There's an interesting new thread on the enboard related to some MS-DOS games, like Quake, QuakeWorld, FitzQuake, and Quake 2, that can run - using 3dfx video cards - with more than enough values of the frame rate as well as a considerable image quality.

Quake 2 with Voodoo5 5500 on MS-DOS

The configuration of the 3dfx cards working on MS-DOS involves to use a unofficial release of the graphics API Mesa 3D (based on the official version 6.4.2) and the latest Glide3x library for DOS (version 3.10.00.30303) from sourceforge.

Quake 2 with Voodoo5 5500 on MS-DOS

Furthermore, analyzing the results of some comparative benchmarks (*), the performances of a Voodoo5 card with Quake 2 on MS-DOS are comparable, and uperior in some cases, to those measurable using the same hardware on Windows.

Benchmark results with Quake 2, Voodoo5 5500, and Mesa on MS-DOS

According to the enboard's member Maraakate, one of the project's owners, the 3dfx rendering on MS-DOS with these Quake-based games was successfully tested not only with a Voodoo5 but also with a wide range of other Voodoo video cards, including Voodoo3 and single Voodoo 2. And some reports indicate also the Voodoo Rush as a supported card.

Benchmark results with Quake 2, Voodoo5 5500, and Mesa on Windows

Sources of the project are available on bitbucket.org, so if you want support the authors - just now they are searching for low level 3D developers in order to do bug fixing - please fell free to append a new message to the related thread.

A marketing image of the Voodoo5 5500

Finally and again, many thanks to all of you for contribution and interest in 3dfx related topics.

The main components of the testing system are the following: a Asus P3B-F motherboard, a Intel Pentium III 800MHz processor working at 900MHz (using FSB at 100MHz), 512MB of SDRAM memory, and a 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 64MB video card.

The testers have measured the frame rates of Quake 2 at several video resolutions on both MS-DOS with Mesa and Windows 98SE with MesaFX v. 6.2.0.2, WickedGL v. 3.02, and OpenGL ICD. Lastly, the test's scenarios include 16-bit and 32-bit rendering, with or without multitexturing.

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