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VooDoo 5 5500 PCI for Mac - [NavyCuda]

United States Postal Service, Canada Customs, and Canada Post. Three services that you just don't want to deal with. After recieving the review board late, after being held up State side, and in Customs... I was informed that I had a $17.22 fee that needed to be payed before I could take my pakage. After going through the change bin, and everything else in my house, I found enough to pay them off...

Breaking the Customs seal, I look into the box, seeing the V5, and some other stuff 3Dfx so generously sent along with the card. I'd like to take this time to thank 3Dfx for allowing M3DR to do a review, considering this is our opening review.

TEST SYSTEM:

• Power Mac G4 350
• 10.2gig HDD
• 320megs Physical Ram w/out VM activated (borrowed PC133 out of the Athalon... I want to see what this card will do.......)
• MacOS 8.6.1
• MacOS Rom 1.8.1
• 3Dfx VooDoo 5 5500 PCI w/ 64megs on board memory

INSTALLATION:

3Dfx has done among the best work for making their products the easiest to get up and running. Having a G4 helps some too. Opening my case, I remove my lock-stock ATi Rage Pro 128 16meg from its 66Mhz PCI slot, and place the V5 in its new home. I decided to use the Y-cable that is supplied with the V5, because the standerd HDD power cable that comes with the G4 is not long enough to reach to the V5's power connector. Securing the V5 in place, I slowly close the case. I noticed that the Y cable pushes up against the inlet fan case in the G4. I also believe that this would happen on a B&W G3 case as well. You can feel that there is pressure, though it is nothing to be concerned with. just be gentle closing the door is all.
Booting up as normal, my system loads fine, I go to my System Folder > Extentions and remove all the ATi components. After that, I put the V5 driver install CD in, run the US install version, and everything installs fine, I restart without a hitch.
Note: the review board I got had older drivers, I had to download the newest ones, which had a firmware update, and new drivers. You can find them at 3dfxgamers.com

FIRST THOUGHTS:

First thing through my head: "Oh crap... its either going to burn my MoBo, or my G4 is going to burn the V5 up..." Well I didn't have either of these problems, but I have encountered a couple that bother me.

FIRST START:

The VooDoo card seems to freeze more often then the ATi card ever did in the Finder. I can't be completly sure that it is the VooDoo card, though after installing it, the freezes became more apparent. Though the advantages of this card easily outway the freezes my tempermental system expirences with the V5.
In a hurry to get this card running, I rushed through the process of getting my system back up and running after a clean install of MacOS 8.6, neglecting to download the newest OpenGL and Game Sprockets, Q3A would not run, giving me Type 2 errors. I was gettign rather mad at the card, though i finally folded and did what every body hates to do. I called Tech. Support.

TECH SUPPORT:

Visions of long distance phone numbers and incompitent tech support employees, I flipped through the V5 install quide pages slowly, afraid of what I would find.
Abig surprise awaited me, a 1-800-number for Canada and the United States. I knew that this was a good sign. calling the 3Dfx tech support number, going through the computerized number punching to get where I wanted, I got through to tech support. After explaining my problem, what my system is, and what I had, and hadn't done, they were able to accuratly reply what the problem was, and 15 minutes later, I was getting beat'n down in Q3A. If only more companies offered tech support that worked.

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