![]() I'm not sure how useful any of them would thus be in a gaming system, especially if you don't have a massive case. Other 3DLabs cards gets a bit trickier - Wildcat4 and below do not support pixel shaders, and generally they all require AGP Pro (not to mention they're generally massive cards - the largest are triple-slot and require an additional PCI connection). What I mean here is: running 3DMark or some other 3D application, the overall system power draw with the VP 880 is similar to with FX 5700 Ultra or some other card that requires 4-pin aux power, but the 880 takes all of its power through the AGP slot (looking at it another way: the 5700 is over-built). Power draw is not terrible, but it does appear to want full-spec from the AGP slot in terms of power (I don't know if this will or won't be a problem for any system, but I felt it's worth mentioning). However the mounting holes were the right size for a Zalman VF700, which runs cold to the touch even when the card is running 3D. The stock fan, at least on my card, was horrendously loud. They seem to work 100% with Voodoo2 in the same system - I had no issues running it in Win2k with the 3dfx reference drivers for a V2 on i815 or i845. With i845 I've had no such issues, and it will thus work in XP just fine, and it works great in Win2000 on the i815 and i845. I've experienced serious issues with the VP on my i815 chipset system running Windows XP (Windows becomes unbootable until you unload either the Intel INF or the Acuity package in safemode). So your machine has to run 2000 or XP if you want to use the card with its drivers ("Acuity"). There are no 9x, Linux (it will run the basic X driver, but feature-support is very limited there), WDDM, etc drivers available for these cards. Some things to keep in mind with these cards: ![]() Performance is generally somewhere in the GeForce 3-4Ti range (in my own testing it isn't too far away from Radeon 9550 in 3D01 either), but without as extensive driver/application optimization for games (it does actually have optimizations and profiles for a number of popular games, but not to the level of GeForce or Radeon). They're capable of up to DX8.1, but can have some quirkiness with pixel shaders in certain applications (in 3D01SE depending on driver settings, and in Morrowind according to ixbt) - I can't say I've ever tried Q3 on mine though. As Putas mentions, it doesn't have anything "special" for gaming, but it isn't a bad card because of that imho. WildcatVP is kind of an odd duck in 3DLabs' history, because it was one of the only chips (the other being the Permedia) designed with the original intention of being both a pro card (what was ultimately sold as WildcatVP) and a consumer card (a single, ill-fated example of that exists as the Creative Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect the 880Pro is a superior card).
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