodworm]

I'm talking about going from 180 to 400 or 800 Mhz.  even at 2.2Ghz with a 400Mhz or 800 Mhz FSB, the V5's I have been told go much faster.  I think it all has to do with mainboard memory speed since the V5 has no AGP texture crap (4x/8x do nothing for Voodoos even if they could run at the voltage etc.).

[InSomNiaN]

180-190DDR = 360-380Mhz bus speed.   As i said, it started dropping off after 180DDR, and as we all know voodoo5's aren't too P4 friendly for 800 bus....

[bloodworm]

the problem with the Intel P4's is the AGP slot is NOT a universal slot which can handle any voltage agp card.  the FSB has nothing to do with not being able to run the cards in an intel motherboard.  just run a PCI V5 in an intel board, there is no perceptible difference in speed between the V5 in an AGP slot and a V5 in a PCI slot.  If you could get a motherboard with a 66Mhz PCI slot (like a server mainboard) then there would be NO difference between the two.

[NitroX infinity]

With AMD processors (AthlonXP and better, not Duron!) you'll max out about 2.2GHz.

With Intel processors (Pentium 4) you'll need some more megahertz's.
I've got a P4 2,26GHz and I'm not yet at the limit. I know that because AMD AthlonXP 2200+ CPU's (which don't run at 2,2GHz offcourse) perform slightly better.

I'm thinking that with AMD you'll max out around 2,2 ~ 2,4GHz.
With Intel you'll max out around 2,6 ~ 3,0GHz