Voodoo2 SLI Vs. Voodoo3
Jack Sidious
f117@sympatico.ca
Jack, Sidious, Jack Sidious, voodoo, video cards, gaming, quake, quake 2, quake2


   3DFX Interactive rescently released their third generation of 3d accelerator 
cards. It's the successor of their popular Voodoo 2 3d accelerator cards and is 
claimed to be a lot faster ... but is it ? The Voodoo 3 comes in 3 different 
speeds. The fastest one, called Voodoo 3 3500 is clocked at 183 mhz core speed 
and comes with 16 MB of memmory and AGP 2x/4x support. The lower end cards, 3000 
and 2000 are basically the same, but have a slower core speed and dont include TV out.


 The voodoo 3 is a 2d/3d card wich means there is no need to add an extra 2d card. 
This is pretty good and can save a precious slot on the motherboard. 
All this sounds nice but lets talk about the stuff that matters most to us, 
the gamers. High resolution and fast framerates is what most gamers are looking 
for and voodoo 3 does a pretty good job there, but so does the Voodoo 2 SLI and I 
would say even better. When Voodoo 3 came out, it made most people think that 
Voodoo 2 accelerators were a thing of the past. This is, of course, not true. 


Running a 24 mb Voodoo 2 SLI combo, I would like to see a Voodoo3 perform 
considerably better. The 3500 generates 366 million megatexels in a second wich 
is very fast. Now, one Voodoo2 alone can pump out 180 million m. texels and when 
combined with another, a whooping 360 million is reached. I dont really see how a 
Voodoo 3 can be "a lot" faster than an SLI, they are virtually identical. In a 
Quake 2 framerate test, on a 450 mhz pII processor with 128 mb ram, the voodoo 3 
topped 63 FPS wich is pretty good. I ran the same pc then with a Voodoo2 SLI 24 mb 
combo, and it reached 71 Fps. The higher framerates are probably due to the SLI's 
higher combined clock speed (200 mhz, 2 cards overclocked to 100 mhz each) wich 
results in a similar performance and produces a lot less heat. 


This can't be done with a voodoo 3 because it already runs pretty hot at 183 mhz. 
The Sli also has 24 megs of memmory compared with Voodoo 3's 16 mb. 3DFX has 
no plans of adding an SLI capability for their Voodoo3 cards wich is pretty 
frustrating. This is an important advantage for the SLI because it helps keep 
the framerates up in heavy graphic sences (battles, explosions etc...). The 
Voodoo 3 does have some advantages over the SLI. 


TV out is a pretty cool option for folks who like big screen 
gaming (I know I do but I don't mind playing on the computer monitor 
either =] ) Voodoo3 can also save 2 extra PCI slots wich is precious for most 
of us. Other than that, the price of these two cards isn't really comparable. 
Living in Montreal, Canada, the Voodoo3 3500 costs $389.99 canadian +tax which 
rounds up to a whooping $446.57


My Voodoo2 Sli cost me around $320 in total (after $80 mail in rebate) wich is 
considerably cheaper. To conclude, the Voodoo2 line of accelerators is far from 
being old or slow, the SLI runs just as well as the fastest Voodoo3 and costs a 
lot less too, which makes it a great choice, especially for folks who allready 
own one Voodoo2....