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3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP

3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP

List Price: $179.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Antoan Arnaoudov - The best video board at this moment !
Review: About 3D : First of all it is COMETABLE, with a big "C". It supports all the three leading platforms : GLIDE, OpenGL and Direct 3D. This board is competable with all the games that are in the markets at this moment.

About the speed : If someone tells you that the RivaTNT2 is fater - don't belive him :-). Yes, under Direct3D the TNT2 is a little bit faster, but under GLIDE or OpenGL the Voodoo is the leader. Most of the new games supports OpenGL or GLIDE.

About 32-bit rendering : Yes this board does not supports 32-bit rendering, but there is some harware conversation that converts the 32-bit textures into 16-bit ones. When I first heared about that I said - Oh! It's impossible, but when I saw the screenshots of some games that supports 32-bit textures I was surprized. It looked like TNT2 in 32-bit colors, but worked 2 times faster !!!

About 2D - This is a fastest board on the market! All the GDI functions are hardware accelerated !

About TV-Tuner : The picture quality is perfect and the driver is nice and fastworking.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: good, but not great
Review: After doing much research I have made my final conclusion. I think this is a all around good card. But compared to GeForce and Diamond Stealth this card is nothing. It does not deliver nearly as many frames per second,and I would not recommend it if you are a very serious Gamer. But don't get me wrong it is a pretty good card.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good card for the price
Review: DO NOT buy this card for the TV-OUT or anything out function; it doesn't work! Besides that it has cool on screen remotes and great graphivs acceleration. DVD playback is ok. It can cause problems with system so only put this card in a system with a minimum of a P3 500-600 and at least 64MB RAM.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not for video capture
Review: Don't get this card for its video capture features -- the software is buggy and crashes/hangs often.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: fast and furious
Review: Forget tnt2 , it is slow and its 32 bit support is the only thing keeping its head above water . With a clock speed of 183 mhz and overcloaking potential that allows you to exceed 200 mhz with no problems ( install extra cooling )this board is the fastest on the market period . the v3 3500 actually uses 32 bit internal calculations and then displays in 16 bit , the results are brilliant and unmatched . Sure the board is exspensive but the Philips TV tuner and FM radio makes the board great value for money .

this will last for a long time and it supports all the platforms d3d , glide and opengl meaning complete compatibility .

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Solid
Review: I bought this card at its debut and have remained happy with it to this day. It is a granted fact that the 3DFX chipsets started losing to NVidia in the speed category long ago, however the Voodoo3 drivers are solid and stable. I run mine with a Tyan motherboard and it has worked wonderfully. Even today, my brand new GeForce4 and not-quite-as-new GeForce3 have problems with simple things like DVD playback. Granted, this might be fixable with minor tweaking, but the point is that the Voodoo3 3500 did everything it claimed it could and did it flawlessly right out of the box. In the category of computer hardware, that is simply amazing. Even though 3DFX is out of business, if you find that you don't need to play new games or run Windows XP, I would still recommend using this card.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent Card - Especially For The College Student
Review: I bought this card on a whim hoping that it could take the place of my television set in my dorm room. Once installed, the interface is very easy to deal with and operation is a breeze - especially with the on-screen remote.

I have a Pentium 2 350Mhz w/64 megs of RAM and I would recommend the card to anyone but the most hardcore gamers. Even with my aging computer and limited RAM, I rarely experience slowdowns with todays newest games.

Gaming factors aside (Buy a Voodoo 5 if you are interested in gaming only, with money to spend), the card really shines when you start using the TV features.

I have a DVD player and a VCR player hooked up to mine and it works wonderfully. The Audio/Video pod included make hook-ups a breeze. It accepts both composite video (my VCR) and S-video type type connectors (my DVD player). I wasn't expecting much but the quality has been fantastic. Especially the picture quality with the DVD player. It runs full screen perfectly and my 17" monitor delivers a far better picture than an average television set.

Dorm room cable has never looked so great either. It has a hook-up for cable or Broadcast television right on the back of the card.

Another nifty feature is the built-in FM tuner. I have it hooked up to a TV antenna stuck under my bed and it picks up radio signals much better than my 400 dollar Kenwood receiver (even in the dorms!). Just an added bonus.

I have used it to record a few shows and to my surprise, the quality wasn't bad. Voodoo recommends a fast computer (faster than mine) for capturing video in high quality. For the limited number of times I have used it, it has worked fine.

Ok - here comes the lack of that fifth star. The card doesn't have a build-in cooling fan and it runs HOT. I contacted Voodoo about the heat and they said the card was built to handle it. While I have never noticed any of the normal overheating affects associated with video cards, I didn't want to risk damaging any hardware like my motherboard. Another negative is the fact that I have to get out of my bed to change channels (no remote!).

Overall, what used to be a computer, stereo, and television set is now just a computer - a faster gaming computer at that.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS!
Review: I bought this card two weeks ago, and have given up on it. I'm returning it!

For 3D games (Quake I, II & II, Unreal T, Tomb Raider etc.) it works great (for 16 bit). However if you try to do Video-Capture, it is horrible!

My previous cards (ATI XPERT98 + TV Tuner **ISA!**) performed better. It might say 30 fps, but it looks all choppy and grainy. I have a ATHLON 700 system but still, real-time videocapture is horrible. The lousy video-capture is not worth the extra $50. My suggestion is to Get a GeForce......

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A vey badly released product
Review: I have had this card for over 6 months now and looking back wish I had nveer bought it. I am from the train of thought of measuring performace with the human eye, and functionality with ease of use and productivity. So there are 2 elements to this card: The 3d and the TV. The 3d is the better aspect to this card. excellant driver support but not noticeabily better then the voodoo2 (or SLI). This seems a very intermiedate card released while knowing that there was better to come. The 32bit color is also a myth. Your human eye wont notice the difference! So the 3d is good - not as mesmorising as the Voodoo2 first was. The TV element has to be one of the worst peices of hardward/software I have ever seen (and I bought this card for video edit - DOH!). True 3dfx have to release a product that is compatable on many different systems in many countries but Hauuppage have managed it. The drivers for the TV are appalling. Update after update fixes dont work - just check the website - and old problems come back etc. Sound card compatability problems and viewing full screen problems , the list goes on, its simply not worth the hassle - I can gaurantee some kind of problem. The software for capture simplly doesn;t work - I have to use MGI Videowave. The capture is NOT as good a £40 Hauppage card, and the compression on MPEG1 is not as good. True you get real time compression but the quality and file size is worse. And this is with a 72000RPM hard drive. Anything slower dont evern bother. I think I'll fork out £40 and buy my old Hauppage card again as this is a steel for video capture and think twice before buying a 3dfx card again. Be warned

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not the Cadillac, but very reliable
Review: I have just spent another long night attempting to upgrade my computer with "better" equipment, and I finally put back my trusty, reliable, Voodoo 3 3500 TV. Why did I ever take this out when, for the most part, it has run flawlessly in two completely different computers of mine. Granted the MPEG recording leaves alot to be desired, but who needs it, I'll just record things I want to save on my VCR. Just a warning to those who feel that spending big bucks on ATI cards guarantees success, don't kid yourselves, this Voodoo card is like an AK-47, it may not be as "impressive" as ATI's M-16 (The All-In-Wonder, "I wonder why I bought it", Radeon), but you can drop this baby in the mud and it'll keep on firing. ATI's card wouldn't work at all in my new machine, but its just a no-name computer, "Its just an HP, who's ever heard of that?".


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