3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 Comes Back To Life Better Than Ever
3dfx Voodoo 5 6000
(Image credit: Mod Labs)
As spotted by HotHardware , Anthony, a hardware enthusiast from the Mod Labs forums, has recreated 3dfx Interactive’s renowned Voodoo 5 6000. The company never released the Voodoo 5 6000 to the public, but the skillful enthusiast managed to revive the fallen graphics card through some exquisite reverse engineering work.
You might not have even heard of 3dfx, and we don’t blame you because it has been ages since we’ve heard that name. For the uninitiated, 3dfx was one of the key players in the graphics card market, next to Nvidia and ATI. The company closed its doors in 2002, but it’s still widely regarded as one of the pioneers of the graphics card market.
Voodoo 5 6000 was a single-slot graphics card based on 3dfx’s VSA-100 (Napalm 30) die, or rather four of them, and it was quite the GPU back then. The VSA-100 chips, which measured 112mm², housed up to 14 million transistors. TSMC was responsible for producing the VSA-100 for 3dfx on the foundry’s 250nm process node. Each VSA-100 had up to two pixel shaders; therefore, the Voodoo 5 6000 had eight of them in total, running at 166 MHz. On the memory side, the Voodoo 5 6000 featured 128MB (4x32MB) of SDRAM clocked at 166 MHz. Across a 128-bit memory interface, the Voodoo 5 6000 provided up to 2.656 GBps of memory bandwidth.
Image 1 of 5
3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 (Image credit: Mod Labs)3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 (Image credit: Mod Labs)3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 (Image credit: Mod Labs)3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 (Image credit: Mod Labs)3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 (Image credit: Mod Labs)
Anthony’s creation isn’t exactly a faithful copy of the original Voodoo 5 6000, but some may argue that it looks even better. Instead of the old-school green PCB, he created his own black PCB, which adds a bit of a modern look to the graphics card. He equipped it with four VSA-100 dies, which cost $18.95 apiece, with their corresponding heatsinks and cooling fans.
The Voodoo 5 6000 was certified for a TDP of 60W, which is more than the AGP slot can provide. Therefore, it drew its power through an external 250W power brick. Anthony artfully added a standard 4-pin Molex power connector to his rendition of the Voodoo 5 6000 to run the graphics card with a common computer power supply. Putting aside these small changes, Anthony assures that his Voodoo 5 6000 performs the same as the original because he replicated the same BIOS, drivers, and even the same bugs.
Aside from the high production cost, 3dfx didn’t launch the Voodoo 5 6000 due to several bugs with the AGP x4 slot on some motherboards. As a result, the graphics card was forced to run at x2. Some of the reported issues included color distortion and artifacts in games, translucent stripes on the screen, and other miscellaneous bugs.
Get instant access to breaking news, in-depth reviews and helpful tips.
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors
Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US.
Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
Topics
Graphics
Legendary 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 Gets Modern Revamp In Amazing Reverse Engineering Effort
- TRENDING:
- Radeon RX 7900 XTX, 7900 XT
- Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
- Intel 13th Gen Core Review
- Pixel 7 And Pixel 7 Pro
- AMD 4th Gen EPYC
- Ryzen 9 7900X And 7950X
homeNews
For gamers of a certain age, the 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 was perhaps the ultimate in graphics card excess. Developed at a time when 3dfx was facing increasing competition from the likes of NVIDIA and ATI, the Voodoo 5 6000 would have been a last-ditch effort to compete at the high-end of the gaming market.
While 3dfx was able to push the Voodoo 5 5000 and Voodoo 5 5500 out the door, the Voodoo 6 6000 was never officially released (although an initial run of roughly 1,000 cards was produced).
Over the years, some of these cards have wound up for sale, although they are quite expensive to procure given the limited numbers in the wild and the sheer over-the-top nature of the card.
An enthusiast who simply goes by «Anthony» has created the next best thing to purchasing an actual Voodoo 5 6000: he built one himself using readily available VSA-100 graphics processors. VSA-100 chips can still be purchased in bulk, and a single VSA-100 will set you back just under $20. You need four VSA-100 chips to recreate the Voodoo 5 6000, and that’s exactly what Anthony did with his impressive remake. He reverse engineered an actual Voodoo 5 6000 to produce his design, and the final result is what you see in the embedded images.
