Regarding memory speed: Voodoo1 (and Voodoo2) cards used EDO RAM, and I don't think there ever was 12ns EDO RAM.

This was already explained in this thread. The markings on the chip are a bit different and the real speed is 40ns not 12ns.

Never sell 3dfx hardware..... just become a hoarder, like the rest of us.

I have seen a couple of monster 3d cards go bad trough the years (screen corruption), so a backup card is a good thing. I personally like the clicking of the orchid cards.

I'm a Orchid fan myself.
I like the clicking but maybe due to nostalgia as that's what I originally had back in the 90's. Also the clicking can be used in solving issues like starting a game but only getting a black screen, if you never heard the clicks you know the voodoo card never initiated. When running multiple 3D cards you can identify right away what card is doing the rendering depending on weather or not you heard any clicks.

Here, a rare sighting of my Orchid Righteous 3D... Never leaves it's box usually because one day I'll meet someone crazy enough to actually want one. Piece of junk.

Which one to get rid of? Get rid of the Orchid, because mechanical relays inside a machine susceptible to RFI was never a good idea and they'll probably break long before the post-war technology on the other cards does as is the nature of mechanical parts.

It always amused me how 1. The card was apparently made in 1997, the ATI Rage was already out and that was better value; they had DVD decoders on-board too and didn't waste slots. 2. Orchid didn't even try to make the card look good, the two example images show the game in it's grainy glory and another with dead colors and horrible filtering applied. I'd get the same result if I cranked the brightness to a silly value and smeared Vaseline over my monitor - and I need my Vaseline for other things.

How the hell anybody ever thought the API would outlast Direct3D and more to the point, the already well established OpenGL, is questionable, I was a kid when these cards were around and already knew it was effectively DOA with Microsoft pushing their own API out and cheaper, simpler solutions which were more popular, those being bought by large OEMs was the final nail in my mind and it was only a matter of time.

HighTreason wrote:

Here, a rare sighting of my Orchid Righteous 3D... Never leaves it's box usually because one day I'll meet someone crazy enough to actually want one. Piece of junk.

Not sure why you think it's junk, mines almost 20 years old and still works and looks great. I have no interference problems. Are you using the original cable with yours?

As far as I know the Righteous 3D was the first Voodoo card to market back in 1996. Sure the ATI Rage was around but was not a better value in my opinion as a gamer. Sure it was cheaper but performance was far less in many games. In games like Quake, there was no contest.

API's? Funny thing is, ATI came out with their own API recently. It's called Mantle. My son is using it with Battlefield 4.
3dfx ran D3D too, but you would get a boost if you used their API.
I never found anything wrong 3dfx with that, and as much a I don't care for ATI, I see nothing wrong with Mantle.

I never had any serious problems, but then I use quality components. The only RFI noticeable is the audible "pop" from my amp when the relay flicks over... Still, mechanical parts and RFI that don't need to be there is a no-no in my book. The cable is original, but isn't the problem, it's not shielded anyway so I doubt it would make much difference. The image is as fine as it can be coming from a Voodoo 1 - they were simply blurry and overly bright... Usually with reduced frame rate.

I don't get the value thing at all. The Voodoo cost the same or often more than a Rage, especially with an updated Rage already in the works at the time (Rage II / Rage 3D) and you'd have to buy a proper graphics card to use the 3DFX anyway, plus a DVD Decoder if you wanted that as many of the cheaper 2D cards didn't do that yet. I might have wanted to use the two slots that would have wasted... With all the money a person would save by using a different card they could have gotten a better CPU and more RAM, the CPU especially had more impact on performance at that time and it's what everyone I knew did - I'm not saying the Rage was particularly good, I think both ATI and 3DFX were terrible at the time as the technology wasn't there yet, there was also that NV1 from nVidia, that thing sucked. I never met anyone that owned a 3DFX card - though I did know some bloke with a Kyro II a few years later... He was mental I think as this was around the time Radeon 7000's were in.

