3dfx Voodoo 4/5 Tweak guide

Updated on January 31, 2001 by Thomas McGuire

3dfx Info

This tab displays information about your graphics card, such as the current clock speed. As you’ve probably guessed from the title, this tab is for informational purposes only. As you can see from the shot above I have my Voodoo 5 5500 running at 186Mhz.

3dfx Advanced Features

This tab contains advanced settings/features that can be used with the graphics card in Direct3D, OpenGL & Glide rendering modes.

Listed below are the options available & what they do, plus recommended settings. NOTE - Some of these options may not appear if you are running Windows 2000, certain CPU’s or don't have the x3dfx drivers installed so disregard any “missing” settings.

General

AGP Command FIFO. This setting allows to you to set the AGP Command FIFO for your Voodoo 4/5 AGP (obviously this setting doesn’t effect the Voodoo 4/5 PCI cards). Depending on the card you have installed you should first select the appropriate AGP setting in the BIOS. If you have a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP the highest you can use is AGP 2X (It doesn’t support AGP 4X data transfer rates), although the Voodoo 4 4500 & Voodoo 5 6000 AGP do support AGP 4X if available.

Settings available are as follows: Auto Detect. This allows Windows to auto-determine the optimal AGP command FIFO setting for the 3dfx card, generally means using the highest AGP mode available, e.g. AGP 4X (Except with the Voodoo 5 5500). If you are using an AGP 4X capable slot, along with a Voodoo 4 4500 or Voodoo 5 6000 AGP you should select AGP 4X in the BIOS & select this option. AGP 1x. This selects an AGP command FIFO setting of 1x, which will work with all AGP slots (It can also solve compatibility issues). AGP 2x.This selects the AGP 2x command FIFO setting, again you should select this if you have your BIOS set to AGP 2X for AGP mode. This will allow for faster data transfer rates than selecting AGP 1X.

VIA Chipset. Should you have a VIA based motherboard installed then this option will appear. This setting can change certain BIOS setting on such chipsets for improved performance & such. Options available are BIOS Defaults, Performance & Compatibility.

I’d recommend setting this to BIOS Defaults for the vast majority of VIA based motherboards (e.g. ones from Abit & Asus), particularly newer ones. Select Compatibility if you are experiencing such issues. You shouldn’t need to select Performance as generally the BIOS Defaults option is already setup for maximum performance.

Refresh Optimization.

This setting optimizes the refresh of your monitor for increased performance (Or rather, the potential for higher frame rates with Vsync enabled). By default this is 75, if you wish to change this take the following steps;

1. Click on Start, Run, type in regedit & hit Enter.

2. Open the following registry key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0000\TIMINGS]. Right click on the OptimalRefreshLimit setting & select Modify.

3. Change this value (75 by default) to the maximum refresh rate supported by your monitor.

I'd recommend you set this to Disable & instead see the Vsync & Refresh rates section, too see how you can set your refresh rate for each resolution/colour depth.

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