Home > Consumer Reviews > 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 PCI 2D/3D Graphics Accelerator

The term "Voodoo" has become a household word in many video gamers' homes, as it boasts incredible features such as a simple, quick installation program, all-around compatibility with virtually every game available, and an extremely unproprietary interface.

As far as value is concerned, the Voodoo 3 3000 PCI video card is top notch. It's difficult to find another video card on the market of it's caliber in a similar price range.

This card should do plenty of justice with any game you throw at it. With 16MB of RAM, and featuring a 350Mhz RAMDAC engine, it can boost 3D graphics to incredible levels. You'll find it runs excellent in 2D and 3D, in Windows 95, 98, or 2000, with any style or caliber of video game.

Unreal Tournament, Half-Life, Soldier of Fortune, Age of Empires 2, Startrek Armada, and the cult classic Civilization are all games I've played using this video card. You'd be amazed at the color. Sometimes I find myself distracted by the scenery, as the card renders even the newest of games so flawlessly.

The only consideration is the fact that with versions of the newer Voodoos recently being released, and a few more to come in the next few months, this one could be in need of an upgrade within a year, possibly a year and a half. However, this should be an excellent card to tide you over.

I recently got a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI from Amazon and it's the best computer component I've ever bought. I have a packarb bell P200 128MB ram and a S3 Virge 2MB video card and had to go in and disable the S3 card since it's integrated into the motherboard, but after that it worked great. I play Half-life Counter-Strike Mod(great game, great mod, opposing force expansion is extremely buggy and frustrating bad buy) and I really kick but now with the new card when I'm one or two vs. one or two others, but if I get 3 or 4 characters in my view at once and everyone is firing fps really degrades immidietely and I get wasted, I think that has alot to do with having a 3 and 1/2 year old mother board and processor though. I haven;t tried any rendering in any of my 3D editors yet, I hope to see a big boost in rendering.

P.S. If you have a previous video card integrated into your motherboard instead of it being a seperate card and are upgrading here's how to disable the old one: Right click on My Computer and click properties, click the Device Manager tab, then click view by type, now click Display Adapters, double click your current video card and check "disable in this hardware profile" and uncheck "exist in all profiles"

Rather than just say that this is really an amazing card, which it truly is, I thought I'd give you some solid stats other than those provided by the company. I'm running this card on a Pentium 2 400MHz, with 64 megs SDRAM and a 15" Sony Trinitron monitor (.25dp). There isn't enough room write the full results, but basically it worked out like this (the tests were with Unreal Tournament demo): even at 1280x1024 and 16 bit resolution, the card was pulling an average of 30 FPS. The refresh at this res was reduced, but not severely. At 512x384x16, I got 44 FPS, but the graphics were too pixelated at such a low res that it wasn't worth it. The best of both worlds seems to be 1024x768x16, which consistently pulls off just short of 40 FPS on average.

The last word is that if you don't have an AGP slot, this is the card to go with. It performs great and if you can do without TV-out, it's about perfect.

When I first tried my Voodoo 3-3000(PCI) it was like i had a hole brand new computer. I have a Pentium II 350mhz 96megs of ram and a 15inch NEC monitor. Before I bought my Voodoo 3 I had a some generic SIS video card that cant run 3D for beans and also i had a PowerVR card that was called the M3D. My M3D could olny run half-life at 15fps at 640X480, but when i got my Voodoo 3 it sky rocket to 60fps at 1024x786 and the quality was so much prettier. Unreal Tournament Ran at 37fps at 1024x786, and at this res every game I ever played never ran slower than 30fps that is pretty amasing for anyone.

I bought this video card because I wanted better frame rates when I played Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 2. I have an AMD K6-200 processor and did not want to upgrade at this time. The VooDoo3 card did the trick. The MSCFS 2 plays very well now, even with the sky full of airplanes. The install was simple and I used the latest video drivers for the card from 3Dfx. No problem. Also I had read that the card became hot to the touch during use but this is not true. Warm yes, but not hot. However, I do not over clock anything. I simply replaced my old ATI card with this great card and that was it. All my programs are running correctly and the 3D games are flying! If you want to buy a fast 2D/3D PCI video card, this is the card to get.