aaronkatrini wrote on 2020-05-16, 16:21:

In the photo @imi uploaded there is a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 PCI.
You can tell from the big "silver-colored" aluminium heatsink and the tiny small heatsink on that Transistor on top it is a V3 3000.
The V3 2000 has a smaller "black-colored" heatsink, and the PCI variant also has that tiny small heatsink on that Transistor.

You're absolutely right, however I'm 100% convinced when I made my comment there was a 2000 with the smaller black heatsink there because I remember seeing the RAM chips on the right first. The ones that are now partially covered by the heatsink.
I also seem to remember an 1.0 BIOS revision on the sticker.
I know it's possible to edit posts without the edit being noted underneath the post if you do it pretty fast, so...
Did you change the picture after you first posted it, imi? Or am I going insane? 😁

Edit: I also remember his post explicitly talking about his Voodoo3 2000 PCI. Please, help me out here, imi! 😁

aaronkatrini wrote on 2020-05-16, 16:21:

But I think the slow CPU might have been a bottleneck, unfortunately that is all I had.

It is for sure, difference is not huge but a bit bigger with a faster processor. Not that it mattered when the 3000 and the 3500 were sold new, most people would have noticed zero performance increase and a tv tuner

@doornkat
🤣, that is a great way to mess with people 😁

@imi
Yeah, I guess a pentium 3 1000mhz (or faster) would've been more suitable. I do have a V3 3000, custom modded with faster 5.5ns ram, with a simple bios flash it could overclock to 183mhz and it would run fine. But the card is too special for me, original black heatsink and the polymer caps on the right, which if one is not careful when removing the card, have been replaced with smd caps, it is a beauty to see and so, I'm afraid to try overclocking it. 😀

This felt like the right place to post about yet another odd Voodoo 3 3500 I've just come across. I had a 3500 in my "to be tested" box and just pulled it out to take a look at it. When I looked at the SDRAM chips I was surprised to see they were 6ns chips! Sure enough, 3dfx Tools shows the card is clocked at 166Mhz, rather than the standard 183Mhz of most other 3500 models. Otherwise, it looks identical to any other 3500.

This seems to be one of the oddball 166Mhz 3500 cards mentioned here about half way down the page. Has anyone ever come across one of these or heard anything about them, aside from this anecdote on that page?

I have not heard a mention, press release or rumor of this board and over 70 of them pop up on Ebay 5 years after 3dfx closes.

I can't seem to find any reference to these anywhere else online, in 3dfx collections or elsewhere. I'm assuming they were an attempt to sell a 3500 without having to source 183Mhz SDRAM... but I can't find any record of them being "sold".

EDIT: Found one person here that says they found one of these 12 years ago.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/d … -the-old-days-/

Tangentially related to this topic - a lot of people aren't aware that you can get a stock standard voodoo 3500 to work just fine with a VGA monitor without the octopus. The compaq voodoo 3500 cards are a kind of halo retro enthusiast product which drives up the price - a bit unnecessarily.

All you need is a cheap P&D to VGA connector and a pair of wire cutters. The pinout is the same on these adapter, it is just usually the bit of metal shielding around the pings that hugs the port isn't the right size. Make a cut in the bit of metal so that it gives a little or take it off and there you go. It also has the advantage of being really clean output compared to the octopus.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-01-19, 19:58:

Tangentially related to this topic - a lot of people aren't aware that you can get a stock standard voodoo 3500 to work just fine with a VGA monitor without the octopus. The compaq voodoo 3500 cards are a kind of halo retro enthusiast product which drives up the price - a bit unnecessarily.

All you need is a cheap P&D to VGA connector and a pair of wire cutters. The pinout is the same on these adapter, it is just usually the bit of metal shielding around the pings that hugs the port isn't the right size. Make a cut in the bit of metal so that it gives a little or take it off and there you go. It also has the advantage of being really clean output compared to the octopus.

I did this with a couple adapters. It's pretty fiddly and the results aren't always good.

There are some adapters out there that are natively wired correctly too, you just have to bend the metal connector a bit to fit. This makes a Voodoo 3 3500 a much more practical choice, and very fast for Glide games.

I think most of the value in these less common cards is simply in adding to a collection. With such a short (but fairly interesting) history, it wasn't too hard to get a fairly complete retail\oem 3dfx collection in years past, so finding the more "rare" cards became the interesting part. Having several really nice websites dedicated to 3dfx has helped this along. Sadly, all the gold scrapping done in recent years has made even the once-common cards quite hard to find, and the prices are high because there's also lot more demand from retro gamers and collectors that are late to the game.

Finding weird stuff is the main draw in this hobby, for me.

Sorry for the necro thread, however I have just obtained one of these cards. Its a Voodoo3 3500 TV with 6ns ram, and the 3DFX tool's says 166Mhz. It came from a Quantex Pentium III Slot 1 tower.

