When I bought this Voodoo4 4500 32MB graphics card in the second-hand market in April 2007, no matter what software was used to detect it, it was 64MB, although the above 4 graphics memory particles, a single one was 8MB, a total of 32MB (video memory number: HY57V653220B). And this card is tested with 3Dmark2001 and other software, and the test value is a little higher than that of the Voodoo4 4500 graphics card of the same model. Finally, someone found that the R536 of this card was artificially soldered away, and they tried to remove the R536 component from the Voodoo4 4500 graphics card of the same model, and they all showed such characteristics. This may be the Voodoo4 4500 easter egg left by 3DFX.
On June 22, 2000, the Voodoo 5500 graphics card shipped. Performance is comparable to Geforce2 GTS.
On August 10, 2000, the Mac 5500 PCI graphics card was released.
Technical specification of Voodoo5(VSA-100x2):
Video memory capacity:32/64MB
Bus type:SDRAM/SGRAM
Bus interface: PCI/AGP 2x/4x
Core clock：166 MHz
Memory clock：166 MHz
Core config: (2TMU/2ROP)x2
Pixels/s:667M
Textels/s:667M
RAMDAC:300-350 MHz
Maximum resolution:2048x1536
Fab (nm)：250 nm
3.1 3dfx
3.1.1 Voodoo5 Evaluation Board
3.1.1.1 PCB#210-0392-001
Voodoo5 Evaluation Board, dual VGA output.
3.1.1.1.1 Rev A0
On Comdex '99, the Voodoo5 5500 AGP graphics card official announcement picture is Rev A0, which is a Voodoo5 chip evaluation board. The earliest PCB Date of Rev A0 has 9945weeks.
Voodoo5 chip evaluation board
On June 22, 2000, the Voodoo5 5500 graphics card shipped. This is the form factor of the retail Voodoo5 5500 AGP graphics card with only one VGA output.
3.1.2.1 Engineering sample
Voodoo5 5500 AGP graphics card, Rev A0, PCB Date 0015weeks.
Regarding the retail date of Voodoo5 5500 AGP graphics card, there are many online sayings "June 22, 2000", www.thedodgegarage.com said: "May 5, 2000- Voodoo 5500 cards start shipping but are recalled on the 25th for possible power supply problems .June 9, 2000- Voodoo 5500 cards ship again." I agree with the "recalled" point of view. It is a fact that the Voodoo5 5500 AGP graphics card yield is not high. In 2002, there were rumors that after nvidia acquired 3Dfx, a batch of Voodoo5 5500 graphics card semi-finished products flowed into China. This batch of cards should be defective. The baffle of the Voodoo5 5500 AGP graphics card I purchased was added by the merchant, and the graphics card was unstable.
Voodoo 5500 AGP
AAlchemy 8264 graphics card is two AAlchemy 8164 graphics card SLI connection, a total of 16 VSA-100 chips, the power consumption is amazing, need POWER board power supply. As for the graphics card with 32 VSA-100 chips, it may just be a legend.
At Comdex '99 on November 15, 1999, 3dfx Interactive announced that it would launch the Voodoo5 6000 graphics card based on the VSA-100 graphics chip. At Comdex'2000 a year later, 3dfx announced that it would stop making the Voodoo5 6000 graphics card. The Voodoo5 6000 graphics card has inherited a high reputation due to the cool design of the 4 cores, unreleased products and the myth that 3Dfx created the market share of 3D graphics cards in that year. In October 2001, the Voodoo5 6000 graphics card was auctioned on eBay for the first time and sold for a high price of $2,025, thus officially announcing the birth of the graphics card collection. There are less than 100 Voodoo5 6000 graphics cards in existence, and they have become the leader of graphics card collections and even computer board collections.
Technical specification of Voodoo5 6000(VSA-100x4):
Video memory capacity:128MB
Bus type:SDRAM
Bus interface: AGP 2x
Core clock：166 MHz
Memory clock：166 MHz
Core config: (2TMU/2ROP)x4
Pixels/s:1333M
Textels/s:1333M
RAMDAC:300-350 MHz
Maximum resolution:2048x1536
Fab (nm)：250 nm
4.1 DEMO Board
At Comdex '99, the Voodoo5 6000 graphics card shown by 3dfx was actually equipped with a Voodoo3 3500 chip. This is the rarest Voodoo graphics card, only 2 are rumored to be developed and only 1 is collected. About 1,000 of the other 6 Voodoo5 6000 graphics cards were developed, and less than 100 were collected.
