Rating: 
Summary: Sweet
Review: I have a P3 500Mhz with 128 RAM and an ATI 8 MB video card. I like to play a game called Codename: Eagle in multiplayer (yeah, even though the whole game got about 1 star for review, I still think multiplayer just rocks). Now this is a good system, but with the somewhat bad graphics programming in the game, the game runs really slow. Now with the Voodoo5, I can crank the graphics up at their highest, and it runs as fast as any other game! I wanted to play Q3A but it requires an OpenGL compatible video card, and everytime I download the newest drivers for my ATI card, it totally crashes my computer. The Voodoo5 is also OpenGL capatable, I love going into stores and not having to check the video requirements of the games to see which ones have OpenGL that I can't play. Now when I saw the specs on this thing I thought to myself, this thing is too good to be true. And it is somewhat. It is a huge card, bigger than anything I've seen, so you may have a problem fitting it's longness into your system, I actually had to pull something out just to fit it in. When I told my friends that this thing could burn through something, my friends just laughed thinking it was a joke. But, for real, it can burn through something, that's why they have equipped to large cooling fans on it. That leads me to the second problem I found with this card. It's the fact that the fans make a soft and somewhat annoying drone, if that's not enough, they are making that drone even while your computer is on Stand By (Sleep, Suspend, etc.) Those are the only two gripes I had about this card, other than that, it is a small price to pay for getting to play my games in extreme clarity, and lightning speed.
Rating: 
Summary: It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread
Review: I just installed this card, and I must say, the anti-aliasing makes a striking improvement on all my 3d games, even those in extremely high resolutions. Basically, the anti-aliasing functions just like the "screen smoothing" that was available with Unreal. It's nice, but not perfect. Although it smooths the screen nicely and gets rid of the jaggies, it somewhat blurs the text in 3d game menus. It's sort of like adjusting the sharp control on your TV to make up for a static-filled picture - the duller image obscures the snow, but its hard to look at after a while. Thankfully, you can control the amount of aliasing or turn it off altogether (which makes better use of your video memory and provides a faster frame rate). Also, I've noticed that the anti-aliasing feature sometimes creates strange artifacts and lighting anomolies on moving objects in Unreal Tournament. This is quite annoying. Also, some of my 3d games now have a slight color problem, probably due to the lame 3Deep automatic color adjuster that comes with the card. One thing I would like to point out, though, is that I was amazed at how impressive the Anti-Aliasing can be -- in most games, it's even more impressive than resolution. THE GOOD POINTS 1) The Anti-Aliasing rocks on most of my games, providing nice, smooth images with no jagged edges, even in low rez. The feature even helps in high rez! 2) If the AA causes trouble with a particular game, I can easily turn it off. 3) It's a fast card. 4) It jacks directly to the power supply which will help prevent the brown outs associated with some mother boards. 5) It has two cooling fans (one for each processor) so it won't overheat like some of the early Voodoo3 cards did. THE BAD POINTS: 1) The AA creates strange artifacts and lighting anomolies in some games. 2) I've had some color issues in one game in particular. 3) The AA can look washed out in some scenes. I hope this helps. I personally think the card was a good buy. Also, it installs easily.
Rating:
Summary: Voodoo5 Rules!
Review: I have had the opportunity to build several systems in the past few weeks ranging from mid range Celerons to high end PIII's and used several different video cards. Those include the TNT2, GeForce Annihlator 2, and a TNT2 Ultra. I have come to expect buggy installtion with the Nvidia product. Voodoo products are the easiest install I have ever done. And when compared to the TNT series, the Voodoo 5 is leaps and bounds above them all.....even better than the Geforce! I now have the Voodoo5 in my PC right now and it kicks with Rogue Spear! The GeForce would not play with Rogue Spear. Go with the Voodoo if you need hi end graphics and no problems!
Rating:
Summary: Don't believe the hype; see for yourself.
