-= Frequently Asked Questions=-

1. How do I flash my BIOS?
All the Information needed is in the Help Text File
We do reccomend reading through the message boards to be sure you want to flash!!
Also ALWAYS dump your BIOS first!
If something were to go wrong during your first flash your ORIGINAL BIOS could be lost!

2. What will flashing my BIOS achieve?
Well several users have reported different results.
The following shows some achievements

Better screen alignment
Increase in performance
Better driver support
Higher overclockability - Not sure why, but it's true
Better VBE3 DOS Support (VESA)
Better compatability with old DOS software and some newer movie players

3. Is flashing my BIOS safe?
Flashing your BIOS is relativly safe.
You can dump your original BIOS before you flash in case anything goes wrong.
The flash program makes a backup of your original BIOS during the flash process.
If the flash fails, you can simply reflash it with one of these, or another BIOS.
We have also made available a program to make a RECOVERY DISK !!

However please read the disclaimer as it states the facts about your warranty and so on:
In the unfortunate event that you do mess up your card, we CANNOT be held responsible in any way, and neither can 3dfx.

4. Someone said that flashing my BIOS will void my warranty?
Flashing your BIOS WILL void your 3dfx warranty.
We have NOTHING to do with 3dfx and the BIOS's available here
are NOT supported by 3dfx in any way.

5. Someone also said that flashing my Voodoo3 2000 with the 3000 BIOS works, is this true?
Some users have done this and all that have tried it have been sucessful.
HOWEVER, there is one MAJOR thing to remember.... Doing this will set your
DEFAULT CLOCK SPEED to 166 and not 143 as it should be.
If you are going to flash the 2000 with the 3000 BIOS, make sure you have
adiquate cooling as you may end up buring out your Voodoo3.

We recommend that you run your voodoo3 2000 at 166MHz clock for a
time to ensure that it is happy at this speed, if needed add
extera cooling, such as a 468 heatsink fan or a case fan aimed
at the voodoo3's heatsink.

6. What is the URL for the original post that started this?
Unfortunatley, due to the disolution of 3dfx, 3dfxgamers.com is no longer available and neither is the original thread.

7. What's the difference between using the overclock tool and using an overclocked BIOS?

"For those who say why use an O/c'd Bios when you can O/c with the 3dfx tools or other util., The answer is simple. When you O/c through the bios the card is always running at the set rate from boot up! This means even when in DOS the card is running at the set speed, Whereas using 3dfx tools or a util the card doesn't get O/c'd until windows is already initalized, and the util. takes up precious processing power!" - Siris

8. Why should I flash my BIOS ?
As with updating anything from the previous versions, such as updating a driver from an older one, sometimes the improvements aren't apparent.

These can range from optimising current routines to perform tasks, to supporting new features and even to making the card run stable at certain functions.

Where as the features aren't as clear cut with bios updates as they are with driver updates, this is only because 3dfx provided no support FOR updating the bios, but they were aware that people did.

If you looked at the various models brought out, with the various bios revisions on them, some you may not notice any difference at all, however you may notice certain hardware differences, such as different makes of memory, different types of memory, etc. And with the different types, such as the introduction of sdram, then obviously with the introduction of something new they'd refine the process which it's being used, and that's why there's different versions and it'd be worth updating the bios with the latest revision.

There's a risk when doing anything, however, when flashing bios's you'd have to try rather hard to mess it up. Common scenarios, if it happens, is the following:-

1) Sudden Power Surge
2) Damaged EPROM chip
3) Restarting the PC while flashing
4) Switching off the PC while flashing
5) Flashing with the wrong bios file

So the choice of actually flashing your bios is entirely up to you, no-one can force you to.

9. How Do I Know Which BIOS To Flash My Card With?
This is all dependant on what type of RAM your Voodoo has, and whether it's AGP or PCI.

The RAM types are defined by SD or SG, SD being SDRAM and SG being SGRAM, this is identifiable by looking at the board, or checking the 3dfx Tools, or, when the system starts up and your card information appears, check to see if it's SD or SG. You can also tell, in most cases on the 3dfx boards, by looking at it, you can check it against the Documentations section of this site.

You'll know if it's AGP or PCI because it should say it on the box in nice big letters, also the connection on the card differs.

So say you have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI with a BIOS revision of 1.00.01-SG and you wanted the latest BIOS, you'd notice it says SG, so it's SGRAM, and you know it's pci, so you'd go for the Voodoo 3 2000 PCI 2.15.06-SG BIOS version. Some people have found that whether you flash with a PCI or AGP bios that it still works, all depends on the system and the card

Last Updated By: StANTo

On: 21st April 2001