Old Diamond Monster 3D II with Radeon 9200?

Oliver Nowak wrote:
> Rich erklärte :
>> My kids have some old computers that still have some life in them. The
>> only thing was that I had to put in more powerful video cards to
>> support new games over the years. My son's computer (Dell R400) had a
>> Radeon 7000 PCI & 2 Diamond Monster 3D II. I had to move the Radeon to
>> my daughter's computer which had no AGP slot after her PCI card
>> failed. I purchased a new ATI Radeon 9200 AGP 128MB card on EBAY for
>> less than $40 & installed it into the Dell 400 after taking out the 2
>> Monster 3D II & the PCI Radeon 7000. The 9200 works fine but now I
>> have these 2 Monster 3D II cards that are useless in the other 3
>> computers (not supported Windows XP & 2000). My son still has Windows
>> 98. Would these cards (Monster) be useless with the Radeon 9200 or
>> worse, slow it down?
>
> Hmm, the two SLI'd Voodoo2 cards were a high end enthusiast setup at the
> time of their release (early 1998) and the Radeon 9200 was released as a
> low end card several years later.
>
> I think it would be best to not install the Monster3D IIs anymore. The
> Radeon will most likely be faster than the V2s, and the other thing is
> the memory size, which is very small on the Voodoo2 compared to modern
> video cards - I think it was only 8 MBytes per card, and the the mem
> sizes of the two cards don't add up since the textures had to be loaded
> into each card's video memory.
>
> HTH,
>
> O.
>
>
The V2's are 12mb's each to equal 24mb. I didn't know if more memory was
good no matter what or whether the slower cards would slow the whole
video system. I guess I would have to install them & benchmark before &
after but I agree with your answer to not install. If the memory didn't
add up on two V2's in SLI what was the good of having two?
Thanks,
Rich
 >> Stay informed about: Old Diamond Monster 3D II with Radeon 9200? 

SLI (scan line interleaving) used the processing power of the two cards, to
support relatively high resolution images. (I don't recall what that was. It
may have been 1024X768.) Both cards had to have the same textures loaded,
though, so the memory was effectively that of a single card.

This site:

http://techreport.com/etc/comparo/graphics/

doesn't list the Voodoo 2. It lists the Voodoo 5 5500, which (I vaguely
recall) used two of the latest GPU chips 3dfx made before they went out of
business (V100?). I imagine that it was better than a pair of Voodoo II
cards. It was still inferior in fill rate to the weakest model of Radeon
9200.

Some games (like the original Unreal) were originally coded for Glide, which
was 3dfx's proprietary 3D interface. Unreal ran better (in my opinion) under
Glide on a 3dfx card than it did under Direct3D on more powerful cards.
That's ancient history, though. If I've gotten any of the particulars wrong,
I trust that someone will correct me.

Return address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn to reply.

"Rich" <rgsrx RemoveThis @cox.net> wrote in message
news:QYiEh.33769$6L3.2270@newsfe08.phx...
(snip)
> The V2's are 12mb's each to equal 24mb. I didn't know if more memory was
> good no matter what or whether the slower cards would slow the whole video
> system. I guess I would have to install them & benchmark before & after
> but I agree with your answer to not install. If the memory didn't add up
> on two V2's in SLI what was the good of having two?
> Thanks,
> Rich
 >> Stay informed about: Old Diamond Monster 3D II with Radeon 9200? 

Rich <rgsrx.DeleteThis@cox.net> wrote:
> Oliver Nowak wrote:
> > Rich erklärte :
> >> My kids have some old computers that still have some life in them. The
> >> only thing was that I had to put in more powerful video cards to
> >> support new games over the years. My son's computer (Dell R400) had a
> >> Radeon 7000 PCI & 2 Diamond Monster 3D II. I had to move the Radeon to
> >> my daughter's computer which had no AGP slot after her PCI card
> >> failed. I purchased a new ATI Radeon 9200 AGP 128MB card on EBAY for
> >> less than $40 & installed it into the Dell 400 after taking out the 2
> >> Monster 3D II & the PCI Radeon 7000. The 9200 works fine but now I
> >> have these 2 Monster 3D II cards that are useless in the other 3
> >> computers (not supported Windows XP & 2000). My son still has Windows
> >> 98. Would these cards (Monster) be useless with the Radeon 9200 or
> >> worse, slow it down?
> >
> > Hmm, the two SLI'd Voodoo2 cards were a high end enthusiast setup at the
> > time of their release (early 1998) and the Radeon 9200 was released as a
> > low end card several years later.
> >
> > I think it would be best to not install the Monster3D IIs anymore. The
> > Radeon will most likely be faster than the V2s, and the other thing is
> > the memory size, which is very small on the Voodoo2 compared to modern
> > video cards - I think it was only 8 MBytes per card, and the the mem
> > sizes of the two cards don't add up since the textures had to be loaded
> > into each card's video memory.
> >
> > HTH,
> >
> > O.
> >
> >
> The V2's are 12mb's each to equal 24mb. I didn't know if more memory was
> good no matter what or whether the slower cards would slow the whole
> video system. I guess I would have to install them & benchmark before &
> after but I agree with your answer to not install. If the memory didn't
> add up on two V2's in SLI what was the good of having two?