I had no idea this version existed and seems very rare.

Cheers.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2020-05-13, 23:54:

By the way, if anyone needs a copy of the BIOS file I can upload it at some point.

If you have saved the BIOS file for this video card, please post it.
If you still have this card, you can get the BIOS file using the 3dfx flash 2.17 flasher utility. This utility saves the BIOS file under the name save.rom, after which you need to press the "N" key to terminate this utility, abandoning the flashing process.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-02-27, 05:45:

Sorry for the necro thread, however I have just obtained one of these cards. Its a Voodoo3 3500 TV with 6ns ram, and the 3DFX tool's says 166Mhz. It came from a Quantex Pentium III Slot 1 tower.

I had no idea this version existed and seems very rare.

Cheers.

So I'm not crazy!

I have two V3500 TV here, one in good condition and working, and one damaged that has 2 missing capacitors on the edge of the board by the VRAM chips.

The first one keeps reporting 166MHz in HWiNFO so I thought there was a problem with that card, or maybe drivers, so I tried many official versions, along with 3rd party ones and it's all the same. I physically compared both cards and couldn't find anything different. I decided to give it a shot and try the card that has the missing capacitors and I'm surprised that it does boot up, displays and run in Windows without error (I didn't try any 3D with it). HWiNFO does show that one as 183Mhz, so I have one of each version.

I guess I need to get that one repaired since it's the optimal one!

Knaxia wrote on 2025-03-24, 23:07:

So I'm not crazy! […]
Show full quote

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-02-27, 05:45:

Sorry for the necro thread, however I have just obtained one of these cards. Its a Voodoo3 3500 TV with 6ns ram, and the 3DFX tool's says 166Mhz. It came from a Quantex Pentium III Slot 1 tower.

I had no idea this version existed and seems very rare.

Cheers.

So I'm not crazy!

I have two V3500 TV here, one in good condition and working, and one damaged that has 2 missing capacitors on the edge of the board by the VRAM chips.

The first one keeps reporting 166MHz in HWiNFO so I thought there was a problem with that card, or maybe drivers, so I tried many official versions, along with 3rd party ones and it's all the same. I physically compared both cards and couldn't find anything different. I decided to give it a shot and try the card that has the missing capacitors and I'm surprised that it does boot up, displays and run in Windows without error (I didn't try any 3D with it). HWiNFO does show that one as 183Mhz, so I have one of each version.

I guess I need to get that one repaired since it's the optimal one!

Does one of the two have 6ns Ram chips? if not, there is actually a problem with your drivers or your card.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-03-26, 21:52:

Knaxia wrote on 2025-03-24, 23:07:

So I'm not crazy! […]
Show full quote

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-02-27, 05:45:

Sorry for the necro thread, however I have just obtained one of these cards. Its a Voodoo3 3500 TV with 6ns ram, and the 3DFX tool's says 166Mhz. It came from a Quantex Pentium III Slot 1 tower.

I had no idea this version existed and seems very rare.

Cheers.

So I'm not crazy!

I have two V3500 TV here, one in good condition and working, and one damaged that has 2 missing capacitors on the edge of the board by the VRAM chips.

The first one keeps reporting 166MHz in HWiNFO so I thought there was a problem with that card, or maybe drivers, so I tried many official versions, along with 3rd party ones and it's all the same. I physically compared both cards and couldn't find anything different. I decided to give it a shot and try the card that has the missing capacitors and I'm surprised that it does boot up, displays and run in Windows without error (I didn't try any 3D with it). HWiNFO does show that one as 183Mhz, so I have one of each version.

I guess I need to get that one repaired since it's the optimal one!

Does one of the two have 6ns Ram chips? if not, there is actually a problem with your drivers or your card.

Here are the photos of both the cards RAM. The clean one is the one that runs at 166Mhz, the dirty one with the extra fan cables is the 183Mhz one.

The most dirty one had a spare fan added, and was in a not-so-clean environment when I salvaged it, had 2 missing capacitors near the RAM but somehow still works. I didn't really pay attention to that card since my other clean one was working fine. It's just not that I saw the speed difference.

Very strange! The first has 6nd ram chips and is indeed a 166mhz card ...

The second one is a bit weird to me as well. Normally the ram chips say 5.5ns (for 183mhz) but yours says 5... I don't know if those are 5ns chips (200mhz) or that maybe some brands just put the number 5 on 5.5ns chips.

Both rare anyway as 3500's normally have 5.5 chips.

Then, would it be worth to "scrap" one of my many V3 2000 or 3000 AGP (I have quite a few of them) by taking the 2 missing capacitors and put them on the 3500?

