Customer Reviews

3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV AGP

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Let me first state that I purchased this card from another vendor. But that doesn't negate this review in the least. Anyone interested in the fastest multimedia card today should definitely check out the Voodoo3 3500. Not only is the card faster than two Voodoo2s in Direct3D, OpenGL, and Glide but it comes with a TV/FM tuner that has stereo dbx support. You can also encode MPEG-2 video and edit video and audio files. The card ships with an adapter cable that splits into two connectors. The first is a VGA connector for your monitor and the second is a pod that contains inputs and outputs for S-video, composite video, and audio. The cable then attaches to the cards's connector.

After running this board for past few days I'm glad I bought it. The drivers are more stable than anything NVIDIA can code and the image quality is quite excellent. 3dfx recommends that you have a Pentium II 266MHz system as the minimum with an available AGP slot. Even with Voodoo 4 and 5 on the horizon the 3500 is a dynamite card that's guaranteed last for quite some to come.

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.

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.

Quite honestly, this is more hardware than any games can currently max out. It won't turn your 386 into a model 3 board, but it will run every 3D game out there at 1024x768 res well. You'll never have problems with older games (which often only support Glide or basic D3D), and it will always be supported. For those of you who remember, 3DFX is to 3D cards what Creative Labs was to sound cards. More "flashy" products may get churned out, but they are soon forgotten. If you're buying a gaming card for the next 2 years, this is the one you'll be 1) the most happy with, 2) have the least problems with, 3)understand why people sport such wood over the modern 3D shooter.

jkm

firaxis games

I originally purchased this card with the intent to boot into Windows 98 to play games and stay in NT 4.0 for everything else. I made a mistake by jumping the gun and assuming I could at least run regular 2D video on NT (I didn't expect it to be able to play games on it in NT). Well, it doesn't. The best it does is 16 color 640x480 using the Standard VGA driver, since the 3dfx drivers wouldn't install or even provide regular 2D functionality.

Worse, the Win98 installation originally had a regular Voodoo 3 3000 in it, and I found that not only could I not install the Voodoo 3 3500 drivers under Win98, I could no longer re-install the Voodoo 3 3000 after I removed the 3500 card and replaced it with the 3000.

After re-formatting and re-installing Win98, the card did work but the TV tuner didn't work too well unless it had a direct cable-tv coax feed. In other words, I was unable to watch Nebraska football games at work on Saturdays because the tuner wasn't good enough to pick up a signal despite having a powered RCA antenna I had purchased for it.

The card itself is only a bit faster than a Voodoo 3 3000, so this card is hard to recommend unless you'll only be running Windows 98 or are willing to experiment with 3dfx's beta quality Windows 2000 drivers. You'd also be better off with nVidia's card in this generation, a TNT2.

As of this writing (March 2000), there are newer generation cards available which are better: An nVidia GeForce 256 powered card (i.e. Creative Labs Annihilator or a Guillemot 3D Prophet), and the older nVidia TNT2-Ultra (i.e. a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra). There are also Voodoo 4 and 5 cards coming in May 2000.

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 .

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.

I had bought this video card back in 2000 when I first built my current system. It was the best thing since sliced bread in my bood. It did everything I wanted it to. I was able to do some video capture, watch TV, listen to the radio, and get great video game play to boot. It did have it's inital flaws with playing DVDs, choppyness mainly. But with the online patch, it worked perfectly. Even with systems upgrades, different hard drives and processors, even mother boards, I kept this card. It was finally when I broke down and Installed windows XP I finally reached limits on this cards capapbilty to adaptation, and it had no updates available for XP, so I was forced to replace the card. Great for a second computer, but unfortunatly out of date for XP operating system.

I used this video card up until 2 years ago in my system running windows 98 until the market forced me to change and up-convert to windows XP, and thus having to convert over to a new video card. This was the best video card on the market at the time I bought it back in 1999/2000 and this thing rocked. I played need for speed, doom, ect...with this beast with flawless graphic details. Plus, I had radio and TV with my cable connected to the system for internet. Granted now, it looks small (16mb on board), and slow (clocked at 183mhz), but this did it all. Also captured video nicely with the special adapter line that came with it. Highly recommended for folks who still tweak with older systems.

I purchased the 3DFX Voodoo3 3500 TV and had a number of problems getting it to work, It would shut down and I had to repeatedly reload drivers etc. After SIX MONTHS of this, I was told by a 3DFX tech that the Voodoo 3 3500 TV, in fact all of the Voodoo 3 line, are not compatible with Tyan (among others) motherboards. It seems that the Voodoo3 3500 needs 3.3 volts to operate, and Tyan and other motherboard manufacturers products only supply 2.1 volts AGP!!!