======================================================================= Voodoo2 Windows 2000 Beta Driver Kit ======================================================================= Voodoo2(tm) Driver kit: Beta 1.00.00 Voodoo2 Win2K 2D/3D Display Drivers: Beta 5.00.2029.0001 Copyright (2000 3dfx Interactive, Inc.) All Rights Reserved NOTE: Use of this software is subject to the terms in the 3dfx license agreement. 3dfx Interactive, Inc. Website: http://www.3dfx.com ======================================================================= What's in the distribution? ======================================================================= This distribution contains Voodoo2 beta drivers and control panel for Windows 2000. The DirectX portion of the drivers supports DirectX 7.0. NOTE: This beta driver does not include Glide or OpenGL support. ======================================================================= Installation ======================================================================= Requirements ------------ - Windows 2000 build 2000 or later. - PC with a Pentium II, Pentium Pro, Pentium or similar processor. - One free PCI slot. Installation ------------ NOTE : Windows 2000 does not support the passthrough feature of the Voodoo2. The card must be installed in the same way as you would install a secondary 2d/3d board in a multi-monitor setup. ** DO NOT ATTEMPT INSTALL THE CARD AS A MULTIMEDIA DEVICE. ** 1) Run the self-extracting executable. 2) Power off the system and insert the Voodoo2 card in a free PCI slot. 3) Power on the system. 4) Windows will report that it has detected new hardware. 5) The 'Found New Hardware Wizard' should now appear. 6) Click the Next Button. 7) Choose the second option to display the list of known drivers. 8) On the next page select 'Display adapters' as the type of hardware that you wish to install. 9) Click 'Have Disk' and enter the location where the driver files were extracted to in Step1. 10) When asked to choose a device select '3dfx Voodoo2'. 11) Windows will bring up a number of Dialog Boxes which will ask you to confirm that you want to install the driver. Answer yes to all of these. 12) Windows will now copy the drivers. 13) Bring up Display Properties->Settings and enable the Voodoo2 as part of your desktop. ======================================================================= Additional ======================================================================= Voodoo2 runs on Windows 2000 Professional as a secondary display adapter only and not as a multimedia device. Microsoft did not get "detached device" support into the kernel in time to get it fully tested prior to the final Windows 2000 Professional release. Detached device support is required to run Voodoo2 as a 3D only board. This means that Voodoo2 can only run attached to a multi-monitor desktop. 3dfx has developed a driver capable of this, but there are few caveats. 1) The SLI configuration is not supported. This limits the maximum 3D resolution to 800x600. The 1024x768x16 resolution is supported for the desktop only. The Voodoo2 driver will not accelerate any DirectX operations at the 1024x768 resolution. This is because there is not enough frame buffer memory on a single Voodoo2 to practically accelerate 3D applications at this resolution. 2) Voodoo2 is only supported in Multi-monitor mode (this requires users to have an extra monitor to run their Voodoo2 card). 3) Video pass-thru is not supported. Apparently, this is the primary reason for Microsoft deciding not to put this Voodoo2 driver on the Beta3 CDs. They concluded that many users would simply ignore the readme file (that explained the caveats) and try to install and use the Voodoo2 just like they did on W9x. 4) 2D corruption on desktop. This only happens with GDI calls and it is caused by the lack of byte enabled hardware on Voodoo2. 5) No support for Glide or OpenGL. Note: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO INSTALL THE WINDOWS NT 4.0 VOODOO2 GLIDE DRIVER. Why aren't Voodoo2 drivers included on the Windows 2000 Professional CD? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Windows 2000 Professional only includes support for Multimedia Display Devices. A Multimedia Display Device is so named because it has the ability to display both 2D and 3D graphics. By definition a Multimedia Display Device must: · Be capable of booting straight to DOS · Be capable of using the Primary Display Driver · Display VGA using Microsoft's standard VGA driver · Be PC98 Compliant · Be capable of passing Microsoft WHQL's DCT 200 test suite Since Voodoo2 has no inherent 2D functionality and doesn't meet all the criteria listed above (NOTE: it was never designed to meet these criteria), it would aptly be termed a "Secondary Device" or "detached device" as Microsoft calls it in Windows 2000 Professional. Microsoft was not able to complete their support for "Detached Devices" in time for public releases of Windows 2000 Professional. Since Voodoo2 needs "detached device" support to run as a 3D only board, it will not run in this fashion on Windows 2000 Professional. Additionally, for any driver to be included on the Windows 2000 Professional CD it must be fully tested and WHQL certified. Without support for "detached devices", there was no way for us to test and ultimately ship fully functional Voodoo2 drivers on the Windows 2000 Professional CD. What are the limitations of the special Voodoo2 drivers? --------------------------------------------------------- The Voodoo2 board will show up in the display applet's settings pane just like a mainstream 2d/3d board. Unlike mainstream 2d/3d boards, Voodoo2 does not have any VGA hardware, so it cannot be used as the only display adapter in a system. Other caveats of these drivers include: 1) The SLI configuration is not supported. Without Microsoft's "detached device" support, supporting SLI would not be practical except for developers because the OS will try to treat the two SLI boards as separate desktop displays instead of one logical device. This limits the maximum 3D resolution to 800x600. 2) Voodoo2 is only supported in Multi-monitor mode (NOTE: This requires users to have an extra monitor). 3) Video pass-thru is not supported. Most users familiar with Voodoo2 will try to get the video pass-thru feature to work. Apparently, this is the primary reason for Microsoft deciding not to put this Voodoo2 driver on the Beta3 CDs. They concluded that many people would simply ignore the readme file (that explained the caveats) and try to install and use the Voodoo2 just like they did on W9x. Many of the Microsoft driver testers stumbled on this one, even after they read the readme file. 4) 2D corruption on desktop. This only happens with GDI calls and it is caused by the lack of byte enabled hardware on Voodoo2. Since the final release of Windows 2000 will not support Voodoo2 as a desktop device, the GDI driver for Beta3 has only simple 2d acceleration with all other calls being handled by the DIB engine. When the DIB engine writes individual bytes to the Voodoo2 frame buffer, garbage will be written into the paired byte location. 5) No support for Glide or OpenGL. 6) For older DirectX based applications (DX5 and earlier), Microsoft has created a method to allow legacy Direct3d applications to use the Voodoo2 card as the default device (as was done on Windows 9x). just as was done on Windows 9x. This is done by setting the registry key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DirectDraw\EnumerateAttachedSecondaries=1. This registry key is set by default by the Voodoo2 driver installation file. Also, this registry key is not specific to Voodoo2, so if it is set DirectDraw will enumerate the first secondary device as the primary DirectX device even if that device is not a Voodoo2. In order to get the default DirectX device enumeration policy, either delete this registry key or set it to 0. What does the future hold? -------------------------- Currently, it does not look like we'll be able to provide a full-featured Windows 2000 Professional Voodoo2 to end users. Software Engineering has tried to work around the problems listed above, but without complete "detached device" support it will not be possible.