Hi, this is my first topic here. I just wanted to share this.

The story begins March 2018, when I bought an untested (you know what this means) Voodoo 3 2000 AGP from an eBay auction for about 35€. Turns out it's defective, showing obvious visual artefacts even in BIOS.

As I didn't have much clue at that point, the project laid dormant for 3 years. In the meantime I learned lots about soldering and repairing old hardware and got confident enough to make an attempt at repairing it. Checking the board thoroughly, co damaged components or traces could be found and based on the shape of the artefacts, I suspected defective memory. On AliExpress I managed to source 5ns TSOP memory with identical layout (I guess all TSOP memories with the same pin count have identical pin layout) and started by removing the original memory chips. With my hot air gun I moved some capacitors which I quickly fixed. Luckily, nothing got damaged in the process.

After installing the new 5ns ESMT memory (M12L16161A-5T), the card did not work and still showed artefacts! So I got back at it and checked all solder connections, fixing a couple bridges in the process.
Honestly, I don't remember whether I even tested the card again afterwards and the project fell to the side. Now, after 3 more years I decided to give it one more go and it promptly worked!

On my Athlon XP-M Abit KT7A System, it achieved 5731 points in 640x480x16 bit 3DMark2000. I really like the socket A platform for retro gaming with its ISA compatibility. I don't mind the VIA 686B south bridge bug as I use a Vortex2 instead of a Soundblaster. 512MBs of PC133 CL2 memory are probably the slowest part of the system. The CPU (Athlon XP-M 2400+ AXMD2400FJQ4C) is running really cool at 1.30V 1600MHz. It is super late, built in week 8 of 2005!
With the 5ns memory, I had hopes of improving the overclocking potential of this card. If I replace the memory anyway, might as well just upgrade it. Optimistically, I used the Voodoo Tweaker to set the speed to 166MHz (from stock 143MHz) and the system instantly froze. After a couple tries, it didn't even work at 155Mhz. So far, I only managed to successfully run 3DMark2000 at 150Mhz, which is just a very slight OC. Adding cooling fans might help, but this is still far less than I hoped for. But the most important thing: it works perfectly fine and stable.

This gives hope to another project of mine, a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI with similar artefacts. I already ordered new 6ns memory for it. But for now, my exams have priority (I am younger than every 3dfx card).