Custom built Voodoo 5 6000

Incredible work. And it look very nice imo !

 

Well, i know everybody loves 3dfx, but... gluing 4 chips on a board just to get AA? :O No wonder they got bought up right after that.

 

Theoretically. But back then, having lower fps/resolution for AA was not worth it yet, and those monster cards were advertised to address this, IIRC. I would have been more impressed from something like FXAA in hardware.

 

I stopped using a Geforce 2 after using it for a couple of weeks because the AA was so much crap compared to the V5 5500 that I had. Didn't matter to me if it was faster if it ultimately looked so much worse. And higher resolution didn't help. Games looked much better at lower resolutions with the V5's RGSSAA than it did with the Geforce 2 at higher resolutions and its crappy AA.

I finally stopped using the V5 5500 when the Radeon 9700 Pro came out. While the AA wasn't quite as good at least it was "good enough."

Regards,
SB

 

I recall wanting a V5 5500 so badly. I had a Voodoo 2 in SLI at the time which I was incredibly impressed with. Thought the cover art of the V5 was amazing too (I was a kid, of course it mattered). 3dfx was firmly in the underdog camp too, which made me even more eager. I couldn't afford it though. My next upgrade was a Geforce 3 150. Followed by the incredibly dumb purchase of an FX 5800 to play Doom 3. Good as it was, HL2 became the favorite...

This homespun version also looks amazing. I'd love to have if, if only for my wall!

 

So only 55 full blown boards (220 / 4 per = 55).

Though I am surprised he has that many chips. As always, it would be really nice if there could be more.

Or even remix 4 chips into 1 single chip but maybe that requires too many driver changes?

 

Here's an interesting video. It was probably posted on here... I remember Gary Tarolli mentioning even back then that people were contacting him about building new boards.

 

Jesus, I wonder If I'll be able to get one. As @BRiT pointed out it won't make for a ton of boards.

How wonderful would it be if this was the start of a 3DFX renaissance? A modding community dedicated to modding and creating games to run on an ever spreading platform base on Voodoo 5 6000s. I can see it in front of me. And it is glorious.

 

I'm assuming that Nvidia owns the IP rights since they purchased 3dfx, but, humor me, could more VSA-100 chips be produced? Either as dedicated silicon or FPGAs? If my dream is to come true we need more chips!

(Well yes, I'm obviously joking. But this was a nostalgia shot I sorely needed right now, and I'm riding it until it peters out)

 

why stop at 4 ? Lets just go full modern and put like 5000 of them on a single chip and see what happens. Imagine the Image quality

 

Now we can go for authenticity , split it into 4 chips !

 

We have 54.2 at 7nm, why not 70 at 5?

 

If the guy who built this built another two and added the SLI interface... would it run 8 cores? Would it run Crysis? I feel these are important questions that need answering.

Also I'd be remiss if I didn't post a picture of the kick-ass box art. 3dfx had some of the best in my opinion.

 

I think a larger memory controller and higher amounts of ram would also be important.

I wonder how high a chip can clock on 12nm or heck even 16nm .. gotta be cheap to use that process now