General question.  Due to the speed of the computer hardware market forever growing and the new architecture of today's processors (not just the new 64-Bit architecture, but the latest in 32-Bit technology such as our latest P4's and AMD Athlon's), will our old 3dfx cards still carry on working as well as they did all those years ago?

I know there hasn't been a drastic change but I wanted to outline the question of whether our old cards (V1, Rush, V2's, soon to be antiques V3/4/5's) would perform as well on the machines today, as well as they did on their Late 1990 ancestors?

Is it just a change in software terms (OS', drivers or lack of) or will our old precious gems become physically limited to modern hardware specs, also?

generally, no.

causes:
1. nearly all modern games  use hardware t&l...no 3dfx chip which has seen daylight actually has hardware t&l and software t&l will run toooooo slow one day...if it is evently supported by the game.
2. fillrate. voodoo5 5500 has 667 MegaPixel/s / MegaTexel/s, modern boards have up to 3 or even more GigaPixel/s / GigaTexel/s (please correct me  :-/ )...that will be toooo less one day. i know, this one's not really a necessary point for game performance, but think of high detail textures and so on..
3. in general, hardware won't support features that aren't implemented in it. so you must develop drivers which support new features by software...as most members of the 3dfx community won't be able to implement new features (like directx 9 etc.), the 3dfx boards will loose more and more compatibility in time.
<please add your points guys>

and you're right, it's also a term of hardware limitation in new (and coming) games.

sorry for that, but some day these great voodoo boards will be unnecessary.   :'(
but as we don't see that day coming and everbody here has his/her own special relationship to 3dfx, the community is still working on new drivers to let 3dfx products still be what they were meant to be:
So powerful, it's kinda ridiculous!"  8)

I totally understand yur point there on NEW games, but we still have our old ones as memories! ;)

Yes, sooner or later, there will come a time when the card won't be even supported by a motherboard (that however, isn't too far away.  Anyone heard of this new motherboard technology called PCIExpress, that apparently will phase and wipe out even AGP slots! :o We could be looking at next year for these new slots on motherboards).

So, if I wanted a decent modern system today, that was still supporting my 3dfx series well, am I better buying now?
It's coming towards the end of the line of these 32-Bit architecture CPU's (I mean, we struggle with compatibility as it is, so what are the chances of the 3dfx line getting a good reception on the new AMD 64-Bit architecture systems and their new devices?) so am I better off buying a top end model NOW, and bunging my 3dfx cards in that machine?

Will I have the piece of mind knowing that compatibility between my 3dfx cards in a P4/AMD AthlonXP machine will exist?  ???

looking at the nVidia nForce2 Ultra400 chipset shows you it only supports AGP8x/4x (no AGP1x/2x support), so only the Voodoo4 would be able to run on it..or a Voodoo PCI. so you should look for a good agp compatibility at first sight.

what d'you by PCIExpress? i bet you're talking of 64bit PCI...actually that's not new, it exists for years on server-mainboards. it was meant to be implementd even in the first pci boards but they decided to downgrade it to 32bit for better compatibility years ago. AGP is still 32bit, so, of course, 64bit PCI will be faster..

don't have a hope that a voodoo is able to run on a AMD 64bit system or the nextgen P5..the P4 should handle...
<please add your knowledge on that>

tip: build a system with "older" components as a secondary PC for your voodoos and add a new ATi graphics board to your new one.

--> janksjaer   :   you should get an Asrock K7VT2, this mobo is extremely cheap ( ~ 35-40 euros, with 10/100 lan, sound and USB2) , has a universal AGP slot :), takes SDRAM or DDR,  and athlons up to 2400+  (2ghz. you can't put a 2.2ghz 3000+, but I don't give a sh..)


that's the easiest to find motherboard if you want some quite  high power and perfect voodoo5 (and lower)  compatibility

PCI Express is a new form of mobo layout, removing the AGP slot, and replacing it with a new revised PCI slot (capable of higher speeds of up to 32x I think) that is much faster than the AGP could ever be.

More in detail here:
http://www.intelforums.net/viewtopic.php?p=7626

I would probably go with a old-ish AMD system for this 3dfx machine, rather than an "extortionate! ::) intel system.

Early days yet, we'll see what happens.

Janskjaer :-*