Of the 12mb, 4mb were used as video buffer and 8mb as texture buffer. The
texture buffer would not add up since the textures had to be stored on both
cards. But the video buffer did add up, allowing higher resolutions than
a single card. That and the doubling of the processing units were the benefit
of having two V2's.

Thomas Scheunemann
 >> Stay informed about: Old Diamond Monster 3D II with Radeon 9200? 

Thomas Scheunemann wrote:
> Rich <rgsrx.DeleteThis@cox.net> wrote:
>> Oliver Nowak wrote:
>>> Rich erklärte :
>>>> My kids have some old computers that still have some life in them. The
>>>> only thing was that I had to put in more powerful video cards to
>>>> support new games over the years. My son's computer (Dell R400) had a
>>>> Radeon 7000 PCI & 2 Diamond Monster 3D II. I had to move the Radeon to
>>>> my daughter's computer which had no AGP slot after her PCI card
>>>> failed. I purchased a new ATI Radeon 9200 AGP 128MB card on EBAY for
>>>> less than $40 & installed it into the Dell 400 after taking out the 2
>>>> Monster 3D II & the PCI Radeon 7000. The 9200 works fine but now I
>>>> have these 2 Monster 3D II cards that are useless in the other 3
>>>> computers (not supported Windows XP & 2000). My son still has Windows
>>>> 98. Would these cards (Monster) be useless with the Radeon 9200 or
>>>> worse, slow it down?
>>> Hmm, the two SLI'd Voodoo2 cards were a high end enthusiast setup at the
>>> time of their release (early 1998) and the Radeon 9200 was released as a
>>> low end card several years later.
>>>
>>> I think it would be best to not install the Monster3D IIs anymore. The
>>> Radeon will most likely be faster than the V2s, and the other thing is
>>> the memory size, which is very small on the Voodoo2 compared to modern
>>> video cards - I think it was only 8 MBytes per card, and the the mem
>>> sizes of the two cards don't add up since the textures had to be loaded
>>> into each card's video memory.
>>>
>>> HTH,
>>>
>>> O.
>>>
>>>
>> The V2's are 12mb's each to equal 24mb. I didn't know if more memory was
>> good no matter what or whether the slower cards would slow the whole
>> video system. I guess I would have to install them & benchmark before &
>> after but I agree with your answer to not install. If the memory didn't
>> add up on two V2's in SLI what was the good of having two?
>
> Of the 12mb, 4mb were used as video buffer and 8mb as texture buffer. The
> texture buffer would not add up since the textures had to be stored on both
> cards. But the video buffer did add up, allowing higher resolutions than
> a single card. That and the doubling of the processing units were the benefit
> of having two V2's.
>
> Thomas Scheunemann
>
>
Thanks to all that replied. Do all of you agree that adding them back
into a system with an AGP Radeon 9200 128MB would be counter-productive?
Thanks,
Rich
 >> Stay informed about: Old Diamond Monster 3D II with Radeon 9200? 

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:53:31 -0700, Rich <rgsrx.RemoveThis@cox.net> wrote:


>Thanks to all that replied. Do all of you agree that adding them back
>into a system with an AGP Radeon 9200 128MB would be counter-productive?
>Thanks,
>Rich

If it were me, I wouldn't bother. They won't be a huge problem being
there. The only issues I can see with having them is that they'll
occupy 2 slots, consume a bit more power than not having them, and the
pass through introduces a bit of fuzziness at higher resolutions
(above 1280x1024).

On my own machine, I shelved my Voodoo cards years back (mostly due to
them not working right with the beta win2k drivers under XP). For the
few GLide games that I still pull out from time to time, I use
Zeckensack's GLide wrapper, which has worked with every GLide game
I've tried so far.

--------------------------------------------------
Thanks,
MCheu
 >> Stay informed about: Old Diamond Monster 3D II with Radeon 9200?