zlacker

I feel like 3dfx still had a slight edge until the tail end of the Voodoo3 era (when the GF256 came out and blew everything away). But I think it depends what you prioritise.

Like here, the V3 seems to have a pretty handy lead in most cases https://www.anandtech.com/show/288/14 - but that's a TNT2 (not TNT2 Ultra) and it's all in 16 bit colour depth (not supported by the V3).

It was certainly an interesting time, and as a V3 owner I did envy that 32 bit colour depth on the TNT2 and the G400 MAX's gorgeous bump mapping :D

>>smcl+(OP)
I worked at CompUSA the summer of 1999 and there were demo machines for the Voodoo3 and TNT2, and what I remember most was that the Voodoo looked muddy while the TNT2 looked crisp. Frame rates weren’t different enough to have a clear winner, since there were 3 different Voodoo models and Nvidia had the ultra. I ended up getting a TNT2 Ultra and loved it. Never had any compatibility issues that I remember.

>>dwater+6U1
I owned a Voodoo 3, while all my friends had TNT2's. My experience was the opposite. Not sure if it was the handling of anisotropic filtering, or some kind of texture filtering - but my Voodoo 3 was notably sharper on all the games of the time.

>>dbspin+Y53
It may even vary depending on the game, the settings, whether D3D, OpenGL or GLide were used or which versions of the drivers were installed.

>>smcl+Xt3
For sure, and I'm pretty certain I also tweaked the hell out of 3dfx tools too.