Well I don't know anything about V cards specs....
All I know is that the first major one that I used, which was Creative's Voodoo2. Is a stand alone Card, that pluged in to a PCI slot; that would only activate when needed. You still used your original 2d Card to see normal screen things, such as Windows, and about 90% of the other software that ran on IBMs. Acutal 3d games that actually used the card were few and far between.
It was also noted that the 3d Voodoo Cards was a lot more blurry than the 2d card. This was noticed on games that gave you a choice of 2d or 3D acceleration. The menus's were usually a lot more blurrier in the 3d mode than in the 2d mode....but the frame rates were increased four fold on the 3d Acceleration mode.
Later on they combined the 2d and 3d cards together...the first (I think) was called the Voodoo Banshe. And from there on forward the 3d chip and the 2d chip were put onto the same card.....
Maybe now the same chip does both 3d and 2d, but I still find the same is true with my Geforce2 card (just not as bad)....things just look clearer in the 2d mode than the do in 3d mode and the 3d mode is a hell of a lot faster.
So....I guess you can say I got my experience through actual usage.