3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI


3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI - Page 3

The 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI
3D Graphics for a legacy system adds leading edge performance

By Dave "Davo" Altavilla
8/4/00

 

HotHardware's Test System
Intel 440BX based - AGP need not apply

LiteOn Mid Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Pentium III 866EB,  Abit BX133-RAID i440BX Motherboard, 128MB of PC133 True CAS2 SDRAM from Corsair (thanks Outside Loop), IBM 15Gig 7200 RPM ATA100 Hard Drive (thanks again Outside Loop), Voodoo5 5500 PCI Graphics Card , Kenwood 72X CDROM,
Win 98SE, DirectX 7.0a

Benchmarks with the Voodoo5 5500 PCI
Who needs AGP? Well, almost...

Quake 3 Arena Time Demo No FSAA

These are great scores for a PCI card.  The test shows the PCI version of the V5 5500 to be within a few percentage points of the AGP version, a testament to 3dfx's dual processor design and extra wide 256 bit memory interface.

But how does the V5 5500 PCI perform on a lower end system?  We're glad you asked.

Quake 3 Arena Time Demo
Pentium 3 600EB Performance

 

With the exception of the lower resolutions, the P3-600 scores are basically on par with the P3-866.  Do you really need to spend all the extra dough on a high end processor?  That's your call.

Let's over-clock shall we?

 

Overclocking The Voodoo 5 5500 PCI
Better than the earlier versions

Voodoo5 5500 PCI
The highest clock speed we achieved with stability (click image)

 

Our early release version of the V5 5500 AGP was only able to over-clock to 180MHz. core speed.  However, yields back at the fab for 3dfx have definitely improved because 190MHz. was easily achieved with our PCI card.  Let's see what kind of performance gain that brought us.

Quake 3 Arena Time Demo V5 Over-clocked

Once again, these are absolutely fantastic scores, especially for a PCI card.  We know of no other PCI Graphics card today that can match this kind of frame rate in either 16 or 32 bit color.

 

For 3dfx, the Voodoo5 5500 PCI is sure to be an excellent seller.  For people who still have BX chipset based motherboards and want to cross over to PC133 performance but don't want to deal with flaky AGP performance, a PCI card may be the only way for you to achieve your goal.  If you are one of those poor souls with integrated graphics and no AGP slot in your system, the V5 5500 PCI may help you hold out on that major upgrade a while longer.  Still for some, AGP may be the only way to fly.

In any event, we feel the 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI is a great card and worthy of a Hot Hardware Heat Meter rating of...

 

Let it all hang out in the HotHardware Conference Room!

 

  To HotHardware !

 

Tags:  PC, 3D, 5500, pci, 3dfx, voodoo, fx

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