While you can overclock the Voodoo 5 using the overclocking tab, I decided to do it with Powerstrip (available at the download page). The Voodoo 5 overclocking tab requires you to reboot the comp before the setting takes effect. Powerstrip lets you do it on the fly without a reboot.
The Voodoo 5 5500 will overclock up to 185Mhz before Quake 3 would start locking up. A nice 11% increase. At 185Mhz, the fill rate increases to 740Mpixel per second. Very close to a GeForce2 GTS. However, don't expect 60fps 1600x1200 Quake 3 performance out of it. This is because of the SDRAM used by the Voodoo 5 5500 simply can't feed the VSA-100 chips fast enough. If high resolution gaming is your thing, the Voodoo 5 5500 is not the best choice.
With a street price of $299, 3dfx has priced this card squarely to compete against nVidia's GeForce2. While it will never beat the GeForce2 in pure frames per second speed race, the Voodoo 5 5500 does have other things going for it. For one, it's prices $50 less than a 32 meg GeForce2 card. The FSAA is also much better executed in the Voodoo 5 than the GeForce2. There is also the added benefit that the Voodoo 5 5500 can run your old Glide only games. We all have a few of those hanging around, right?
Speaking of games, I was very disappointed with the software bundle, or lack there of. There are no games included with the Voodoo 5 5500. You just get a few utilities programs. 3dfx views the game bundle as just adding cost to the product because they feel the type of person who buys their products already have the latest games. A valid point.
3dfx has done a good job with the Voodoo 5 5500. It won't help them take back their 3D crown, but it did get them a lot closer than they were before.
The Goods
A Voodoo card with support for 32 bit color and large texture!
FSAA works really well with racing and flight sims
64 Megs of RAM
Works with all 3D games
The Bads
SDRAM can't feed the card fast enough
May not fit some cases
Rating: 8/10
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