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Voodoo 2 Cards from Russia - Do these seem legit or not?

Well they "glisten", how can you go wrong :p

It is curious how someone would have 200+ bare Voodoo cards to sell. But they have 100% feedback.
 
It is curious how someone would have 200+ bare Voodoo cards to sell. But they have 100% feedback.

STB Systems was 3dfx's first party OEM and by far made the most number of 3dfx cards, especially after 3dfx bought them out. Most prebuilt OEMs at the time sourced cards from STB Systems, so it's feasible the seller found a warehouse full of old PCs with them or new-old stock cards that were never used.

The price makes sense if you have a warehouse full of 20 year old product that you gotta move.
 
I am sorry for my absolute unawareness. What is worthy and special about these cards? I mean they must be even much worse then my retired GForce4 MX or similar ...
 
Some people prefer the authentic 3dfx experience with real hardware when playing old Glide games. There are Glide wrappers available, but none are 100% perfect and DOS Glide games require some extensive hacks to make run.

Many mid to late 90s games were either Software or Glide. Some also had Direct3D, but the API was in its infancy and suffered from numerous bugs and performance issues.

As for performance, yes even two Voodoo2s in SLI can't match a Geforce 4 MX, but that's not the point of having the cards. They also weren't in the consumer market at the same time so comparing them isn't really valid.
 
I have a feeling quite a bit of obsolete US hardware ended up in the far east after they became obsolete. The computer industry in the USSR was way behind here in the west so even old Voodoo cards would be nice to have there.

Anyway there is a huge library of GLIDE games and the best way to play them is with 3DFX cards. I purchased the original Orchid Righteous 3D card mail order before stores carried them and before games really supported them (you needed patches for games to work). It really was a huge improvement in gaming so people collect 3DFX. Voodoo 1 was 640x480. Voodoo 2 went to 800x600 for a single and 1024x768 in SLI. Voodoo 3 got you 32bit desktop color. Voodoo 4/5 gave you 32bit in games and great AA (voodoo 5).

The unreleased prototype Voodoo 6000 cards are worth thousands. Anyway I purchased all the 3dfx cards I didn't have ages ago when they were dirt cheap on ebay so I am stocked up.
 
Many mid to late 90s games were either Software or Glide. Some also had Direct3D, but the API was in its infancy and suffered from numerous bugs and performance issues.
Goes even further than that too -- many of them had no support for OpenGL or proper direct3d, and WILL NOT RUN even close to properly on ANY flavor of NT. 2K, XP? Faggedabaddit!

Some of them won't even work with later 3dfx cards like the Voodoo 3, 4 and 5. I've got a PCI 3, an AGP 3, and a AGP2x 5-5500, and NONE of them will for example work "properly" with the 3dfx release of Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries. You HAVE to use a real V2.

Sometimes with some games to have proper working video you have to back out to older versions of the drivers such as those the card would have shipped with. That was more of a problem with the Banshee though -- a lot of games written for Voodoo II would work with the drivers off the disk the Banshee cards shipped with, but not if you updated to the latest release off of online. Even some directX games went tits up in that scenario such as Vampire:Redemption -- though that one using DirectX can be run just fine on modern systems.

Pretty much ALL the Microprose MechWarrior titles prior to 3 you HAVE to dial back to real Win98 and for them to run properly if at all -- and for many of them the best experience was on a genuine Voodoo II.

If these are legit, I'm tempted to grab a few more for my collection. I've got one working and one dead one now... though I know the dead one just needs a reflow.

Sadly a LOT of voodoo hardware is a bit like the early red ring of death XBox 360's. The hot/cold cycle breaks the surface mount solder joints. Behaves like you've got bad RAM when if you flex the board slightly the problem clears up. Two minutes at 150F in the oven or gently wave a heat gun over the RAM and it's good for another couple months.

Did that one too many times to my own Banshee, it's dead now.
 
225 sold since july.... seems legit to me. I've bought plenty of items from scary foreign countries. last part I got was a $350 motherboard from Russia. I think 99% of people are honest enough in our hobby.
 
They mention SLI, does that mean you can do a 2 way SLI with 2 of these and a regular GPU? Or do they mean SLI a standard GPU? And how hard is it to get the passthrough and SLI cables?

I am really tempted to buy a couple of these for my Win 98 machine, or even my 486 machine (if it has PCI, I forget).
 
voodoo 1 & 2 are 3d only, so you are required to have a 2d card. The general consensus is, Matrox make the best 2d cards of the era. A G200 is a very inexpensive card with wonderful performance.
 
You need a Pentium or better to get the most of a 3DFX so don't bother with a 486. And a P2+ for SLI to feed them both. Diablo 2 was a nice glide game.

SLI 2 Voodoo 2 together (2 8mb or 2 12MB boards don't mix and match RAM sizes). SLI stood for scan line interleave before PCIE came around you could use 2 video cards. You will need the cable to connect the 2 Voodoo 2 cards on top PLUS the cable to connect the output from the VGA connectors to your 2d video card.

Back in the day I used a Matrox Millenium for the 2D card but others will do.
 
2 8mb or 2 12MB boards don't mix and match RAM sizes
Actually, most of the time you COULD mismatch so long as the one with less memory was the one you actually ran video through, making the one with more RAM the 'slave'.

You just ended up with 4 megs of RAM sitting there like a lump doing exactly two things; and Jack left town.
 
They mention SLI, does that mean you can do a 2 way SLI with 2 of these and a regular GPU? Or do they mean SLI a standard GPU? And how hard is it to get the passthrough and SLI cables?

In an ideal setup back when these cards were new, you'd have three video cards in the system. The main video card would ideally be a powerful 2D card like a Matrox G200 while the other two would be the Voodoo2s in SLi. When a game would request 3D acceleration, the 3dfx drivers would switch in the Voodoo2 cards and the 2D card would be switched out. You can use other primary video cards, but ones that also offered 3D functionality (like a TNT2 or Radeon) would interfere with the Voodoo2 cards and not allow them to run anything but Glide games.

The SLi and passthrough cables are not hard to find on Ebay, nor are they expensive. They aren't hard to manufacture yourself either, I've made a few SLi cables myself because I have two non-reference Voodoo2 boards where the SLi connector is in the middle of the board instead of on the edge (Canopus Pure3D II.) My cable had to be quite a bit longer than the standard 1" or so SLi cable, but it still works fine:

THZ2RYrh.jpg


The passthrough cable is also relatively easy to find, though you can also make one if you need to. On standard Voodoo2 boards, it's just a male to female DE-15 VGA cable. You'll want one that's as short as possible and has enough shielding on it to avoid signal degradation that can cause artifacts on the display.

I am really tempted to buy a couple of these for my Win 98 machine, or even my 486 machine (if it has PCI, I forget).

Even an overclocked Am5x86@160 MHz can't properly drive a single Voodoo1 board, there's no point in even trying a Voodoo2 setup.

PLUS the cable to connect the output from the VGA connectors to your 2d video card.

The passthrough VGA cable isn't technically required if you don't mind swapping what card the monitor is plugged into. You can plug the monitor directly into the Voodoo2 card after you launch the game and back into the 2D card when you're done gaming. It's not ideal, but it'll work if you don't have the passthrough VGA cable on hand.
 
Well i bought 2 of the things. Will see if I can get the SLI working just for the hell of it. Not on the 486, makes sense, but on the Win98 machine it should work nicely.
 
Will do, but it'll probably be a while before I get them and then get trying out the SLI thing.
 
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