VOGONS


First post, by Stiletto

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Decided to publish the results of an old interview today:
http://mamedev.emulab.it/undumped/index.php?title=POD_Arcade

There was a throwaway line I hadn't quite noticed at first, I'll point it out for swaaye:

Ubisoft received two prototype 3Dfx cards during development (with a special version of the 3Dfx Glide SDK). These cards were each effectively two 4 MB Voodoo Graphics ("Voodoo 1") cards on one PCI card, giving a total of 8 MB of VRAM and two GPUs. We believe this might be a prototype of the Quantum3D Obsidian prior to their spinoff on March 31, 1997. Reportedly these cards were "made by Rendition" but that does not make sense because as far as we know Rendition only ever designed/made Vérité chips before eventually being acquired by Micron Technology. Regardless, in theory, only two prototype 3Dfx cards means that only two prototypes were ever made.

So said my interviewee in 2002. But I think it more likely it's a prototype of a Quantum3D Obsidian.

Looking for HW pics? Sorry! This stuff never made it out of Ubisoft AFAIK. I was never sent any.

Looking for SW? All that's out there is the Arcade track which has been modified for POD retail binaries.

Hopefully this is a good forum to mention this. Arcade forum is dead, and this is weird, collectible hardware. I thought maybe one of the 3dfx gurus might know something about this. All I know is it predates Quantum3D Quicksilver and "Heavy Metal" systems 😀

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 1 of 6, by sliderider

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I had read something previously about a dual Voodoo 1 card existing. Quantum3D had one, and that one is documented on Donovan's Dodge Garage, but I also remember reading about a company in the UK that built one for non-gaming applications. I can't remember where I saw that article now, probably should have bookmarked or saved a copy of the webpage to my hard drive in case it ever went away. I've tried to find that page since then, but have had no luck so far. Maybe someone else here knows the page I am talking about?

Reply 2 of 6, by nforce4max

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I think that the closest thing to this is in Donovan's hands but never know as they were other prototypes that never seen the light of day. Would have been a very epic card had it hit the market on time.

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 3 of 6, by NitroX infinity

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These cards were each effectively two 4 MB Voodoo Graphics ("Voodoo 1") cards on one PCI card, giving a total of 8 MB of VRAM and two GPUs.

Sounds like the Obsidian SB100 cards? Or am I missing something?
http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_obsidian.htm

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Reply 4 of 6, by Stiletto

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NitroX infinity wrote:

These cards were each effectively two 4 MB Voodoo Graphics ("Voodoo 1") cards on one PCI card, giving a total of 8 MB of VRAM and two GPUs.

Sounds like the Obsidian SB100 cards? Or am I missing something?
http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_obsidian.htm

Agreed, but according to this guy's memories, their prototype 3Dfx cards were "made by Rendition".

Which makes no sense.

AFAIK Quantum3D cards were not made by Rendition! 😀

Also, because he told me it was 2x 4 MB cards, I guess it's more like a Quantum3D Obsidian SB50-4400...
but that's only one GPU....

Also, if he was correct about when this took place, then this took place BEFORE Quantum3D existed/was spun off.

But memories can be misleading...

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 5 of 6, by Stiletto

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Here's the precise quote...

There were at least two 3dfx prototype cards at Ubi Soft that could run the special executatble made especially with a special SDK given by 3dfx... Well all of this seems very "special", but at that time, the 3dfx development team was completly associated with the POD project, the guys from 3dfx were incredible. As far as I know, there were about 10 of the prototypes graphic cards all over the world, and Ubisoft had 2... The prototype was a special Voodoo1 that could handle a direct link with another card of the same type, except the second card doesn't need to be plugged on a PCI slot, it was just fixed on the first one. So basically you had 8 Mb of textures at a time where by simply having a 3D card with 4 Mb was incredible : analogy with now (may 2002) would be having a GeForce 5 with 256 Mb or a Radeon 9500. It's not the same as having two voodoo in SLI, it was a prototype, made by Rendition.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto