I have a system that seems to be rock solid except for this one little prob that my Voodoo 5 5500 AGP will not run Direct3D for more than a few minutes before freezing. Glide and OpenGL are 100% rock stable. A strange thing is that if i put the card into single chip mode for Direct3D, it becomes 100% stable and will run 3Dmark 2001 for days on end. What could be causing this problem to only be evident in Direct3D mode and not Glide and OpenGL using both VSA chips?

System Specs
MSI 6163 Pro Rev2 (i440BX) with latest 3.10 BIOS
384MB PC100 SDRAM (CAS2 but running it at CAS3 to maximise stability)
3Dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP (BIOS 1.06) with official Win98SE 1.04.00 WHCL drivers
Matrox M3D (PowerVR PCX2) with latest drivers and D3D disabled for this card
SMC 1211 NIC
235Watt PSU (potential prob?)
Windows 98 SE with all patches and updates applied

I have removed the M3D to eliminate that as the cause and the V5 still locks in dual chip mode without it. I have also swapped in a Voodoo 4 4500 and that card was rock solid in this PC.

How do i get the dam thing to run in D3D with both chips enabled without locking up?

G'day mate!:)

Your power supply is plenty - I doubt that D3D needs more power than Glide anyway - I run a V5 on a 200watt supply.

Hmmm, I have noticed some Voodoo 5 5500's locking up in double chip mode, but not in single ship mode was due to damaged DRAM, but in your case it still works in Glide so that most likely rules that out unless it's started doing it all of a sudden.

It is most likely purely a D3D configuration problem.  So you can't get any D3D stuff going at all, not even older games etc??  Has it ever been OK with D3D?

Have you considered using the AmigaMerlin drivers instead?  I've found them to be better then the official drivers, well for XP anyway.

Finally, and it's a long shot, I noticed your BIOS is 1.06 and there are newer versions around that might improve your preformance/stability.  I guess I can't comment on how much since I have a MAC PCI version which I flashed to PC 1.18 version, so I'm not sure about AGP BIOS upgrade improvements.

Any other AGP owners like to comment on that?  Is it worth the upgrade?

try disabling agp command fifo in your 3dfx tools.

AGP Command FIFO gives me options of "Auto Detect", 1X or 2X. Either setting has no influence.

Another thing i found is OpenGL crashes in dual chip as well after half an hour or so. All Direct 3D apps lock up after about 2 to 10 minutes. Glide is 100% stable definately tested with NFS3 running 1024x786 with 4xFSAA running in loop for 10 hours suggests this.

The card did work fine at one time ages ago but i've recently put this system together to use the V5 and play older games because i upgraded to a P4 in 2001 which ment the V5 has been a paper weight since then. I hope it isn't a hardware prob with the card. The card has been in the cupboard in an Anti Static bag for last three and a bit years.

Tried AmigaMerlin's 2.9 driver and D3D ran for a while and then locked up. I now think it may be hardware. dam, where can i get another V5 in Aust

Well, i've similar problem only my v5 locks up in any 3d quite soon when sli enabled :/ I would suggest you replace original cooling with bigger heatsinks + fans, because vsa100 runs quite hot.

Well, sometimes there are v5 from Austria on ebay, but the most i see from Germany.

Lol, He meant AUSTRALIA!;)

Reminds me of that movie "Dumb and Dumber" where he meets the girl from Austria and says: "Austria!!  Well!!  G'day mate - let's throw another shrimp on the barbie!!"

I loaded Win2K on the box and low and behold D3D apps stopped freezing the system completely. Now they just drop back to the desktop. Another interesting thing is massive texture corruption in 3DMark 2001 under Win2K when using two chips. Textures are fine with just 1 chip enabled.

I dont think it is heat because both the heatsinks are cool to touch while the card is under 3D load (b4 it locks)

Just weird, i think 1 of the chips or ram associated with the chips is faulty. Runnign a V4 4500 in the system instead but bit slow. Grr i wish i had a working V5

yep,looks like faulty memory chip to me.well,if you have the skill,you can replace the memory chip yourself,but compatible memory chip are hard to find,it would be easier to simply find another voodoo5..

you're not overclocking anything are you?  I found my V5 would lock up under certain apps in the old days because of even minimal overclocking of the V5 (due to the overclockers back then did NOT overclock BOTH chips) and also overclocking the chipset on the motherboard.  the 1.06 BIOS does have a few flaws in it with relation to display size.... you could try updating to 1.18?  are both fans still cooling optimally?  the glue on these V5's will start to seperate from the chips itself due to just plain age, and you wouldn't know it till you pulled the heatsink off.  how dirty is the board itself?

Nope, no overclocking here. V5 default 166 and CPU default 450 4.5x100

I now kno it definately not heat. I had a banshee that used to overheat and i solved that back in the day by underclocking it 10MHz. The RAM on the card was rated at 100 but the bios clocked it at 110.

Just out of interest i underclocked the V5 down to 143 (V3 2000 speed) and no change, still lockup. (Used 3dfx overclock tool). I further dropped it down to 125 and still no change so heat definately isn't a problem.

looks like the v4 4500 it is - well until a V5 comes on ebay in Australia;)