Uhoh, it looks like just about all those V5 benchmarks that have been coming out on the net might have been wrong. According to this post on 3dfxgamers and this post on AnandTech (and his messageboard)there was a problem with the V5 driver installs that was hurting performance by as much as 100%! (According to AnandTech) How in the holy hell did people miss this? How did 3dfx not notice? Here is one of the many people who have tried the new install: (Thanks FatalSync)

Prior to this, I was getting 44.4 fps on Q3 timedemo1, 1280 resolution, 32 bit color and textures, all details set to max, FSAA off. After, I am getting 60.8fps. I'm shellshocked, to say the least. I ran the benchmarks many, many times. Keep in mind that AnandTech benched the Creative Labs GTS (overclocked) at 54.4fps in Q3, same settings.

Apparently the regular install is just putting in a generic Voodoo driver instead of the V5 specific driver. I'll give this a shot over the weekend guys, right now there isnt much reason to consider a V5-5500 aside from FSAA capabilities, this might change things. Although I have my doubts. :)

7pm update: Ok it looks like this is indeed a real issue, but it only impacts some installs. I'll find out if this had any impact on the Shack benchmarks over the weekend and will update them if necessary.