First post, by yjfy
History of 3Dfx Graphics cards Vol. 2
yjfy
Related links:History of 3Dfx Graphics cards Vol. 1History of 3Dfx Graphics cards Vol. 1
1.Voodoo3
At COMDEX '98 on November 16, 1998, 3dfx announced Voodoo3.The Voodoo3 chip integrates 2D/3D and has a dual texture processing unit like Voodoo2.Voodoo3 will currently be identified as 2000 and 3000 models.Voodoo3 2000 will run at 125MHz clock frequency with 300MHz RAMDAC. Voodoo3 3000 will run at a clock frequency of 183MHz and has a RAMDAC of 350MHz.
Perhaps for confidentiality reasons, the video card of the Voodoo3 shown is actually a BANSHEE graphics card, just with a "Voodoo 3" sticker on the chip.
December 14, 1998- 3dfx announced it was going to acquire STB systems and start making their own voodoo3 graphic cards.
On February 12, 1999, 3dfx released Voodoo3 2000 and Voodoo3 3000, which were planned to be listed in April.
Voodoo 3 2000 featuring a speed of 143 MHz, and up to six million triangles and 286 megatexels per seconds at resolutions up to 2048x1536. It will be available in either PCI or AGP formats, and boasts a 300 MHz RAMDAC and 16 MB of SDRAM.
Voodoo 3 3000 runs at 166 MHz, and will feature 350 MHz RAMDAC and 16 MB of graphic memory. it will feature a TV/S-Video Out jack.
Also released the Voodoo3 3500,Voodoo 3 3500 runs at 183 MHz and is expected to deliver 8 million triangles and 366 megatexels per second at resolutions up to 2048x1536.it will feature 350 MHz RAMDAC, a TV/S-Video Out jack. But it will also support digital flat panel displays through 3Dfx's proprietary flat-panel drivers, LCDfx.
The Voodoo3 2000's had ram rated for 7ns, the 3000 for 6ns,3500 for 5.5ns.
Because 3Dfx no longer provides Voodoo3 chips to major manufacturers such as Diamond and Creative, 3dfx's former partners have defected to Nvidia and ATi. This serious decision-making mistake made 3Dfx lose the support of many manufacturers.
3Dfx only provided some manufacturers with Voodoo3 chips to make motherboards with integrated graphics cards, and later released some restrictions, and some non-3Dfx Voodoo3 graphics cards appeared.
The performance of the Voodoo3 graphics card is comparable to the TNT2 graphics card announced by Nvidia on March 15, 1999. TNT2's flagship TNT2 Ultra graphics card performance even beat the Voodoo3 3500 graphics card, which is the first time a Voodoo graphics card has been surpassed by Nvidia's Riva series of graphics cards.
Since 3DFX did not centrally destroy all VOODOO graphics card engineering samples, there are quite a few scattered in the hardware collection industry, which not only makes VOODOO graphics cards a popular graphics card collection, but also makes the history of 3DFX graphics cards very clear.
Technical specification of Voodoo3(Avenger):
Video memory capacity:8/16MB
Bus type:SDRAM/SGRAM
Bus interface: PCI/AGP 2x
Core clock:125/143/166/183 MHz
Memory clock:125/143/166/183 MHz
Core config:2TMU/1ROP
Triangle processing speed/s:6-8M
Pixels/s:125-200M
Textels/s:125-400M
RAMDAC:300-350 MHz
Maximum resolution:1920x1440
Fab (nm)：250 nm
1.1 3dfx
1.1.1 Chip Evaluation Board
1.1.1.1. Voodoo3 AGP
The Voodoo3 graphics card evaluation board is close to the board type of the Banshee graphics card. The Voodoo3 core is a dual texture processing unit, which is equivalent to adding a texture processing unit on the basis of the BANSHEE core.
PCB#600-0050-03，16MB SGRAM
Voodoo3 Chip Evaluation Board
In PCB#600-0050-01, the green PCB has the earliest development date, the PCB date is 4298weeks, and the yellow PCB development date is 4798weeks. There are also PCB#600-0050-04 and PCB#600-0050-05 board types.
1.1.1.2 Voodoo3 PCI
PCB#600-0053-01（ASSY 650-0053-01）
16MB SDRAM
Voodoo3 Chip Evaluation Board
(From thandor.net)
Also available for PCI interface are PCB#600-0051-01 (SGRAM), PCB#600-0075-01 board types, and PCB#600-0056-01 board type, this version has an external ramdac, PCB date 0299 weeks.