hey guys i just put my voodoo2 into my 2000+ system and it wont recognise the card. the system has a 64mb GF4MX440 as well and its running on a Gigabyte 7VM400M-RZ. i've tried moving the card to a different pci port yet still win xp just wont pick it up. is there a way to fix this.. ? also by putting the Voodoo2 in with the GF do u guys reckon games will run a little better and i'll get a better score in 3D mark? i'm only trying this cause i cant afford a better video card and i had the voodoo laying around gathering dust.

cheers guys.

If increasing your overall performance (with both Cards together) was your goal, then you can safely remove the Voodoo2, because that's not how a Voodoo card works.

ah ok.. i thought the voodoo2 was a 3d accelerator card?

"3D Accelerator" is a bit misleading.

The Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 worked as follows: in Windows the 2D-signal was looped through from the VGA-In to the VGA-Out but when a 3D-application is started the 2D- or 3D-signal from the primary graphics card is cutted and the 3D-signal from the Voodoo-chipset is fed to the VGA-Out.

In other words: u will be able to play games either with Voodoo2 or GF, since both of them are 3D accelelators.

Truth be told, only old games dating from 1997-2000 can be (optimaly) run with Voodoo2 as well as all Glide games. GF4 MX is for directX 7 games - games from 2000-2003.

As for the question of fixing the problem:
Make sure you attached the cross-VGA cable from GF4 -> Voodoo2 and then Voodoo2 -> Monitor. If the card still doesn't appear in XP then open the System properties (Device manager) window and see if there is a "!" mark on something in Sound, Video & Game controllers. If there is nothing, then press "Action" tab and press "scan for hardware changes". If still there is nothing, then either is the card dead, or PCI slots do not work as they should.

Before I go into a further BIOS/hardware analysis - try one of the options above and see if you can fix the prob ;)

tried all that.. still nothing.. the pci ports work fine as they all detect my leadtek tv tuner. i just was hoping the old voodoo would somehow aide the gf4 in 3d graphics. for sames like nfs:u2 and sof2 and battlefield.  

so basically (i'm stoopie) primary card displays 2d only and the voodoo2 does all the 3d work?

if thats the case if i bung her into my old amd k6-2 500 with 196mb ram and a 8mb onboard video it should run soldier of fortune better then the crappy 8mb onboard would wouldn't it?

thanks for all the help guys i just wanna show some use for the old girl...

oh also can a voodoo2 help an old system that blotches while playing dvd's or will it show no benefits?

wrote on 18.03.06 at 18:04:25:

so basically (i'm stoopie) primary card displays 2d only and the voodoo2 does all the 3d work?

That's right.


wrote on 18.03.06 at 18:04:25:

if thats the case if i bung her into my old amd k6-2 500 with 196mb ram and a 8mb onboard video it should run soldier of fortune better then the crappy 8mb onboard would wouldn't it?

The Voodoo 2 is superior to all onboard-graphics of that time so it would do.


wrote on 18.03.06 at 18:04:25:

oh also can a voodoo2 help an old system that blotches while playing dvd's or will it show no benefits?

No, in that case you need a DVD-decoder-card.

Hey Coop3r, if you are looking for a hardware DVD decoder for that K6-2 machine, I might be able to help you out.  I've got a Creative Labs Dxr-3 PC-DVD kit here (PCI decoder card, 12X DVD-ROM drive, and passthrough cable all in the original box) that's just taking up space.  At one time I was using it in my own K6-2/500 system, along with a Voodoo3 3000 PCI graphics card and a SB Live! audio card.  It worked pretty nice, so I kept it when I sold the rest of the system... but then the Athlon machine I got was powerful enough to do a decent job of software decoding in WinDVD, so I never used the Dxr3 kit again.

$25 CAD plus shipping and it's yours, if you're interested.

Renner: hmm sounds inviting.. whats your location? i'm in queensland, australia. also is it a standard dvd rom or a special one?

so i'm still wondering if there is a way to make the voodoo and the gf4 run to accelerate the 3d graphics in any way shape or form.. also if i only have the desktop displayed will the voodoo show up anything on the monitor if the pass through cable is unplugged?

I'm in Canada.  It looks like I could ship it to Australia by surface post for approximately $20 CAD.

The DVD-ROM is just a standard 12X read-only drive, as far as I can tell.  It came as part of the kit, so it's what I used, but I don't think it's required.  If you already have a better drive, then I could give you just the decoder card and passthrough cable... the shipping would be considerably cheaper (approx. $10 CAD by surface, $17.50 CAD by air).  However, the DVD drive would be garbage to me without the decoder card, so I'd still want $25 CAD for the card and cable.

If you're still interested, I'd appreciate it if you registered an account so we can exchange details by PM.



With regards to your Voodoo2 and GeForce cards:

You absolutely can not make the Voodoo card "help" the GeForce card render 3D graphics.  It's not possible.

The only thing that the Voodoo card can do for you is "take over" rendering for really old games that use the Glide API for 3D graphics (Glide is like DirectX or OpenGL, but it was proprietary to 3Dfx so it's not used anymore).  How this works is that when you launch a game that uses Glide, the Voodoo card is fired up and does all of the work.  The GeForce card is completely ignored while that game is running.  When you quit the Glide game, the Voodoo card passes control back to the GeForce card and basically goes to sleep.  The Voodoo card does absolutely nothing unless you are running a game that uses Glide for 3D.

Did that clear things up?

nah i will give that one a pass..


back to the voodoo2.. how would i purge to recognise thecard.. its now in a dual p2 333 server and even still no detection.. but however the cpu on the card gets warm..

this is starting to piss me off now.

if the system is clean of 3dfx drivers , and no detection
card possibly dead

if previous installation on pc of 3dfx drivers , clean them out try again (go into safe mode to make sure its clean)

installed 3 v2s  in a row on one pc , had to clean drivers each time , in order to detect .