Review: I'm running a system with an ASUS P3V4X board, a Celeron 300a @ 464, 128MB RAM, and I was excited though still somewhat skeptical over this new product from 3dfx when I removed my venerable Voodoo3 and installed the Voodoo5. Just like the Voodoo3, the Voodoo5 installed without incident. With the exception of a couple display problems in Half-Life that I solved after a few adjustments this newest addition to the 3dfx line is a winner. Admittedly I wasn't very convinced about FSAA at first, having to rely on screenshots and comments from many "experts" who've never seen the card in action, and I was also tempted by the speed of the Voodoo5's competitor GeForce 2. Well, after installing the 3dfx Tools software, and firing up the 4-sample FSAA I was stunned at what I saw. The magnificent vistas in the games Jedi Knight and Rogue Squadron were shockingly realistic, closeups of the Imperial Walkers and TIE Fighters were so impressive I can only describe them as jaw-dropping. Half-Life, terrifying enough as it was, took on a whole new aspect, especially on the inter-dimensional levels. The racing games Beetle Buggin and Episode 1: Racer were phenomenal. You get the impression that you're watching a movie, seeing the mountains in the distance and the crowds in the stands as you zoom by. Even older games like GLQuake became enjoyable once again once FSAA was turned on. I was slightly disappointed that my Quake 3 framerates did not improve very much, but much to my delight I can now turn up the resolution to 1280x1024, or turn on 4XFSAA at 640x480 and see almost no decrease in frame rates. The lower resolution (640x480) with 4xFSAA easily beats the higher one (1280x1024) as far as visual quality in my opinion. The compatibility of the Voodoo line is still present, and the Glide API support too. In fact I can play Rogue Squadron at 1280x1024 and 4xFSAA in Glide mode and it looks and plays beautifully. I suppose I could have paid more for a GeForce 2 and gotten faster frame rates in Quake3, but given what this card has done to my gaming experience I will never play a game without FSAA again. I turned it off once and I was just aghast as to how ugly the games looked in comparison. Now for the cons. This is a rather large card and people with smaller cases may need to fiddle with their hardware to make it fit. My card just barely does, just brushing the back of the cable connecting my hard drive. The drivers are also rather new, although from what 3dfx has done with their Voodoo3 drivers I'm certain they'll get a lot better with time. Finally, there's no TV-out, or game bundle with the card, but it does have a free DVD software offer for S&H costs. The 3dfx online forums and toll-free tech support were also very helpful, and I got a few tips for my card that were invaluable. To summarize, I was simply blown away. Not since my original Voodoo 1 card was I ever so impressed with anything from a consumer graphics company. Don't let the naysayers dissuade you from at least checking out this card. It's amazing what kind of false information is out there, even on some of the reviews I've seen here. The Voodoo5 is simply astounding.
Rating:
Summary: A Tip to Increase the Performance of this Great 3D Card
Review: Just yesterday, I wrote a review giving the Voodoo 5 5500 four stars because it didn't give the performance leap from the Voodoo 3 3000 that I felt it should have. A little net research pointed out that the disc from 3Dfx included with the card actually installs a general Voodoo series driver, rather than the 5500 specific driver, meaning the communication between devices is runs slower than it should. Here's how to solve that problem: after installing all the stuff from the 3Dfx disc, go to your Device Manager (located in the Control Panel/System/ folder). Select the "3Dfx Voodoo Series" driver from the DISPLAY selection and click on "Properties." After that, select the "Driver" tab, and click on the "Update Driver" box in the lower right-hand corner. The Windows Driver Wizard will allow you to "Display drivers from a specific location" and the location of the Voodoo 5 5500 driver is on the cd rom, in the "Windows9X/ drivers9X" folder. The Voodoo driver will display in the selection box. And it's all cake from there. I feel a little weird posting technical tips here at Amazon, but the driver jumped up the performance of the card enough to move my 4-star rating to a full 5. It's a great card, and the installation of this driver improves the performance considerably.
Rating:
Summary: voodoo 5 5500 rules
Review: When I got this card, it was because of my friend who told me it ruled. But now that I actually looked some stuff up, GeForce is nothing in comparison. Why get a card that you have to change settings for, when you can get one that's better and pops right in. I think that says enough in itself.