I also just looked up the Datasheet for that specific memory chip from Hynix , and apparently it would indeed be a 5NS (200Mhz) chip, because their 5.5NS would be indentified TC-55

https://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pd … 57V161610D.html

Part No. Clock Frequency
HY57V161610DTC-5 200MHz
HY57V161610DTC-55 183MHz
HY57V161610DTC-6 166MHz

(Sorry for double-post, can't edit previous post)

200mhz chips is very rare imho. I had al lot of v3's in my collection and have never seen one.

Nee caps would be much better for the whole card. They are getting very old so getting new ones is much better.

Knaxia wrote on 2025-04-24, 14:28:

Then, would it be worth to "scrap" one of my many V3 2000 or 3000 AGP (I have quite a few of them) by taking the 2 missing capacitors and put them on the 3500?

No, these caps are cheap and plentiful, so I wouldn't sacrifice a possibly functional V3 to replace caps on another. Just look for 10uf 16v SMD aluminum electrolytic caps.

Regarding the one that looks like it has some 5ns chips, that is really interesting! This well known 3dfx fan site (under the Voodoo 3 section) mentions a 200Mhz clocked card with 5ns memory being produced for Falcon Northwest computers back in the day, but those are extremely rare. I have had dozens of V3s go through my hands, including some oddball ones, like a 166Mhz 3500, a Compaq 3500 with a V3 3000-style silver heatsink + standard VGA out and probably the weirdest one was a 100% standard AGP V3 3000 except the heatsink was anodized black... and I've never seen a 200Mhz model.

Since yours is clocked at 183Mhz, it's possible that once the Falcon Northwest orders were completed they still had some remaining 5ns RAM chips and just used them up as needed, or they made too many cards to that spec and just flashed this one with a 183Mhz BIOS. Or, maybe in final testing the card was unstable at 200Mhz for some reason so it was sold as a standard 183Mhz card.

Could you double check to verify that all of the chips are indeed 5ns? If they are, I would try running it at 200Mhz for a while to see if it's stable. If it is, you've effectively got one of the rarest production V3 models out there... with the Quantum 3D Ventana taking the crown of rarest. 😁

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-04-25, 00:07:

No, these caps are cheap and plentiful, so I wouldn't sacrifice a possibly functional V3 to replace caps on another. Just look f […]
Show full quote

Knaxia wrote on 2025-04-24, 14:28:

Then, would it be worth to "scrap" one of my many V3 2000 or 3000 AGP (I have quite a few of them) by taking the 2 missing capacitors and put them on the 3500?

No, these caps are cheap and plentiful, so I wouldn't sacrifice a possibly functional V3 to replace caps on another. Just look for 10uf 16v SMD aluminum electrolytic caps.

Regarding the one that looks like it has some 5ns chips, that is really interesting! This well known 3dfx fan site (under the Voodoo 3 section) mentions a 200Mhz clocked card with 5ns memory being produced for Falcon Northwest computers back in the day, but those are extremely rare. I have had dozens of V3s go through my hands, including some oddball ones, like a 166Mhz 3500, a Compaq 3500 with a V3 3000-style silver heatsink + standard VGA out and probably the weirdest one was a 100% standard AGP V3 3000 except the heatsink was anodized black... and I've never seen a 200Mhz model.

Since yours is clocked at 183Mhz, it's possible that once the Falcon Northwest orders were completed they still had some remaining 5ns RAM chips and just used them up as needed, or they made too many cards to that spec and just flashed this one with a 183Mhz BIOS. Or, maybe in final testing the card was unstable at 200Mhz for some reason so it was sold as a standard 183Mhz card.

Could you double check to verify that all of the chips are indeed 5ns? If they are, I would try running it at 200Mhz for a while to see if it's stable. If it is, you've effectively got one of the rarest production V3 models out there... with the Quantum 3D Ventana taking the crown of rarest. 😁

They are all the same memory chips all around, yes. Here are some more photos. You can see the two missing C72 and C73 capacitors on the side. I also just noticed it's missing the L510 component in the back of the card, which seems to be one of those same "150K" chip next to it. How is the card still working is a mystery right now.

I cleaned the card a bit and removed the fan for better view, so here's a few additional photos. Sorry for the bad lighting, don't have the best setup right now.

Knaxia wrote on 2025-04-25, 00:35:

They are all the same memory chips all around, yes. Here are some more photos. You can see the two missing C72 and C73 capacitors on the side. I also just noticed it's missing the L510 component in the back of the card, which seems to be one of those same "150K" chip next to it. How is the card still working is a mystery right now.

I cleaned the card a bit and removed the fan for better view, so here's a few additional photos. Sorry for the bad lighting, don't have the best setup right now.

Man, that's too bad someone shoved a fan on it and boogered up the heatsink... though I guess if it protected the card from an early death it's not all bad.

I have some 3500s with those same "150K" components missing on the back. They are inductors. I found these for sale recently but I have no idea if they are actually the right thing and the shipping price is absurd for a few tiny components so I haven't purchased any yet.

If anyone knows of a good place to get these, I'd love to buy a pile of them.