It only runs at 125 mhz.

Quote:


here we go again.

Compaq V3-1000 = 125 mhz, no heatsink, 16 megs, 2 TMU

Gateway V3-1000 = 143 mhz, heatsink, 8 megs, 1 TMU

It might exhibit the same "Overheat Bug" (confirmed and acknowledged bug, with a Warning issued by Quantum3D for their products) that is inherent to Voodoo2 and especially Banshee's.

From personal experience, Voodoo3 seems affected by it as well.

I know I had been using a Voodoo3 2000 in an K6-2 based System which ran quite cool.
After I swapped the very same Card into an Athlon System, I almost burned my fingers when touching it out of curiosity, despite just running the 2D Desktop, no workload on the Card.

A Voodoo3-3500 I remember was already quite hot back in time. Last time I had it running a FSB133 Athlon Thunderbird System, it became literally lightning hot (could have easily cooked bacon&eggs on it).
So hot, it even kept killing several 586 Fans that I attached to it, within a few weeks of operation, and I eventually had to pull it from the System for the sake of the Card's plain survival.

Same might happen to this card as well, it may very well require a passive Cooler to safely operate under such conditions...
The last Systems I know were "safe" to operate the Banshee and Voodoo3, were 66MHz FSB Systems (all), and most 100MHz FSB Systems (intel Pentium2 or Socket7 K6-2 class).

On Athlon class Boards, the Overheating seems to be omnipresent, although the Voodoo3 can take a hell lot of thermal beating without the user ever knowing (unless he touches the Chip/Cooler of the Card and painfully finds out)

Well, last time I tested a passive cooled Banshee (no Fan), the Card got almost burned (!)

It failed within 2 Minutes of 2D Operation, and did not recover until I gave it 5 Minutes of cooling.

I know temperatures were way off scale = completely abnormal and beyond any sane design, because this Banshee was the only piece of Hardware that ever got me a physical, no kidding "branding" (unintentional) 

People often believe Banshee's / Voodoo3's were meant to run extremely/lightning hot, but that's just not true.
They can become warm (Banshee, Voodoo3 2000) or even very warm/hot (Voodoo3 3000/3500), but never too hot to touch.

If they were running far beyond 80 Degrees Celsius already without 3D Rendering workloads by default, they would actually never have gotten their sale clearance without explicit warning stickers/signs, since people could have easily burned their hands when handling/operating them.
Besides, 3dfx would have had a massive failure rate on these Cards under such conditions.

The Banshee is clocked just slightly higher than a Voodoo2 (no cooler at all), so it has no reason (except the Bug) to become lightning hot at a mere 100 to 110MHz.

It also becomes obvious, once you think about all the IC's/Resistors in close vicinity of the Chip. Those commonly have a thermal design limit of max. 115C, which no piece of Hardware in any PC was ever designed to even remotely approach. Close to these temps, any component would have to be labeled a plain fire hazard.

PS.
Try the Banshee or Voodoo3 in an old Pentium Class AGP System. If my Memory serves me well, those cards (2D Desktop) will hardly become really warm, you can keep your Hand on it indefinitely.
Swap same Cards into an AthlonXP, and you'll burn either the Cards (Banshee), or your Fingers right off then touching it.
(I burned my skin within 0.5 seconds of touching the Banshee's Cooler during my test)

I estimated the Cooler's Temperature at that time at beyond 130C (>260F) (!) , it was like touching the inside of a hot oven when trying to get the finished Pizza out

Weird thing is, that my voodoo3 1000 agp [8meg, black heatsink] gets soooooooo hot on my old p733.
almost as hot as falcon's banshee.
And i even modded the cooler, got better epoxy, and a whole lot of stuff to keep it within sane temperatures [sane in human terms, not computer ones]

But my voodoo3 3000 agp, doesn't get hot *at all*, even after hours and hours of rendering 3dmark2001.
And the only thing i modded there was the thermal pad -> AS5.

Bearly hits 30~35c.. it's even cooler than the cpu..

Hmm...it would be interesting if we could find out WHY this bug occurs - especially with Athlon systems for some reason? ???

I also have a V3 1000 which I had to fan-mod and add a heat spreader to the back of the chip to keep cool (like @Falcon said - you REALLY could cook fried eggs on the thing!)

Yo @Voodude, do you know anything about the specifics of the bug? ???

Oh and @TM30 - the PERFECT heatsinks / fan combo for a V3 1000 is the heatsinks off of an old (in my case 'dead') Matrox G400.

I used the main heatsink from the matrox GPU for the front of the V3 1000 GPU (sawed off the 'feet' from the heatsink), along with a 12v 40mm fan that I bought.

Then I froze the old G400 and removed the small heatsink from the MGA chip - used it as a heat spreader on the 'silver' area at the back of the V3 1000 GPU.

Arctic alumina was used throughout the process... 8)

Nuff said!

I can verify that a V5500 AGP 'does' overheat in this way when used in an Athlon...

But the PCI version will NOT! 8)