The Voodoo did do Direct3D on paper, but it would have scored higher with me if they'd just admitted it didn't really support it. It was slow, it looked just as bad as 3DFX mode because you still couldn't disable that awful filtering and that's assuming you could get it to run without severe glitches or crashing completely. Uninstalling the card again was a nightmare too. I think a testament to this is that clearly nobody bought these 3DFX boards, the company died, nobody used silly wiring (except crossfire, which is useless) or relays quite like that again and it was all swept under the industries carpet where it belongs. The card also never really gained any ground on the demoscene, which to me spells disaster as that's where most innovations came from. Instead the scene stayed with software until moving to Direct3D and OpenGL. Whilst this was going on I thing 3DFX were still making PCI cards with loads of chips on them for a market that had moved to AGP and single chip solutions some time before. The Banshee was a step in the right direction but they appear to have then learned nothing from it and repeated mistakes they'd been making since the start - as well as a few new ones, they also took far too long to move away from 16-Bit rendering; Dithering+Filtering is not a good look, it was like Vaseline and too much beer at the same time, made me feel sick...

Nobody gives a damn about ATI these days; ATI sucks ass now, nVidia currently make better cards.

This is just how it looks to me. I remember getting that Voodoo 1 and being really excited, I'd heard about them and despite the reputation they had with local enthusiasts for being garbage I'd discovered the internet by then and found another group of people saying they had been revolutionary and had unparalleled performance for the time... I was very disappointed when I installed it only to find that what local enthusiasts had told me for years was indeed true... It didn't get on well with my Matrox Productivia either. Just as well it was free I suppose, the guy in the local computer shop was dumping about a hundred of them that had never sold about 14 years back and my Dad saved it for me, wish he'd saved more of them, we could probably have sold them years later.

So many things wrong with this post.

AFAIK Voodoo1 came at a time they made sense. Being dedicated to 3d meant lower cost (and just about everyone and their mother had a 2d chip already), and having an specific API meant less overhead in a time where PCs were relatively weak and the API overhead had quite an impact. Also, Glide had the possibility of being used by DOS games, where you had no OpenGL or DirectX. Besides, DirectX was in its infancy, and OpenGL didn't have much of a foothold in gaming, and what it did have was usually covered by MiniGL libraries included with the latest version of the drivers, which implemented only what was necessary. Also, PCs from back in the day weren't powerful enough for rendering 32-bit 3D games at decent speeds and acceptable resolutions. In a nutshell, Voodoo1 worked because, giving the limitations of PCs back then, they delivered a nice level of performance and quality.

Mantle was just dumb IMHO. It looks like DirectX 12 will have comparable performance while supporting both NVidia, ATI/AMD and Intel graphics, rendering it redundant.

Re overbrightness - for some reason the default gamma on Voodoo reference drivers is > 1.0. Set it to 1.0 and things look much better.

@ HighTreason:
If you don't like the card, you could (should?) sell it, theres probably enough people out there wanting one 😀
It's not about wanting something of everything, people always prefer one thing over another and in the end it doesn't really matter why 😜

Edit: About the (un)reliability of mechanical switches, I agree with you btw

Hey Guys,

I m looking for a Diamond Monster with datum 1996. Any of you have seen one ever? It should exist, because Voodoo 1 was released in 1996 august. I thought revision B are 1996, but i also read there 1997...

Mine are revision B and E and both are from 1997.

I have a revision B dated 1996 on the board. The "B" looks like it was written in by hand with a ink pen. I have the retail box with all the original goodies inside. I can put a pic tomorrow if you want. Ram is EtronTech -50.

Yes, I would really like to see a picture! What is interesting yesterday I have found a Rev A on german Ebay and still was dated for 1997.

meljor wrote:

Mine are revision B and E and both are from 1997.

I have a Rev. A card, which is from week 21, 1997. There are no Diamond Monster cards from 1996.

It is exist, I have found one picture!

I don't see how Rev. B can be from 1996 when Rev. A is from 1997. Those are probably not retail cards.

meljor wrote:

Never sell 3dfx hardware..... just become a hoarder, like the rest of us.

I have seen a couple of monster 3d cards go bad trough the years (screen corruption), so a backup card is a good thing. I personally like the clicking of the orchid cards.

Well, I took your advice to the heart... now I have at least 30 different Voodoo cards... but no 5500 AGP yet! 😠

bjt wrote:

Re overbrightness - for some reason the default gamma on Voodoo reference drivers is > 1.0. Set it to 1.0 and things look much better.

Been playing around with Voodoo1 and it's really bright on LCD, but connect it to the CRT, the picture is simply amazing 😲 Colors are deep. Shapes and textures are more soft. I knew I should keep my CRTs - CRT technology is the best 🤣