The format of that BIOS message is very similar to that of the real Voodoo3 shown here, right down to the same version number.

The differences are the obvious Nvidia references, different copyright years, the "Elpin" string being corrupt, and, seemingly, the "." at the end of "3dfx Interactive, Inc." in the real V3's BIOS being present at the same position.

Wonder if it's a real V3 with the BIOS modified to sell as a GF2 MX200? No idea why someone would do that, though, and of course it may just be a (poorly) 'shopped screencap...

Item location: 南昌, China

Everything on ebay from china is crap. I wouldn't even waste $1 on that.

Since when did any Voodoo3 have a universally keyed AGP connector? This is what the card physically says it is, a Gf2MX.

Occam's razor is simple: at no time would a V3 have been cheaper/easier to get hold of than a low-end Gf2MX200. So there is no reason for the card to exist as seller claims.

luckybob wrote:

Item location: 南昌, China

Everything on ebay from china is crap. I wouldn't even waste $1 on that.

Ah the mighty Woodoo 3 AGPx with 256GB of Octane DDR7 memory. I likey.

I talked to that guy and he sent me the GPU photo. He claimed that that markings are fake, but I see that circle that is nvidia prop, and hope everyone interested wouldn't bite this snatch. And memory chips are 7ns (133mhz).
One more thing. $120 for “rebaged” voodoo3 card is too much even if it's not a fake (but it is).
so keep your eyes clean when you see the offers like this.

I know the story about those cards. Back in 2012 a big dutch 3dfx collector did an interview on a local hardware website (tweakers.net). Link to actual video is here: https://tweakers.net/video/5965/gathering-of- … deokaarten.html

He was/is? also a member here by the name of Nitrox Infinity. He had over 200 3dfx cards and over 140 were complete in original boxes! He bought them from all over the world, not that many people have bigger collections. (he sold most of them off a couple of years later).

In this video he talks about a fake voodoo3 from china that was rebranded to geforce2mx in the bios and also that even some of them had fake Nvidia geforce2mx brandings on the gpu itself and ''3dfx'' was taken off. At 3.44 minutes in the video he shows the card and it seems to be exactly the same as the one on ebay (minus the sticker ''vga'' on the bios chip).

So I believe the story is not fake and the card is indeed a very rare rebranded voodoo3!

Very cool story if true!

Comparing gpu shapes on google the shape is also different to the geforce2 mx gpu. It looks like a geforce2GTS/PRO/Ultra gpu but nothing like the pictures I find from the Geforce2 MX200.

The Geforce2 GTS etc. gpu's do look a lot like the ones from 3dfx v3 but the mx ones are a different shape.

dionb wrote:

Since when did any Voodoo3 have a universally keyed AGP connector? This is what the card physically says it is, a Gf2MX.

Occam's razor is simple: at no time would a V3 have been cheaper/easier to get hold of than a low-end Gf2MX200. So there is no reason for the card to exist as seller claims.

Most pcb's used that agp form factor so probably cheaper to get at that time? Also I really can imagine some companies dumping v3 chips cheap as the company was gone and cards would be much harder to sell? V4 was there, v5 was there, 3dfx was gone and Nvidia was on top of sales with their GTS and MX series. I would dump them if i had those v3 chips at that time!

That does look like a Voodoo 3 chip to me. The Geforce markings on the chip are rotated, seems weird. It also makes sense to try to sell it as a Geforce 2 MX since it was a much faster card. And if they actually made such a card, it would be on a universal agp pcb, since those were the norm in 2001 (when the Geforce 2 MX came out).

Also that ''circular'' effect of the print seems off: when you find a ''circled print'' from Nvidia every single letter and digit is within the circle an never sticking out of it. At least, what I can find online from pictures. That circle also seems present on Geforce2 gts and higher only, not on MX and it looks different.

You guys do realize that the GPU photo is not from the card being auctioned? Green PCB vs black PCB...

No, but it looks like the exact same PCB. You might not want to try to remove the glued on heatsink on a card you are trying to sell.

Seems the RAM are the same found on many Voodoo 3 2000s.

Ofc at 120$ I wouldn't buy it no matter what.

Cbb wrote:

I talked to that guy and he sent me the GPU photo. He claimed that that markings are fake, but I see that circle that is nvidia prop, and hope everyone interested wouldn't bite this snatch. And memory chips are 7ns (133mhz).
One more thing. $120 for “rebaged” voodoo3 card is too much even if it's not a fake (but it is).
so keep your eyes clean when you see the offers like this.

Not the same PCB as the sale as has already been mentioned.

And if you look up the datasheet for the RAM chips, they are actually rated for 143Mhz
http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheet/mic … T48LC1M16A1.pdf

And, according the the capacity of the RAM chips, the BIOS was also hacked to change 16MB to 32MB.

So, I say it is really a rare Chinese fake GF2MX 200 32MB that is really a Voodoo 3 2000 16MB.

Really interesting card for a collector, but really just a bog standard V3-2000 for everybody else except for the universal AGP notch.