VOGONS


First post, by TheeRaccoon

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Hey all! I recently acquired a Quantum3D Mercury brick from a recycle company and one of the 200SBi's that came with the pack is a very interesting one.
They all are the black PCB versions of the card but they have the heat sinks from the green PCB versions which in itself is very strange.. However one of these cards even has the faster 125MHz EDO memory too!!!! (The other cards have the standard 100MHz EDO which came standard on the earlier versions.)
It's literally the exact specs of a green PCB card but with the black PCB.. VERY weird.. I have searched for a month now almost and I haven't been able to find any information. I have contacted all of my fellow Quantum3D/3DFX hardware collectors and none of them have ever seen a 200SBi like this. These cards all have "546-0014-05" BIOS. Also a very rare trait.

I would guess these boards were produced RIGHT when they were making the switch to the green PCB versions and some of them just so happened to get both traits.

Anyways as of now this is the only 200SBi known in existence with this configuration. If anyone has any information on this card or has one themselves please post here!! I would really really appreciate it! (: Thanks!

I've also included pictures of the cards in the brick for your enjoyment (:

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Reply 1 of 19, by TheAbandonwareGuy

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Fascinating.

Likely a prototype if I had to make a blind guess.

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Reply 2 of 19, by meljor

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Stop acting like that is hardware.... to me, that is PURE ART!

Love it.

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
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Reply 3 of 19, by martin939

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Uhm...what does it do? Is it like a Quad-SLI setup of some sort with a PLX bridge?

Never mind, it's SLI + some other trickery 😀 I wonder if it works in a normal PC or only in the Hg rig?

Reply 7 of 19, by TheeRaccoon

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martin939 wrote:

Uhm...what does it do? Is it like a Quad-SLI setup of some sort with a PLX bridge?

Never mind, it's SLI + some other trickery 😀 I wonder if it works in a normal PC or only in the Hg rig?

This is essentially 8 way Voodoo 2 SLI. Each card has two Voodoo 2 chipsets.

There isn't any huge performance difference from standard Voodoo 2 SLI. However the Single card SLI solution IS faster than standard Voodoo 2 SLI though utilizing a single PCI lane. I've tested this theory with my Quantum3D Obsidian 2 X-24 (Basically the exact same thing as a 200SBi but a 200SBi has no daughter board and it's all on one PCB.) vs my two Creative Voodoo 2 cards in SLI with the same system. I had even downclocked the X-24 to the clock of the Creative cards to further prove the theory.

The other 3 cards are used for Full Screen Anti Aliasing as this was a big need for their original use in military training simulation.

Reply 9 of 19, by TheeRaccoon

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Unknown_K wrote:

Do you have the software to make all those cards work?

I first need to solder the cable that goes from the riser module.

I have tested these cards though. All work..

2 of them need very minor re-work. 125MHz card is in my main retro machine right now!

Reply 12 of 19, by Artex

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Now that is awesome. I'm a huge 3DFX collector myself and have never seen such a config on the SBi. Mine (and every one I've seen) has 100Mhz memory and 4 separate heatsinks instead of one that spans the length of the card. Very, very cool.

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Reply 14 of 19, by Artex

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dr.zeissler wrote:

Yep. Exactly how mine looks as well.

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Reply 15 of 19, by Captain NA

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No prototype or anything, they are rev 05 cards, only seen one other of those. Normally its rev 4 or 6.
But have never seen a Rev5 card with 125mhz memory before, thought it only where Rev6.
But maybe tgeir 100mhz stock ran out on the Rev5 right before producing the green rev6... Dono

Just fooling around.

Reply 16 of 19, by TheeRaccoon

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Captain NA wrote:

No prototype or anything, they are rev 05 cards, only seen one other of those. Normally its rev 4 or 6.
But have never seen a Rev5 card with 125mhz memory before, thought it only where Rev6.
But maybe tgeir 100mhz stock ran out on the Rev5 right before producing the green rev6... Dono

That's all I can think is possible. Crazy card..

Reply 17 of 19, by Radical Vision

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3Dfx is interesting, as the SLI voodoo 2 cards, or this type of brick, or the Voodoo 5 with x2 and x4 chips..
But in the end is really retarded and funny when you realise that 3Dfx was fighting with nVIDIA and GEforce 256 that have only one GPU with modded Avenger chips 2 and 4 of them, and still was behind them 🤣 that is called a retarded performance...
What was going to happen if nVIDIA did release only dual GEforce 256 instead of only one, or even 4, they was going to demolish even ATi...
Thing with 3Dfx was they did lagg behind all the competition, they did have old hardware, and instead of releasing the rampage chip and the Specter cards they did rebrand the Avenger and Voodoo 3, also the purchase of STB systems was even more retarded then rebranding Avenger chips into VSA and little reworking....

Still is interesting to see that type of stuff...

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Reply 18 of 19, by TheeRaccoon

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Radical Vision wrote:
3Dfx is interesting, as the SLI voodoo 2 cards, or this type of brick, or the Voodoo 5 with x2 and x4 chips.. But in the end is […]
Show full quote

3Dfx is interesting, as the SLI voodoo 2 cards, or this type of brick, or the Voodoo 5 with x2 and x4 chips..
But in the end is really retarded and funny when you realise that 3Dfx was fighting with nVIDIA and GEforce 256 that have only one GPU with modded Avenger chips 2 and 4 of them, and still was behind them 🤣 that is called a retarded performance...
What was going to happen if nVIDIA did release only dual GEforce 256 instead of only one, or even 4, they was going to demolish even ATi...
Thing with 3Dfx was they did lagg behind all the competition, they did have old hardware, and instead of releasing the rampage chip and the Specter cards they did rebrand the Avenger and Voodoo 3, also the purchase of STB systems was even more retarded then rebranding Avenger chips into VSA and little reworking....

Still is interesting to see that type of stuff...

Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 were the kings, there were some pretty cool Voodoo 3's but overall I was honestly never huge on anything after Voodoo 2. Unless it's the Quantum3D AAlchemy boards using the VSA-100 chips.

Reply 19 of 19, by subhuman@xgtx

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Radical Vision wrote:
3Dfx is interesting, as the SLI voodoo 2 cards, or this type of brick, or the Voodoo 5 with x2 and x4 chips.. But in the end is […]
Show full quote

3Dfx is interesting, as the SLI voodoo 2 cards, or this type of brick, or the Voodoo 5 with x2 and x4 chips..
But in the end is really retarded and funny when you realise that 3Dfx was fighting with nVIDIA and GEforce 256 that have only one GPU with modded Avenger chips 2 and 4 of them, and still was behind them 🤣 that is called a retarded performance...
What was going to happen if nVIDIA did release only dual GEforce 256 instead of only one, or even 4, they was going to demolish even ATi...
Thing with 3Dfx was they did lagg behind all the competition, they did have old hardware, and instead of releasing the rampage chip and the Specter cards they did rebrand the Avenger and Voodoo 3, also the purchase of STB systems was even more retarded then rebranding Avenger chips into VSA and little reworking....

Still is interesting to see that type of stuff...

This is a professional·level configuration intended for use with commercial flight simulators and other similar applications. Evans & Sutherland also released multi·gpu IG systems with Radeon-based cards(the SimFUSION 6xxx/7xxxx series) which contained 4 R300 chips (from the 9700) per card

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