Get the V3 anyway. I like to recommend a 2000 for $75 on the net. Armchair Aviator found a 3000 for $105 to my surprise.

I have a Celeron 366. It came with 64 MB of RAM and an ATI Rage Pro on the board. I put in a Voodoo3 2000 PCI and another 64 MB of system RAM and I've never looked back!

For about $200, I doubled my system memory and more than doubled my gaming power. The V3 runs Falcon in Glide or D3D. Same goes for EAW and F-15. The newer sims, like USAF and MiG Alley also run perfectly.

I'm a fan of the Celeron. Mine, while listed as a 366MHz chip and costing hundreds less than a PII, runs at nearly 386 MHz.

I have experimented so I'll pass on my observations. Hope it helps!

Some sims will not run at all, if your video card can't handle it. For example, I believe Jane's WWII Fighters calls for a card that supports Glide, D3D or Open GL. If you try to run this with built-in system graphics of most systems it will simply fail to run.

Some games will call for a 3D card with "at least" 4 MB of memory. If you try to run them with a video card that has 2MB, it will not run, or it will chug along like a slideshow.

On the other hand, some sims will run the same with an older video card or a new Voodoo3, until you jack up the RAM. Falcon 4.0 and Microsoft CFS come to mind. Both of them ran only slightly beter when I went from a crappy 2MB card to the Voodoo3, UNTIL I increased my RAM. It turns out, despite the specs on the boxes calling for 32 or 64 MB of RAM, both games can devour RAM in no time- the more you put in, the more they will eat up and take advantage of.

So, what's my advice? First, ask yourself what sims you have in mind. If you are itching to play a few titles which require 3dfx Glide to run (the box will say so), you're wasting your money to get the most powerful Direct3D card in the world (like the TNT2). Voodoo3 cards, made by 3dfx, support both Direct3D and Glide.

It's usually the odd game which demands more than 64 MB to run, although most will benefit from added memory later on.

Here's what I did: I got the Voodoo3 2000, PCI for about $120. I think it's cheaper now. Once that was installed, I was able to run a half-dozen sims which were out of my reach before. The only ones which still seemed sluggish after that were Falcon 4 and CFS, for the most part.

That's why I got more RAM a few weeks later. But I could have enjoyed a lot of games for a while with my original 64 MB. When I got it, 64 MB was $99, with a $20 rebate.

Good luck. read those game requirements on the boxes carefully and write down the specs you keep seeing on games you want. Then decide.

I forgot what the 810 was; think it has an Intel I740 graphics built in. Some boards had an extra 2 megs for frame buffer, some use main memory for buffer, sheesh. You're right, it can be disabled, and only a pci can be added, since there's no agp slot.