Upgrade Choices
In the case of an existing AGP system with a 300MHz processor or slower, the choices become more complex.
If your existing primary card offers at least decent performance, adding a Voodoo2 card is probably the way to go. It's not so much that Voodoo2 is that much faster - rather, it's the library of existing 3D games that are only accelerated by 3dfx. These are getting fewer over time, but there's still a number of games that only use 3dfx's proprietary Glide API for 3D acceleration. There are also Direct3D games that are tuned to run better on 3dfx boards (for example, games that use 8-bit palletized textures). However, if you've got a Voodoo2 card and are interested in a speedier primary card, there are several choices, depending on your interests. If flexibility of features is important, consider either the Matrox Millenium G400, or if you're really into video, the ATI All-In-Wonder 128. You can add interesting features like hardware DVD - right onto the graphics card. The good news is that all the chip vendors are shipping OpenGL ICDs now. While performance varies, at least you won't be completely left out.
The Millenium G400Max is a turbocharged version of the G400 and is quite fast. Matrox still has some work cut out before its OpenGL implementation is as fast as the competition, but it's coming along.
Voodoo3 offers the widest range of compatibility due to its support of 3dfx's Glide API, but Glide-only applications are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. It's very fast in 16-bit, 3D gaming, which accounts for most games that are currently shipping; however its performance in future games with 32-bit source art or high polygon counts is uncertain.
The current darling are boards using the Nvidia RIVA TNT2 chip. The TNT2 supports 32MB of RAM, high clock speeds, 32-bit rendering, 32-bit z-buffer, and other goodies. This means that, like Voodoo2, the TNT can do multitexture rendering in a single pass. In fact, RIVA TNT2 boards run most Direct3D and OpenGL games faster than even Voodoo2 SLI. The 2D performance is good enough that it's worth considering upgrading for that alone. There are two types of TNT2 boards: standard and Ultra. Boards with standard TNT2 chips typically come with just a heat sink on the board. TNT2 Ultra chips ship at much higher clock speeds and usually have an onboard fan.
Other choices include S3's Savage4. Performance doesn't match up with either TNT2 or Voodoo3, but you can get 32MB boards for less than $140, and the OpenGL performance is surprisingly good.