Voodoo5 6000 DEMO Board official announcement picture
This verision used an Intel PCI bridge chip, was equipped with 128 MB of 5.4ns SDRAM and used a proprietary external 3dfx power supply.
The picture below is the official announcement of Voodoo5 6000 Early Evaluation Board, PCBPCB#210-0391-001-A1, date 1500 Weeks (Rev A1), and earlier PCB#210-0391-001-A0, 0700 Weeks (Rev A0 ) Voodoo5 6000 graphics card.
Voodoo5 6000 Early Evaluation Board official announcement picture
This version uses HiNT bridge chip. These cards were able to be powered by either the internal system PSU or by a proprietary 3dfx external power supply. The clock speed generally either 166 or 183 MHz.
This 3700 version Voodoo5 6000 graphics card (PCB date is 3700weeks (Rev A), PCB#210-0391-001-A) has the most collections, there are about 60, and most of them can work normally. Its performance is comparable to the Geforce2 Ultra graphics card. The other Voodoo5 6000 graphics cards have only a few collections per version.In addition, there are three types of Voodoo5 6000 Later Evaluation boards: PCB#210-0391-001-A2, 2600 Weeks (Rev A2), PCB#210-0391-001-A3,3400 Weeks (Rev A3) and PCB#210-0391-001-A, 3900 Weeks (Rev A).
Last edited by yjfy on 2022-11-16, 05:54. Edited 1 time in total.
Daytona (VSA-101) is more like a VSA-100 chip develop with a newer process, cooler operation, less heat generation, and no need for a heat sink. Claimed DDR support does not improve performance.The Daytona chip graphics card was originally scheduled to retail in January 2001, but was aborted due to Nvidia's acquisition.
Technical specification of Daytona(VSA-101):
Video memory capacity:16/32MB
Bus type:SDRAM/DDR-SGRAM
Bus interface: PCI/AGP 4x
Core clock:143/166 MHz
Memory clock:143/166 MHz
Core config: 2TMU/2ROP
Pixels/s:333M
Textels/s:333M
Fab (nm)：180 nm
5.1 Voodoo 4-2 4000
AGP,16MB SDRAM,Core clock:166 MHz.
PCB#210-0418-001
PCB date 4100 Weeks
Among the Daytona chip graphics cards, only a very small amount of this type of graphics card is sold for IBM servers. The Voodoo 4-2 4200 pictured was an engineering sample and was sold because it was fully functional.
Earlier PCB#210-0419-001, PCB date 3500 Weeks, not sold.
After 3DFX was founded in March 1994, it began to develop hardware and chips for the gaming market such as arcade machines. On November 6, 1995, 3Dfx announced Voodoo Graphics, a 3D graphics accelerator designed for 3D entertainment applications on arcade and home computers. and achieved great success.
In 1997, the Sega Dreamcast game console solicited two competing designs: a unit code-named "Blackbelt", a system designed in the United States using 3dfx technology, and "Katana", developed in Japan using NEC and VideoLogic technology.
on July 22, 1997, 3DFX Voodoo2 competes with PowerVR Series2 Sega Dreamcast game console graphics processor fails,3Dfx wasted over a year of precious time. Although Voodoo2 later achieved great success in the PC market, 3Dfx is still very concerned about the game console market that has not yet made a breakthrough, and plans to use new technologies to improve the performance of 3D chips and crush competitors.
In 1998, 3dfx started the Rampage project. The Rampage development project is a new technology for the new graphics card, which is expected to be several years ahead of the competition once it debuts. The research and development direction of the Rampage project tends to use 3D auxiliary chips to work with new 3D chips, so that 3D performance can be greatly improved.
In February 1999, the Rampage project carrying the 3dfx game console dream was first verified on the Voodoo3 chip graphics card. On March 10, 2000, Bill Gates officially announced the Xbox plan at GDC2000. 3dfx, believing rumors that the Xbox will use Gigapixel graphics technology, faced the poor progress of the Rampage project and announced its plan to acquire GigaPixel on March 28.Unexpectedly, Nvidia, the new king of 3D graphics cards following Microsoft's technical route, won the Xbox contract, and 3dfx's competitive game console graphics processor failed again. 3dfx has spent too much energy and money because of the game console dream, and it has become the main factor that causes 3dfx to crash.
