Voodoo3 2000 problems

[Jenni]

I bought a used Voodoo3 2000 from Giovanni. It works great, except that I'm having some problems with hi-res pics. For example, this pic: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html (should be the pic for Nov. 5th, Jupiter. Forgot to mention that it changes daily) looks crappy at 800x600, 32 bit. It has big bands of color rather than a smooth transition from 1 color to the next. If I click on the pic and display the bigger JPG, it doesn't have that problem. It looks great. Also, I have noticed this many other places, such as the MaximumPC PDA banner that is on the top of some of these pages. There are definite bands of color on the PDA itself, and in the shadow behind it. I have the latest drivers from 3dfx. I even tried a driver for my monitor, an IBM G50. Also, some of my pics look better at 16 bit than at 32 bit. I'm beginning to wonder if it is BIOS/MB related. I'm using an old Biostar MB with a pentium 200 (non-MMX) and 64 megs of RAM in SIMMs. This is a 1995 BIOS, and the only update is a 1997 one that mentions nothing about improved video performance. Any suggestions on what I could try to fix this?

[Edited by Jenni on 11-06-2000 at 01:05 AM]

[madthumbs]

V3 2k is only supposed to handle 32bit color on the desktop (if that). It has a 22bit color post dither. When set to 16bit color, it should look better than any other 16bit color. Aside from not doing transparencies, and particles well (in 3d), this effect is quite nice. For 2d pics, I would stick to the 16bit color setting, I doubt you will notice a difference in color quality.