He created his own custom PCB with more modern components to house the VSA-100 chips along with the sixteen 8MB 166MHz SDRAM modules. This meant that the Voodoo 5 6000 had an incredible — at the time — 128MB of graphics memory (32MB for each VSA-100 chip).
There’s also an internal 4-pin Molex connector to deliver power to the board, which means there’s no need for the external power brick of the original. According to Anthony, his recreation performs exactly like an authentic Voodoo 5 6000, warts and all.
Anthony did modify the original design, however. You’ll notice this card uses a PCI interface, unlike the original V5 6000, which used AGP. This particular custom card has the ability to pass-though VGA signals like a Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2, so this revamped V5 6000 can be used in conjunction with another graphics card, to handle 2D or DirectX games.
«Performance is exactly the same as on V56K,» said Anthony. «Same BIOSes, same drivers, same bugs. [It’s] Very important [to note], no V56k was hurt or even killed during [reverse engineering].»
The original 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 with its external power brick.
According to a Mod Labs Chief Administrator, some of the issues inherent to the Voodoo 5 6000 (and are replicated with Anthony recreation) are:
- Color distortion and artifacts in games on some platforms and driver versions
- The presence of translucent stripes on the screen in high-speed modes of operation
- Miscellaneous compatibility and speed issues
Although we can’t find any recently completed auctions for the Voodoo 5 6000, a related Voodoo 5 5500 (which features two VSA-100 chips) sold brand new sealed in the box for $1,300 on eBay.
We’d imagine that a Voodoo 5 6000 would fetch a far greater sum. Although Anthony’s version of the Voodoo 5 6000 likely isn’t as valuable as an original board, we have to commend his incredible achievement.
Forward to n (r) past. 3dfx. The way it was / Habr
Out of the corner of my eye
This is a legend. This is voodoo5 5500 (bow here).
It is a two-chip solution. This was the way 3dfx walked with wide strides, and it was called SLI. Whereas in Nvidia they were for the integration of everything into everything, i.e. dislocation in just one chip. We already know who is right today, and that’s why I suggest you read it.
4-pin molex top right. Yes, it was one of the first (if not the first) cards of the homeuser segment with additional. food. I didn’t mix it up, that’s for sure — won’t start without molex . This one only has a VGA output, but even then there were models with DVI. And there is also a Ficheconnector… transistors, coils, resistors… now everything is also there… and capacitors too… and the icon «!!! DO NOT GROW!!» (as practice has shown, absolutely in vain).
I mean that the card had to be repaired.
In 3D it was like this:
It works, I bow to the solders (and even accelerates!)
Works, apparently, agp2x and not x anymore. Although many reviews wrote agp4x, liars. DiME is not here either, but there is a sideband, which is surprising 🙂 All this makes the card a competitor of several generations of cards from other vendors at once, and this is pretty funny. nine0007
Closer to hearts.
Disclosure of the voodoo cult.
In fact, despite all the PR-pictures, the chips look like this:
Photo above! NOT MINE!, I’m still not that much a fan of offal … It’s impossible to understand anything in the photo, but you and I know that these are two VSA-100 chips working in a layer. But SLI is already much more advanced here, moreover, each chip can work in two modes: rendering or applying makeup.
Frankly, I don’t know how the SLI mode on Nvidia works now, but here … however, if anyone is interested, the theory is right here. 3dfx for short. As always special and classy. nine0004
The card itself was born in 2000. Video memory ( 64 meters ) is interesting here:
each chip is given 32 meters for exclusive use
. Well, that is, the effective memory is 32 meters here 🙂 And, by the way, Everest confirms this!
At the time of writing, I was absolutely sure of this, however, deep testing and study of the issue showed:
successions (bands). After that the data from all these frame buffers is submitted to the general frame buffer where the complete frame is created and transferred to the monitor. Moreover, each VSA-100 chip is equipped with its own memory bus and local frame buffer and supports up to 64MB local graphics memory. A part of the available memory is used for a framebuffer (with double of even triple buffering) and the rest — for storing textures and Z-buffering.