In November 2000, the Rampage project announced its initial success. This so-called Rampage chip integrates two VSA-100 cores on one chip, and its performance is weaker than the Voodoo5 5500 graphics card with two VSA-100 cores.
Technical specification of Rampage:
Video memory capacity:64MB
Bus type: DDR-SGRAM
Bus interface: AGP 4x
Core clock:200 MHz
Memory clock:400 MHz
Core config:4TMU/4ROP
Pixels/s:800M
Textels/s:800M
Fab (nm)：180 nm
6.1 Voodoo3 T&L
Display chip is Voodoo3, T&l chip is Mitsubishi M64592, 16Mb SGRAM 6ns Memory, PCB Date 1299weeks, PCB#600-0077-01.
Voodoo3 T&L
The Rampage project later plans to develop a SPECTER 1000 graphics card equipped with a Rampage chip, and a SPECTER 2000/SPECTER3000 graphics card equipped with 1 or 2 Rampage chips supplemented by a SAGE hardware T&L chip. The flagship Specter 3000 will have a bandwidth of 10.2 GB/S and a fill rate of 1600-2000Mpixels/S.
PCB#210-0434-001-A1，PCB DATE 0047weeks。
The performance of the SPECTER 1000 graphics card developed in November 2000 was only comparable to the Geforce 256 graphics card that integrated hardware T&L into the graphics core in August 1999. At this time, the GeForce2 Ultra graphics card with the same performance as the SPECTER3000 graphics card has been launched. Is it necessary to continue the development of SPECTER 2000/SPECTER3000 graphics cards? Rampage does not have much innovation in technology, and it has to rely on additional chips to improve performance, and the development cycle is too long, and it will eventually die, which directly causes 3DFX to completely lose its fighting spirit.3dfx sold most of its assets to Nvidia on December 15, 2000, and 3dfx has since become history.
.End.
Last edited by yjfy on 2022-11-16, 06:16. Edited 3 times in total.
Many many thanks for this great summary!
Back in the day there was a big broohaha about the Vodoo3 only being able to do 16-bit natively and the Nvidia could do 32-bit.
In the beginning it wasn't a big deal until games started coming out where there was a visible difference between 16 and 32 bit.
There were other features started a kind of VHS/Betamax or HD-DVD/Blu-Ray type war. Too many to name.
When I was beta testing for them I was given some Voodoo3s and "VoodooTV FM" cards to test and we tried and tried to get more out of them with drivers but the architecture just wasn't there.
I enjoyed it while it lasted.... I sold all the hardware though as I "needed the money" so don't ask!
This is the best reading of 3dfx cards, so now we can understand well what happened with them. It is also new to me, that even the double chip Rampage could not compete with Geforce 3 Series, because would be weaker and would arrive later. I just don’t understand how Nvidia could bring out so frequently new generations, with so good performance? Didn’t have 3dfx more money that time for development?
My high end of '96 gaming machine;
Intel PR440FX - Pentium Pro 200MHz 512K, Matrox Millenium I 4MB, Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo II 12MB SLI, 128MB EDO RAM, Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, 4x Creative CD reader, Windows 95...
One of my favorite facts about Nvidia release cycle speed. At the peak of nvidia 3dfx war new chips were coming out every 6-9 months:
Riva 128 (April 1997) to TNT (June 15, 1998) took 14 months
TNT2 (March 15, 1999) 8 month
GF256 (October 11, 1999) 7 months
GF2 (April 26, 2000) 6 months
3dfx dies here
GF3 (February 27, 2001) 9 months
GF4 (February 6, 2002) 12 months
FX (March 2003) 13 months
Nvidia was working on two GPUs in parallel, one to be released next cycle and another more ambitious one. 3dfx was busy trying to reuse its legacy Voodoo1 tech and not really looking into the future, it got so bad 3dfx didnt know how to implement T&L in house and bought another company for that.
Nvidia had an army of hardware engineers always working on 2 future products in parallel, 3dfx had few people in a room.
