(watching with interest)

Should work just fine. There's literally zero difference between 8mb and 12mb versions.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Should work just fine. There's literally zero difference between 8mb and 12mb versions.

No, *literally* there is 4MiB difference between the two different versions. 😉

Upgrading Ram on voodoo2?

Thank you. I did see that thread but it didn’t really get anywhere. Considering I’ve found a place that will do all the chips for just over £10, I figure it’s worth a go.

RichB93 wrote:

Thank you. I did see that thread but it didn’t really get anywhere. Considering I’ve found a place that will do all the chips for just over £10, I figure it’s worth a go.

Yup, it just stops.

If you go ahead please please please update this one with any progress, I am very much interested in getting this done myself. I have my old diamond monster 2 8meg, I couldn't afford the 12meg at the time but it was the one I wanted.

Well I've ordered the parts, will have to wait a few weeks for the chips to arrive from China but fingers crossed it works! I can't see any reason why it shouldn't because I've compared images of my 8MB card to the 12MB model and everything is literally identical, save for the physical RAM chips being missing. I was surprised that even the caps that support the RAM chips are still soldered in place on the 8MB models. So with any luck, once the new chips are fitted it should work! Just hope the chips I've ordered are genuine and up to the task!

Fingers crossed!! if it works you could offer it as a service, I know of at least one person that would take you up on it 😉

RichB93 wrote:

Well I've ordered the parts, will have to wait a few weeks for the chips to arrive from China but fingers crossed it works! I can't see any reason why it shouldn't because I've compared images of my 8MB card to the 12MB model and everything is literally identical, save for the physical RAM chips being missing. I was surprised that even the caps that support the RAM chips are still soldered in place on the 8MB models. So with any luck, once the new chips are fitted it should work! Just hope the chips I've ordered are genuine and up to the task!

It was probably cheaper for the machine to populate the PCB with ALL the passive components, than to steer out the non 12MiB versions, and then have another machine, or line of machines solder in the active components / RAM ICs.

root42 wrote:

RichB93 wrote:

Well I've ordered the parts, will have to wait a few weeks for the chips to arrive from China but fingers crossed it works! I can't see any reason why it shouldn't because I've compared images of my 8MB card to the 12MB model and everything is literally identical, save for the physical RAM chips being missing. I was surprised that even the caps that support the RAM chips are still soldered in place on the 8MB models. So with any luck, once the new chips are fitted it should work! Just hope the chips I've ordered are genuine and up to the task!

It was probably cheaper for the machine to populate the PCB with ALL the passive components, than to steer out the non 12MiB versions, and then have another machine, or line of machines solder in the active components / RAM ICs.

That's a fair assumption. I'm excited! Have a long time to wait for the chips to arrive from China, but I will keep everyone updated. Faster chips aren't massively expensive either, so in theory you could 'hot rod' a card with 125MHz RAM and really let rip. I'm just hoping this works; I'll be chuffed to bits!

Cant solder to save my life but plenty can and I like the idea of 12MB SLI to the masses!

I can’t either but my brother can - if you look at a hot air reflow station, it actually looks relatively straightforward.

Good luck, man. Would've assumed they configure the amount of memory via a resistor or something, but they could just detect the chips. Will be interesting to get the results.

Looks pretty promising based on that other thread.

It looks promising! I found some hi res shots of the 12MB version of my card and besides the extra RAM, everything else looks exactly the same. Same resistor locations, power caps for the extra RAM spaces already exist, so should just be the case of adding the extra RAM chips.

If this is successful, I’ll add some heatsinks and bring them up to the full 100MHz the RAM is rated for 😎

I’m stupidly excited; now I just have to wait!!

My 2x STB Voodoo2 cards are 12MB and only use the front face of the card. Looks like the texture memory used 1MB chips instead of 512KB chips. I wonder what would happen if you doubled THAT... a 20MB Voodoo2?

.....Nah...

FFXIhealer wrote:

My 2x STB Voodoo2 cards are 12MB and only use the front face of the card. Looks like the texture memory used 1MB chips instead of 512KB chips. I wonder what would happen if you doubled THAT... a 20MB Voodoo2?

.....Nah...

You may joke but, the Voodoo2 *does* support a 20MB configuration... 😲

• 2 or 4 MBytes of SGRAM* or SDRAM* frame buffer memory
• 2, 4, 8, or 16 MBytes of SGRAM* or SDRAM* texture memory

I've no idea for the driver support, but in theory it's totally doable.

Someone must do it. For science!

Upgrading is easy but keep in mind there might be some missing passives compared to the 12mb of the same pcb on some cards, you can upgrade without too much fuss to 20mb with the old piggyback method on the texture memory however the frame buffer is already maxed out at 4mb. Documentation from 3DFX does state the TMUs can handle up wot 16mb each but no one has tested that. Upgrading to 12mb is straight forward, just place then solder and if there are missing caps (blank pads) you might have to do a little extra work.

There is a guide somewhere online how to mod existing Voodoo 1 and Voodoo Rush cards to the maximum 8mb while for voodoo 2 such a guide might not exist. Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo 3 is often already at the maximum 16mb but all the VSA cards can be upgraded to 64mb per gpu so your bog standard V5 5500 can be upgraded to 128mb pretty easily and those coveted V5 6000s can be modded to have 256mb.

The RAM has arrived and I'm en-route to my brothers...

Watch this space!