Rating:
Summary: BUY THIS CARD
Review: This is the most brilliant cards EVER. Please ignore the warnings from exodus as he is reffering to the voodoo5 6000 not the 5500. Firstly, the 6000 will be approximately $600 instead of $300 for the 5500. Everything I have seen about the 5500 is awesome, and, *crosses fingers* mine should be in my machine within the next 3 weeks. BUY THIS CARD! It is a no bullsh*t card. Others may ask you to modify things such as volages within your PC. Now for some people, this is plain impossible as they are either too scared or simply cannot be bothered. This card is no nonsence, plug it in and then get on with the games! BUY THIS CARD OR YOU WILL BE SORRY!
Rating:
Summary: VooDoo5 vs. GeForce2
Review: Well, VooDoo has the numbers, 5 vs. 2! <that's a joke,laugh!> Anyway, I have always been pretty loyal to the VooDooline of video cards, but i have to step back a little bit here. Sure the VooDoo5 may look better due to Anti-Aliasing, and it may have cool little effects and stuff builting, but is it really better? The games may be faster and look sharper, bu twhat about people that want a great card for both gaming and general use. Where does the VooDoo fall there? I have a VooDoo3 2000 right now, so ANYTHING would be a vast improvement, but I am stuck. Get the GeForce2 with TV-Out, built in GPU, and 256-bit proccessor, or the 64MB Ram and four on-board processors the VooDoo has to offer? I personally am not huge on software and could go with an OEM GeForce2 card, thus saving money from the VooDoo5, but should I? Where am I going with this? Well, nowhere I guess. Just thinking outloud more than anything. Word of advice to everyone though, actually a few words. RESEARCH! Don't just read what people on Amazon say, check out things like... newsgroups for real-world opinions. Don't be sold by the marketing, look at the facts. Get benchmarks, get real user opinion, get anything you can. From there, figure out what is best for you, not what other people say is better for you. Also, Exodus has been posting about a better card on the horizon. While things like this are cool to know, don't let it stop you from buying the card you want. Like someone else stated, you can wait forever and better cards will keep coming out, but you will eventually have to buy one of them, or sit with no computer for a long time. They are always working on better cards, and talking about them WAY before release. Remember the first utterings of the VooDoo5 "The GeForce Killer", and we are finally seeing it now. If you want it, get it. If yopu can't afford it, wait for the price to drop or get something cheaper. EVERYONE needs a video card, weather it's the best or not. Sorry for rambling on, but everyone needs to stay informed. I just wanted to stress that, and hopefully get some responses from people with GeForce2 and VooDoo5 cards. Also, I don't know how either of them is doing for Linux support right now, but that may be another thing you might want to think about...... the thought go on. Sorry. Hope this was at least a little helpful to someone...
Rating:
Summary: VOODOO5 The Card for the Socket7 Machine!
Review: One of the facts I was forced to live with was that my motherboard and that of most of my friends who owned a Socket7 PC, was browning out due to the pull of nVidias cards and their ilk. They just couldnt handle the energy requirements... this caused random reboots if my winmodem was pulling to much gas... basicly.. just browned out. Also resolution would fail on a cold boot.. I had my desktop at 1024x768, and it would boot into the 600x800 settings.. When I got my V5 5500, it jacks INTO THE POWER SUPPLY.. BYPASSING THIS PROBLEM INSTANTLY! You get a card that rocks.. best image quality and no brownouts.. does nVida have that? I DONT THINK SO. Voodoo forever!
Rating:
Summary: Reveiw from a different prospective that others MISS
Review: While it may be a very intresting war between the v5 and GeForce2 fans. Keep this in mind. On almost ALL socket7 boards the nVidia boards draw to much juice off the motherboard causing brownouts and resolution fading on the load of your OS. The Voodoo5 5500 has a cable that jacks INTO your powersupply to eliminate that feed problem. Thus this board is a Socket7 friendly board.. That and it just PLAIN RIPS. I got one.. and for those of you who want to actually ENJOY THE GRAPHICS and not just pure frames.. go with Voodoo5.. GeForce2 is just plain ugly in comparison. Voodoo all the way baby.
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