In case the available memory turns not enough, 3dfx suggests resorting to one of the two supported texture compression methods: DXTC or FXT1. nine0005 …
www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/3dfx-vsa-100.html
By the way, these are probably the only cards where the memory and the chip are clocked synchronously. That’s why 3dfx usually doesn’t run well. But why, if they have always been leaders in terms of speed? And here…
… And yet these chips thundered with their grandiose abilities in such a necessary industry as makeup. It is called here T-Buffer . The essence of the technology is in the hardware implementation of Full Scene Anti-Aliasing ( FSAA ) via 4x super sampling, which does exactly the same thing: it removes ladders throughout the frame in a very complicated way. The method was unique for those times, it gives a very high-quality picture, but the FPS hawala so that it was revived only a couple of years ago.
Well, on the basis of this FSAA, the most necessary make-up tools were also implemented in hardware: motion blur, soft shadows and focus on the object. I’m not mistaken now: that was implemented. nine0004
However, there was this FSAA and the company was only in voodoo5 (two or more chips were required). Well, more precisely, it was also in voodoo4, but only FSAA 2x .
Firewood
Finally with a bang, no glitches like with voodoo3. Needless to say, 3dfx burns and warms! Yes, you can see for yourself:
Who didn’t understand — F1:
There really is no overclocking, but … this is fixable;) what’s more, are still finishing !
I mean, 3dfx then seriously undertook to fix their jambs, and this one was, in general, probably the last of those that did not have time to completely fix it.
FSAA
With this, everything is surprisingly very simple here 🙂 For this FSAA method, the only setting is the number of samples. So you choose between 4 and 2. And you can also turn off the second chip altogether, turning the card into voodoo4: D
Once again about hardware special voodoo effects5 . They were implemented in the chip. They were even in the DX8 specification. But they didn’t get into the game.
Well, almost…
…
Also, T-buffer support was programmed into Serious Sam First/Second Encounter. It is supposed to be used for depth of field effects. To activate it, the game must run in 16-bit color depth, FSAA must be on and the following commands have to be written in the console:ogl_iTBuffereffect=2
ogl_iTBufferSamples=4
The game is then supposed to confirm T-buffer usage in the console when starting it up. Other valid values for the second command are 2 and 8, depending on the number of VSA-100 chips on the used card. The FSAA implementation in this game is reported to be faster than in other releases. Still, given the experimental nature it is very unlikely that the DoF effects work as intended. nine0004
…www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/3dfx#Voodoo_4.2F5
As we all well remember 🙂 3dfx had its own clumsy texture mapping method. The formula is simple: how many chips, so many textures per clock.
That is, in our case, our v5500 can have 2 textures per clock. This is what is called multitexturing. Great, and now let’s recall the curve nt2 and its trilinear filtering. So, here things are exactly the same (as if 3dfx decided that this is a progressive way). Well, that is, in the firewood you will find:
In fact, it should be read like this: either there is no triline at all, or there is no multitexturing, but then there is an approximation (aka mip-map dithering). So it goes.
OpenGL ICD
In fact, I didn’t check how much it is I CD, because I don’t understand 3DSMAX and similar monsters. And I’m good at games. And on this occasion I can say the following: he still catches powerful glitches. So we can say that M 9 was enough0014 CD. Moreover, even in the latest beta version in the world, this imaginary I CD of yours is still just
WRAPPER in GLIDE
.
Don’t believe? And in vain:
And this is where the joke comes with such things as, for example, Quake2. After all, Quake2 has its own glide -> ogl wrapper, which means what? And that then the whole ogl goes back to glide and only then is it drawn to the screen. Kind of circles of hell 🙂 Was wrong, in Quake2 and similar it’s actually OGL -> Glide Wrapper. Those. in fact, it’s the same as running it on voodoo: in OGL or in Glide, because in the first case, the drivers will still translate everything into glides, and in the second case, the game will translate everything into glides on its own. nine0007
Application layer
It’s a monster 🙂
ATTENTION, Config:
MB: Gigabyte 6vtxe (Apollo Pro133T chipset)
CPU: Pentium 3-S 1.4Ghz/512Kb/133FSB
RAM: 3x256Mb PC133
HDD: healthy UDMA-5 WD with decent 2MB cache and 5400RPM
WinME
Video: 3dfx voodoo5 5500
0098
I don’t know what it does, but I turned it on 🙂 nine0095 Permission in the game will be clicked. Then I’ll explain why.
