Voodoo 5500: worth replacing?

[Santilli]

Hi
Is it really worth replacing my 5500? I don't do much but internet, some video, trailers, etc. email, some Quake 3, but not much, and lots of text and graphics.

I'm after either a really noticeable improvement in graphics quality on this Hitachi 802 21 inch, in text, or a great increase in speed.

Main thing is, is the increase worth the money spent?

Sort of the same question as, is it worth moving from a 1.4 gig athlon
to a 3.Xmhz Pentium 4?

gs

 

[jtr1962]

I am wrestling with a similar dilemma right now. In January I upgraded my PII-450 with a Powerleap 1.4 GHz Celeron but I'm still using my Voodoo 3000 card. Outside of MS Train Simulator nothing that I do would really benefit noticably from a faster card. In fact, most applications only benefitted slightly from the processor upgrade. I'm sure they do everything 3X faster, but when most operations were only taking milliseconds you just don't notice a speed increase. Things like zipping folders is way faster than before, but a new graphics card won't do a thing for such non-graphics intensive applications. My own conclusion is that for your usage patterns(and mine) it probably isn't worthwhile unless the new card is fairly inexpensive. If I can pick up a decent Radeon card for under $50 in the future I might upgrade but it would have to have extra features that my Voodoo card doesn't, especially TV input. In the end the biggest bottleneck on my system before and after any upgrade will remain the hard drives. Until we have SSDs, nothing will change that fact.

 

[Stereodude]

I would say yes, but that's just me.

New cards have hardware accelerated alpha blending (used for the fade effect in 2k and XP) and really are faster in a 2d desktop enviroment than the cards you both mention. In addition most new cards can drive two monitors, have TV out and DVI support as well.

 

[CougTek]

I would say that it depends on how much spare money you currently have. If you ask the question, it's because you are already tempted to upgrade up to a certain level, so if you don't, you'll keep thinking about it. I know the feeling. I felt the same for the last 6 months and broke at the beginning of July because I saw very good prices on the hardware I wanted (but probably not needed).

Both of you don't need to upgrade for the applications you mentioned. A Voodoo 5500 is just fine for Quake 3 at medium definitions. A 3GHz Pentium 4 with 800MHz FSB and Hyper-threading is nice for bragging, but most of the time you won't feel much of a difference between it and your current Athlon 1.4GHz. Just like I don't notice a great difference from my Athlon 500MHz to my Athlon XP 1500+ when I'm just browsing the Net. Office apps open a bit faster, 3D animations play better, but otherwise, when regarded purely as a work machine, the difference isn't night and day.

Bottom line is : if you don't have other priorities and you really don't need that money, then upgrade. Be it just to stop wondering and to feel better about your computer equipment. But if you have other expensive project in mind and you hesitate between this upgrade or anything else, then spend your money on the anything else part, because your usage pattern doesn't need a more powerful system.

You know yourself, you know how badly you want to upgrade...or not. Your peace of mind is the determining factor here IMO. If you are able to convince yourself that you don't need to upgrade and you believe you'll stop thinking about, then don't. If you are like the majority of us, then stop resisting and buy. The satisfaction of owning something at the bleeding edge will worth alone the money.

 

[Santilli]

Thanks, all.

I always wonder with these great advancements, if I'm even going to notice.

I noticed the 1.4 athlon, from the PII 400 mhz.
Likewise the 4 X X 15's make a huge difference, as does 512 mb of ram.

On the PII 400 mhz I bought a Kyro II 64 mb card to replace the 16 mb TNT, and that is a noticeable speed jump.

I have little doubt my best investment for the PII would be a boot drive, and card, scsi and new generation X 15, but, the person using the computer would be more upset by the change then the speed increase.

Likewise the Tualitin upgrade.

Think I'll proceed with other projects I need to do...

s

 

[Mercutio]

The only reason I'd still suggest moving away from the 5500 is that its two fans are a bit loud. Of course, with all the SCSI disks, you probably don't notice...

 

[Jan Kivar]

The only reason I'd still suggest moving away from the 5500 is that its two fans are a bit loud. Of course, with all the SCSI disks, you probably don't notice...

Yes, this is the only viable point. I'm assuming that V5 5500 has a TV-out, yes? Dual displays could also be neat (like CRT+LCD), especially if You use Photoshop or similar a lot.

I've never seen a V5 in action, so I can't say much about the 2D quality. Maybe it beat nVidia's offerings back then, but the overall quality for any new GPU is OK nowadays. 21" screens can be problematic though.

BTW jtr1962, how's your temps? I have undervolted 1.3G Celeron with Powerleap and retail Intel HS. Using undervolted 80 mm fan, 43-44°C idle, ambient 26-27°C, measured with external temp sensor under the HS.

Cheers,

Jan

 

[Mercutio]

The Voodoo 5 has TV out. It's not very good. 2D-wise, 3dfx made cards that were just below Matrox in terms of image quality. I've never seen an nvidia card that looked that good (OTOH, I avoid them, and I've not seen anything newer than GF4MXs).

