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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: stopthegop on October 29, 2006, 10:28:19 AM

Title: Scored a free Voodoo 4 Card
Post by: stopthegop on October 29, 2006, 10:28:19 AM

Thought I'd share a little trick on how to obtain free (or very cheap) 3dfx pci video cards.  Its worked for me twice now.  

Check out the free stuff section of craigslist and look for "curb alerts" or people giving away old PCs.  In the NY area there's 50 or so of these postings every day.  Anyway, just send an email to the poster and ask them if its still available and what kind of graphics card is installed.  Most people won't even respond.  Some respond but don't have a clue what you're talking about..  Some respond but have the wrong type of card, etc...  But after about 20 or so attempts, a guy came back and said he had a pentium pro 200 and the graphics card was a 3dfx voodoo 4!  It was obviously PCI because the pentium pro predates agp.   Anyway, the price was right: free.  Just took 30 min. of my time to send off the emails..  

 

Title: Re: Scored a free Voodoo 4 Card
Post by: keropi on October 29, 2006, 10:37:32 AM

good for you!
but on amiga-side, a voodoo4 offers no improvement over a voodoo3 ... AFAIK there are no warp3D drivers for the voodoo4/5...

Title: Re: Scored a free Voodoo 4 Card
Post by: stopthegop on October 29, 2006, 10:39:56 AM

Thats true..  but wouldn't there be some benefit to having the additional vram on the voodoo 4?

Title: Re: Scored a free Voodoo 4 Card
Post by: Amigaz on October 29, 2006, 10:41:18 AM

Quote

keropi wrote:
good for you!
but on amiga-side, a voodoo4 offers no improvement over a voodoo3 ... AFAIK there are no warp3D drivers for the voodoo4/5...

No true about the Warp3D drivers, there's full Warp3D support for Voodoo 3,4 & 5 on the Mediator
Only advantage with the Voodoo 4 would be 32mb gfx memory if you have it in an A3000 or A4000 and 32bit Warp3D modes

Title: Re: Scored a free Voodoo 4 Card
Post by: keropi on October 29, 2006, 10:43:58 AM

oh, did not knew mediator had 4/5 w3d drivers...
so the 8MB VRAM limitation exists only in the 1200 mediator models?

Title: Re: Scored a free Voodoo 4 Card
Post by: Amigaz on October 29, 2006, 10:49:20 AM

Quote

keropi wrote:
oh, did not knew mediator had 4/5 w3d drivers...
so the 8MB VRAM limitation exists only in the 1200 mediator models?

Yep, Use to have my Voodoo 5500 in both my A1200 and A4000...only problems I had is that some games that ran in 15bit screenmodes looked weird like Nightlong, Wipeout2097 and Earth 2140
The 8mb memory windows is what makes the Mediator for A1200 suck  :boohoo:

Title: Re: Scored a free Voodoo 4 Card
Post by: humppa on October 29, 2006, 11:18:35 AM

Quote

oh, did not knew mediator had 4/5 w3d drivers...

There are no drivers which use Voodoo4/5-specific features. In case of the V5500, only one GPU is used. There is no real speed-benefit over using a Voodoo 3000.

Title: Re: Scored a free Voodoo 4 Card
Post by: Panthro on October 29, 2006, 12:17:42 PM

do the extra ram IF you can use it is of no benifit to speed?