Best video card for WC4 and WCP?

C

Crow4ever

Captain
I am looking to build a system to run WC4, WCP and SO. I'm wondering what would be the best video cards to use, in order to get the full visual options and special effects on all of the games (fog, lens flare, super detail levels, etc).

Prophecy recommends having a Voodoo or Voodoo 2 chipset, or at least a Direct 3D card (and they name a few D3D cards). I know when I first played through this game, I didn't have a named card, and was missing one or two options on the video options screen.

So in order to get ALL of the detail and visual options this time around, what card(s) should I be looking for? And if I get a Voodoo/2 (add-on card), does it make a difference what type of 2D card it's attached to?

Thanks in advance for any and all help.
 
WCP/SO play best on a Voodoo 5. That card is glide compatible AND has enough power to do anti aliasing.
For DOS I'd recommend some late Matrox Mystique card (like the 220 or G220). Very powerful and quite compatible.

However why build an extra system for that 3 games? WC4 just needs the window patch and should work on any card. For WCP/SO just take a glide wrapper (like this one: http://home.t-online.de/home/zsack/). Should work fine with any recent video card as well.
I am usually all for legacy compatible hardware (and I still have a Mystique 220 and a Voodoo 1 for just that reason), but for these 3 games it really isn't necessary.
 
It's going to be more than just those 3 games. But isn't a Voodoo 5 a bit overkill? The 5 wasn't even out when Prophecy came out (don't even think the 4 was either). The game docs only suggest a Voodoo or Voodoo 2, so wouldn't a 2 or 3 be more than enough? And what would a Voodoo 5 do differently in the Wing Commander games that a 2 or 3 couldn't do?

Anyway, I have the spare hardware, so building another box to play a bunch of old games seems worthwhile to me. Besides, there seem to be some glitches and other problems with trying to get those games to play, so I'd rather dedicate a new box to get them to play the way they were meant to be played.

Oh, and the box I'm building is going to be a P1 166 or 200... which doesn't even have any AGP slots anyway. So does a Voodoo 5 even still make sense?
 
Thanks, Ghost. I think I have a Rush sitting around here somewhere. I'm gonna try that one before I go buy a different card.

What brand of Rush card do you have, btw?
 
Crow4ever said:
It's going to be more than just those 3 games. But isn't a Voodoo 5 a bit overkill? The 5 wasn't even out when Prophecy came out (don't even think the 4 was either). The game docs only suggest a Voodoo or Voodoo 2, so wouldn't a 2 or 3 be more than enough? And what would a Voodoo 5 do differently in the Wing Commander games that a 2 or 3 couldn't do?
Click to expand...

You asked for the BEST option and I told you. A voodoo 3 probably would work as well, but I don't know for sure. Note that only the Voodoo 1 and 2 are addon boards however!
As to why: WCP runs with all option on on a Voodoo 1. If you want to go higher then 640x480 (fan patches) you'll need a Voodoo 2 (800x600) or two Voodoo 2s in SLI mode (1024x768) or a vodoo 3 or better (1024x768 + Anti Aliasing support). Its really a matter of what degree of prfection you want.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top