Voodoo hex

[xPhilx]

Hi All,

Here's the setup:
Micronik towered A3000D.
A3640 CPU card.
8MB ZIPs + 128MB ZorRam.
Prometheus PCI bus board.
Voodoo3 3000 GFX. (yeah right! Read on)
RTL 8029 NIC.
ATX 200W PSU.
9GB Micropolis SCSI HDD. (which gets hotter than a star gone super nova!)
Plextor PlexWriter SCSI CD-R.

And here's my problem:
I started getting corrupt graphics in RTG mode at workbench.  This would be small random dots or short lines but always accompanied by a vertical line to the right-bottom of the pointer.  Later this worsened to thick black vertical lines at equal distance across the screen.  I tried re-inserting the voodoo3 3000 into different PCI slots, moving the Prometheus to different Zorro slots, removing the A3640, replaced the original A3000D PSU, uninstalling - reinstalling P96.  All to no avail.  The Amigas native PAL screenmode is fine.

Assumption = knackered Voodoo card.

I remembered I have a Voodoo4 4500 PCI card in storage so tried that.  At first I had garbage on-screen but a reinstall of P96 sorted it out and it runs perfectly - no graphic corruption.  Screen redraws and updates are a little slower than the Voodoo3 but no biggy.

Action = get another Voodoo3 card

I got another voodoo3 3000 from eBay which arrived today.  After installing it I find this card has, how can I explain this . . . 6 rows a dashes "-" horizontally across the screen which move with the pointer, and hello, there's that vertical line to the right-bottom of the pointer again??  Surely I've not bought a duff card, not off eBay lol.

Thoughts = to explicit!

I decided to try both voodoo3 cards in a PC.  Yep, both show corrupt graphics.  The original card displays DOS characters as garbage and once windows boots there are vertical black bars at equal distance across the splash screen.  Am I right in thinking this is bad memory?  The second card is okay in DOS but in windows it has thin orange vertical bars at the same equal distance as the first card.

Now, I'm left wondering if both cards have died a 'natural' death or did the Promethues have a hand in their demise.  I don't want to use the Amiga and risk any further damage.  I guess I'll have to get yet another Voodoo3 card and try it in the PC first to make sure it's working okay.  If that card corrupts graphics in the Amiga I can only assume I have a dodgy Prometheus board . . . unless anyone knows different?

I guess what I'm asking is has anyone seen this behavior before with the Prometheus and am I right in thinking that the Voodoo memory is bad.

Oh, while I'm here; silly question I'm sure but is the Voodoo3 2000 compatible with the Prometheus?

Cheers.

[Zac67]

Voodoo 3 2000 and 3000 are exactly the same apart from clock speed. So yes, it should work.

[Heiroglyph]

If you suspect that the Prometheus is killing them, you better check your Amiga power supply.

The Prometheus doesn't change the voltages.

[Iggy]

If you have a Voodoo 4500, and it works, why would you want to run a less powerful card?

[zipper]

In my Prometheus voodoo 4500 is mostly as fast as 3000 but because of drivers are for 3000 in some 2D accelerated operations  4500 is noticeably slower. But it's probably just a Prometheus problem. Aren't the default clocks the same?

[xPhilx]

Okay so I've just done a little homework on the Voodoo cards:

Voodoo3 2000 = 300 MHz RAMDAC
Voodoo3 3000 = 350 MHz RAMDAC
Voodoo4 4500 = 350 MHz RAMDAC (VSA-100 GPU)

So yeah, you would expect a comparable speed between the 3000 and 4500.  Now I'm no techie by any stretch of the imagination, but as the "3dfxVoodoo.chip" Amiga driver is for the Voodoo3 I would expect that card to have the edge over the 4500. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

In real world usage, namely web browsing with AWeb, there is a slightly slower screen update using pgup/pgdn with the 4500.  As I said this is no biggy.

@Heiroglyph
Wise words.  I'll get to checking the PSUs later on today when time permits.

@Iggy
See above about the driver.  It would make more sense using the 4500, less heat and the heatsink has a fan fitted as standard.  Its just that I now have an itch and I have to scratch it.  I have to know why both Voodoo 3000s showed the same(ish) faults, was it just fluke or a hardware fault in my Amiga?  I'm 99% certain I just had bad luck with 2 bad cards, but I'd like to be sure.

Cheers.

[matthey]

The Voodoo 4500 is mostly register compatible with the Voodoo 3000. Some Voodoo 3000s have faster memory and maybe faster PCI throuput than the Voodoo 4500. The memory and PCI setup may not be as optimum in the driver as for the Voodoo 4500 as well. The Voodoo 3000 is faster for some operations and the Voodoo 4500 for others on my machine. The Voodoo 4500 is faster when the GPU is taxed which is rare on the Amiga. The Voodoo 4500 on the Amiga currently has the advantage of more memory, 15 bit mode support and sharper image. I may eventually modify the Warp3D driver with greater than 256x256 textures as well. The Voodoo 4500 can also do full color 3D and full screen anti-aliasing but they would be more difficult to implement.

[Zac67]

Voodoo3 2000 = 300 MHz RAMDAC
Voodoo3 3000 = 350 MHz RAMDAC
Voodoo4 4500 = 350 MHz RAMDAC (VSA-100 GPU)

The RAMDAC has absolutely no impact on processing speed. It's about output quality and defines the sharpness of a certain display mode. E.g. 1280x1024 @75 Hz ~= 100 Mpixels/s requires at least 200 MHz RAMDAC for an acceptable output quality.

It's the chip speed multiplied by chip throughput per clock (depending on architecture), so it's rather:

Avenger:
Voodoo 3 2000: 143 MHz
Voodoo 3 3000: 166 MHz
Voodoo 3 3500: 187 Mhz
VSA-100:
Voodoo 4 4500: 166 MHz + 2nd pipeline
Voodoo 5 5500: 2x 166 MHz + 2nd pipeline

With existing drivers, on the Voodoo 5 the 2nd VSA-100 isn't used at all and on VSA-100 possibly no advantage is taken of the 2nd pipeline either which might be the cause of them actually being slower than Avenger.