 

[jtr1962]

BTW jtr1962, how's your temps? I have undervolted 1.3G Celeron with Powerleap and retail Intel HS. Using undervolted 80 mm fan, 43-44°C idle, ambient 26-27°C, measured with external temp sensor under the HS.

Right now the temp is 42°C. Room temp is ~24°C, so figure it's been pretty much at 18 to 20°C above ambient, which incidentally is almost exactly the same as my old PII-450. I'm running the stock fan that came with the Powerleap with no modifications. I'm also running the FSB at 112 MHz which gives me a 1.568 GHz CPU clock. The core voltage is whatever it was originally set for when I installed the CPU(I think Powerleap sets it 0.1 V above spec for stability reasons). I reasoned that the core voltage wasn't worth playing with because the next speed increment in my BIOS for the FSB was 133 MHz. From what I read, the 1.4 GHz Celerons just won't overclock that much no matter what so I settled for 112 MHz FSB. Very nice upgrade BTW, well worth the money. Any operation that took more than a few seconds of CPU time is now 3X faster. The system overall feels snappier. Now if only I could do something to speed up my hard drives by two or three orders of magnitude so they can keep up with my CPU.

 

[Santilli]

The Voodoo 5 has TV out. It's not very good. 2D-wise, 3dfx made cards that were just below Matrox in terms of image quality. I've never seen an nvidia card that looked that good...

This is,IIRC, what Tannin said as well, and why I'm reluctant to switch cards.

Jtr1962:
What kind of hard drive are you using? I'm thinking the Powerlead might be a real good idea for our Dell Dimension 400 mhz, P2.

I'm using a Quantum LM in it.

Ideas?

gs

 

[jtr1962]

Jtr1962:
What kind of hard drive are you using? I'm thinking the Powerlead might be a real good idea for our Dell Dimension 400 mhz, P2.

I'm using a Quantum LM in it.

Ideas?

Boot drive:
Maxtor 5T040H4 (7200 RPM 40 GB)

Other Drives:
Maxtor 6Y080P0 (7200 RPM 80 GB)-DM9 model family
Maxtor 4G100J5 (5400 RPM 100 GB)

I plan to use the DM9 as the boot drive eventually since the 40 GB is getting close to full.

The Powerleap seems like a good idea for your P2. Just make sure to check for compatibility on Powerleap's web site. Provided it's compatible(almost every decent M/B seems to be) it will be a good way to get a few more years(or more) of service out of the machine. That was my thoughts behind upgrading. I was pretty happy with the PII except that I wanted better FPS in MS Train Simulator. The new CPU took care of that and consumes no more power than my old one. I only wish Intel hadn't stopped the Tualatins at 1.4 GHz as they seem to be great processors.

 

[Jan Kivar]

BTW jtr1962, how's your temps? I have undervolted 1.3G Celeron with Powerleap and retail Intel HS. Using undervolted 80 mm fan, 43-44°C idle, ambient 26-27°C, measured with external temp sensor under the HS.

Right now the temp is 42°C. Room temp is ~24°C, so figure it's been pretty much at 18 to 20°C above ambient, which incidentally is almost exactly the same as my old PII-450. I'm running the stock fan that came with the Powerleap with no modifications. I'm also running the FSB at 112 MHz which gives me a 1.568 GHz CPU clock. The core voltage is whatever it was originally set for when I installed the CPU(I think Powerleap sets it 0.1 V above spec for stability reasons). I reasoned that the core voltage wasn't worth playing with because the next speed increment in my BIOS for the FSB was 133 MHz. From what I read, the 1.4 GHz Celerons just won't overclock that much no matter what so I settled for 112 MHz FSB. Very nice upgrade BTW, well worth the money. Any operation that took more than a few seconds of CPU time is now 3X faster. The system overall feels snappier. Now if only I could do something to speed up my hard drives by two or three orders of magnitude so they can keep up with my CPU.

Nice. I try to maintain very low noise, so no OCing for me. IIRC Powerleap is set at the correct voltage (or maybe I just set mine to 1.5V). Removing all the voltage jumpers it drops to 1.3V, which all Tualatins should still tolerate (at least at stock clocks). I had only two jumpers included, so I can't test all the possible voltages. Did You buy everything from PowerLeap, or just the adapter?

Planning on getting a Samsung SP1213N, when they hit the market. Now using 60 GB 120GXP. Luckily it seems that ABit BX6-r2 will support large drives.

Cheers,

Jan

 

[jtr1962]

Did You buy everything from PowerLeap, or just the adapter?

I purchased my CPU on eBay although everything was in one box from Powerleap. The same person was also selling adaptors separately but I figured I wouldn't save anything buying the CPU and fan on my own once you counted shipping. I'm thinking of trying a noise reduction project for my PC one of these days. It's not that noisy, but when the room's quiet you definitely hear the fans.

 

[Santilli]

You guys almost had me swapping the P3 450 from the backup to the Dell
XPS R400, with the P2, 400 mhz.

I thought better of it.

This thing isn't bad, all things considered.

It works, and meanwhile I'm screwing around with my PC, adding an adaptec card, and raid box for storage.

gs