Artex wrote on 2022-05-09, 02:34:
Appreciate your words TrashPanda.
Like you, I'm clearly over the moon for anything 3Dfx-related and have amassed quite a collection of boxed and bare cards, lots of 3Dfx shwag and the mighty V5-6000. My first 3Dfx card - the Orchid Righteous 3D with those magical clicky relays - forever changed me during my techie 'formative years' and the nostalgia has never stopped. To answer your question, it's a beast of a card when (8x) AA is applied and those extra chips are put to use. So yeah, definitely a special place in my heart for this lovely card and storied company. But then again, you look at the Quantum3D Mercury Brick (also in my collection) with 4 x 200 SBis connected up and the Antialiasing is pure madness.
Quantum was right into 3DFX tech fuckery and made some mind bending bits of hardware that look impossible and 3DFX AA was really quite good, its a shame that they died before Rampage could make it to the market it was looking to be quite the little beast. That V6000 sounds like a fun card to play with, my v5500 should arrive here shortly so Ill be spending a lot of time with it seeing what its capable of and how it matches up against some of the ATI/nVidia GPUs I have.
Have seen a few mercury modules show up on eBay and they sell for crazy amounts, far beyond what my budget allows but if I ever get the chance to grab one you can bet I will.
Right now though I'm looking at a PCI Permedia 2 card, its actually the first time I have seen a P2 in the PCI format, still deciding if its worth grabbing for my Tomato rig. (Collecting odd PCI GPUs is starting to become another vice)