Hello everyone. I mistakenly posted this question in the General Discussion forum (oops!) so I'll try my luck here.  I'm trying to decide which driver to use for my Voodoo card.  My 6 year old rig consists of the following:

Athlon 900
512Meg RAM
Voodoo 3 2000
WinXP SP2

Games that I play on it:
-  Quake (EZQuake)
-  Quake 3 Arena (point release 1.32)
- Diablo 2
- Frets On Fire
- Warcraft 2.

I'm planning on getting UT 2004. Does it have GL support or is it just strictly D3D?

I've read a lot of posts here about drivers, etc and it's come down to these 2 (which I've downloaded but not yet installed;waiting, no, counting on your feedback):

- AmigaSport 3.0
- SFFT Alpha 47

From what I've read the AmigaSport drivers is best for all around use and the SFFT Alpha 47 is more geared towards newer games with some issues with old games (and best for D3D games).

Based on the games that I play, what would you recommend?

Also I've downloaded WickedGL302.zip and MesaFX v06202.  Which of these two would you recommend (again based on my play list)? Pros/Cons.

Also, should I uninstall the MS drivers first or just let the 3rd party drivers do their thing?

In the event that something goes screwy, the rollback feature should just put things back to its previous state, correct?

I've been away from the 'net and computers for awhile and just getting back into it again.

When I was playing Quake 3 using the MSXP supplied drivers for my V3 2K card I thought it was set (thought I had a openGL driver installed with XP), getting decent framerates but when I tried playing ezquake-gl it gave me an error msg. saying GLW_StartOpen()- could not load OpenGL Subsystem. So that made me think something was missing. Sure enough, the MSXP supplied drivers were just insufficient.  That lead me on a quest to find good drivers for my Voodoo card. It took me awhile but I found the 3dfx archive and this forum. And I'm glad I did as there seems to be a lot of knowledgeable and experienced people on this forum regarding 3dfx products.

Sorry for the long post but I would appreciate any feedback you can provide.

Great forum!

SFFT drivers are only really recommended if you are trying to play newer games which aren't 'really' meant to work on the Voodoo cards...

i.e. Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey, etc...

If you're using the system for classic games, just go for Amigasport 3.0

(also the fact that SFFT are beta drivers and can be unstable)

..I think I should really create a small FAQ about this

anyway,to answer your question first,I would recommend Amigasport 3.0xp (make sure you have a look at the readme before installing),updated with the most compatible retro glide2x/glide3x/opengl (just unpack to your windows/system32 folder after you install the driver,overwriting the previous files).plus wickedgl for quake3 based games.this should give you optimal performance in the games you mentioned (with the exception of UT2004,which wont run good on that system under ANY circumstances.Frets On Fire may need some additional tweaking too).

now,if you want to know why did I recommend all that stuff,continue reading,but be warned,it may be a bit too technical

1) why amigasport? the answer is simple,you want to use the pc for retro/light gaming,that means you need a fast,stable driver that runs old(er) games.SFFT is great if you really need a DX8 compatible driver (which you dont),but sometimes it can behave really erratic,and it tends to be a bit slower too.

2) why that extra package with glide drivers? the package contains 3 files:
-latest original glide2x from 3dfx-maybe not as fast in unreal tournament as the glide2x to glide3x wrapper included in amigasport,but much,much more compatible with all those glide2x games out there (diablo2).
-latest glide3x release from dborca (creator of mesaFX)-this is just an updated glide3x,you will need it if you want to use mesaFX.
-the latest opengl icd from 3dfx-maybe not as compatible with newer games as the opengl interceptor included in amigasport,but way better for retro opengl stuff like quake1/2 etc.

3) wickedgl.this is the right thing if you want to play quake3 based games.small note-it wont work right unless you use that glide package

3) mesaFX.this the latest opengl driver for 3dfx cards.very,very compatible,but it tends to be slower that wickedgl or default 3dfx opengl icd.dont use unless you need the compatibility boost or some of the special fixes (I think Frets On Fire may need mesaFX,we will see).note-wont work right unless you (guess what) use the glide3x from that extra package.

note: mesafx and wickedgl are not driver-dependant and can be used simultaneously (example: you can use wickedgl for quake3 and mesafx for frets on fire at the same time).

hope I didnt bore you to death

its a self extracting archive,if memory serves.run it and it will unpack the driver,so you will be able to run the installer..including the readme just to be sure:

Code:

********************************************************************************
  AMIGASPORT 3.0 FOR MS WINDOWS 2000/XP AND 3DFX VOODOO3 2000/3000/3500TV CARD

win2k,xp Display Driver:  5.00.2195.0232 - 3dfx
win2k,xp Miniport:        5.01.00.2604 	 - 3dhq
Glide(tm) 3.X Driver:     3.10.00.30303  - glide.sourceforge.net
Glide(tm) 2.X Driver:     1.0.1.106      - Colourless
OpenGL(r) Driver Version: 1.0.0.0761 ICD - 3dfx

http://www.3dfxzone.it
********************************************************************************

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]
This is a result of many people's contribution of 
technical knowledge and hard work. If you intend to
distribute this kit, please do not modify or edit 
any of its contents.
Thanks goes to all the glide.sourceforge.net project 
members, Colourless for their great Glide drivers.
And special thanks to all beta testers!!

[CONTACTS]
Sport        <sport_3dfx@tiscali.it>
Amigamerlin  <Amigamerlin@3dfxzone.it>
Daniel Borca <dborca@3dfxzone.it>
Glide        <glide@3dfxzone.it>
KoolSmoky    <koolsmoky@3dfxzone.it>


1. Uninstall your previous driver and 3dfxToolkit
2. Run "Driver Setup.exe" in the extracted directory.
3. Restart your system.
4. Run "setup.exe" and follow the instructions
5. Restart your system.


To list a few of the changes;

New GLide and OpenGL driver

Clone Option for TV-OUT (For Voodoo3 with TV-OUT)

Fixed so that the original 3dfx Glide driver will work
with out any hacks for winxp.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

For more information, visit the forums at 
http://www.3dfxzone.it

Information regarding Glide can be found at 
http://www.sf.net/projects/glide

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

edit: tried Frets On Fire,no go.runs,but performance is terrible (looking at the readme,no wonder,opengl card with pixel shaders is recommended)..on athlonxp 1100/voodoo3 2000.

@ps47 to the rescue!

I'll leave this up to you mate...too many of my friends asking me to repair laptops and games consoles ATM...

I recently did a fresh install of Win98 over the weekend. I loaded the original Voodoo 3 2k drivers (from the original CD) then updated to the last drivers that 3dfx put out and loaded up Quake. It seems I'm getting about 2 fps - 5fps more than I was under WinXP (using AmigaSport. Also around the same 'boost'  in fps with Q3.

I can confirm that,ut2004 runs on a voodoo3 and actually has fewer errors than ut2003,but no matter what you do,its still too slow to play..even on 2Ghz+ cpu.
blitzfire wrote on 05.03.08 at 05:44:06:

not a good move.mesafx is not exactly quake1 friendly.minigl/icd/wickedgl will do a much better job.as I said,you should only use mesafx when you really need to..keep in mind that while it is compatible and supports many opengl extensions,it is slower (in most cases) than any other 3dfx opengl driver..