Considering getting a 5500.
I only have one motherboard that will support an agp card and its a p2 450(to slow). Whats the fastest systems that you can run the PCI card in and will it give more performance than the AGP card in say an amd 3200+ system?

the v5 PCI you can run in any PC with PCI slot
if you want together with AMD Phenom II or i7 CPU

fast than a AGP with Athlon XP i think not reallly faster
old games only use one core, eaven AGP have not the best bandwith

Thanks for the reply, at what point does the framerate become limited by the card and not the cpu.

oldskool wrote on 21.02.10 at 19:48:06:

Thanks for the reply, at what point does the framerate become limited by the card and not the cpu.

Difficult to say but a Pentium II 450 is too slow for a Voodoo5 5500. Of course it will work but Quake III at 1280x1024x16b will run faster with a Pentium III-S 1400. With Unreal (also at 1280x1024!) the difference is huge (29.41 FPS over 73.42).

Consider a good Pentium III (the III-S 1400 is the faster S370 CPU) or Athlon XP system for optimal performance. If I'm not mistaken the newer 'third-party' drivers use for CPU power than 3dfx' original driver. Years ago I've tried a Voodoo5 5500 with an Athlon 700 but switched back to the latest normal/official 3dfx driver because these were noticeable faster with Soldiers of Fortune.

If you want performance figures (with the latest normal/official 3dfx driver) of both the 5500PCI and AGP in a Pentium II 450 or Pentium III-S 1400: see my benchmarks :).

Keep in mind that usually PCI version is not tested at full PCI66 bandwidth as AGP version, because you need a system with PCI-X slot.

goriath wrote on 21.02.10 at 20:17:53:

Keep on mind that usually PCI version is not tested at full PCI66 bandwidth as AGP version, because you need a system with PCI-X slot.

Correct :). In my benchmarks I used a normal 33MHz PCI slot.

The card doesn't seem to suffer to greatly from being on the pci bus. Still seems as though theres more FPS to be had with a faster cpu. :)
Is there any disadvantage of having a pc bios flashed mac card?

I have a 5500 MAC flashed to PC and it worked OK, so...

But beware, if you want to put a V5 PCI in a modern PC, you'll need extra cooling, a big fan blowing from one side of the card. Those 2 little fans cannot cool the card in a fast PC, the V5 will overheat very fast.

Nice benches. I like the 5500 PCI 8-) Its a very fast PCI videocard :)

Big fan, check. Dont like the thought of snaping off the heatsinks after its been in the fridge :o
I found some cpu scalability tests for the 5500 which show a flat result at higher resolutions (card limited) anyone managed to max it out at lower resolutions and how fast a cpu does it take to do it?

Ok, I now have a motherboard that supports AGP 2.0 fully so an agp card is also a choice.

Can anyone give a rough idea of prices for 5500 pci or agp, don't want to lose my head and overbid on ebay (again).

AGP 5500
AGP 5500 (boxed)
PCI 5500
PCI 5500 (boxed) my favourite box graphic  :)

Recently AGP 5500 (the most common version) go for 40-45 EUR. I paid myself half a year ago about 9 EUR :D