I have this voodoo 3 3000 videocard and it looks slightly different from the original ones,also the sticker says made in china instead of made in mexico as the original,is this a real voodoo 3 or some chinese counterfeit?
It looks to be as the same STB reference design:
Although I'm not sure what's with the random tantalum.
Also the heatsink its glued to the chip it doesn't have those 2 bolts.
Never seen one with a china sticker before.
Were these made towards the end of 3dfx?
wrote:Also the heatsink its glued to the chip it doesn't have those 2 bolts.
Well a handful of 3dfx cards were made for the Asian market that weren't released here.
All voodoo3s have the heatsink glued on regardless if they have the through-pin heatsinks or not. The tantalum could be an aftermarket thing or an odd addition to the assembly process. I'm going to say aftermarket as that looks to be a through hole tantalum mounted on surface mount pads...
There are no differences with the PCB however.
So what most likely happened: it was released in Asia and someone decided to replace one of the capacitors.
There are a load of Voodoo 3s (made in mexico) with the same heatsink:
wrote:So what most likely happened: it was released in Asia and someone decided to replace one of the capacitors.
Nope, I bought two Voodoo3 3000 today, and one of them is exactly like that. With a tantalum and a "china" sticker on it. 😉
Acer Helios Neo 16 | i7-13700HX | 64G DDR5 | RTX 4070M | 32" AOC 75Hz 2K IPS + 17" DEC CRT 1024x768 @ 85Hz
Win11 + Virtualization => Emudeck @consoles | pcem @DOS~Win95 | Virtualbox @Win98SE & softGPU | VMware @2K&XP | ΕΧΟDΟS
My Voodoo3 3000 PCI that I got off the shelf in the US was thermal pasted too (the "glue" you are talking about) and didn't have any through holes for bolts, so not any cause for concern.