Let’s go technology…
API
Here it is interesting. The card can already 3 API:
Color
Finally 32bpp support is announced in 3D ! Now all 3dfx fans are in a daze: really? Really.
Direct3D
.
In fact, as I found out, glide 3x also seems to have support (? Or was it intended?):
Great! And now I will inform you that I did not find a single worthless game with 32bpp textures for glide ! To be precise:
- Deus Ex (and any on the Unreal Engine 1 ) will not let you set 32bpp in glide.
Only in Direct3D ; - Hitman: Codename 47 too. And, if you still expose, it will correct this error;
- Messiah won’t work — 32bpp only in Direct3D; nine0098
- Turok 2 won’t work — 32bpp only in Direct3D;
- Driver will not give — 32bpp only in software: D
- Stunt GP is of interest. There, in the settings, you can select 32bpp in glide. But after analyzing the shots, I can state: is a fake .
… maybe that’s why the magic option is waiting for us in the firewood:
So. When enabled, the resolution in Deus Ex will become fixed at 640×480 and it will be impossible to change it. Other games are sure to catch their glitches. But we will not win the imperfection of color. nine0007
Okay, now we come to the most interesting part. Let’s compare the picture?
The same scene is taken intentionally so that you can return to the previous. parts, compare the quality and immerse yourself in the depth of what you see.
IMPORTANT: shots are made in 1024×768, FSAA 4x . Because OGL cannot be raised higher. There will be no 1280×1024 shots, but I’ll tell you!
In addition to this, we traditionally monitor fps at the bottom of the shots and do an analysis. According to the previous part and based on the config, we remember well that apart from the video chip, we have nothing else to rest against. nine0007
Well, first of all, you must have noticed that there is an unrealistic performance gain in glides. Yes, yes, many said about this, that they say that a game was made under glide . In fact, it’s 16bpp, that’s the whole secret 😉 However, it doesn’t look much worse. It’s all the fault of the 3dfx hardware post-filter, which will be discussed later.
Second. If we raise the resolution to 1280×1024 (available in d3d and glide), then we will see about the same fps as it was on the tnt2 curve in the same resolution and color. But the picture will be completely different, because the FSAA is very smooth.
Just look at the soldier! Here wine. nine0007
Flatten EVERYTHING!!!
So, that means how it was… I pulled everything in the firewood to the maximum of colors, including FSAA in 4x , turned off mip-map dithering.
After launching Deus Ex, the first thing in the glide was, of course, this:
This was followed by exactly this:
** fuck!!! Here is smoothing! Not *** yourself, *****!!!
… Well, that’s what it was worth buying a card for:
Wait a bit if you don’t notice much difference. For now, notice that performance drops by half with each level of filtering. It was 1024×768, which was massive in those days. It can be stated that with FSAA2x it is quite possible to play at this resolution. FSAA4x is clearly missing a couple more chips. This, of course, is too expensive … but is it worth it at all? Let’s see … Let’s look at the back of the chair, the edges of the table, the helmet, the hotkey inventory.
If anyone notices that the corpse has an enlarged belly, it is he who breathes;)
Here you can see that FSAA4x is actually not very good, so it’s up to you.
Well, in terms of fps, the conclusions are as follows: here voodoo5 beats the tnt2 curve even in FSAA2x (tnt2 will have approximately the same fps, but will not have FSAA2x).
Hardware T’n’L
What is it and why?
A controversial question that in those days had no clear answer. While some greed advocated for him and in every possible way promoted the idea of merging all responsibility onto the gpu, others argued for the growing power of the CPU and cited various (no less dubious) arguments, which boiled down to the fact that even now it is quite possible to rely on the CPU, and, let’s, everyone will mind its own business: we will draw, and architects will optimize their architectures. Who turned out to be right, we already know today, but how were things then? nine0007
Surprisingly, 3dfx didn’t scam us here. While marketers were feeding breakfasts to release a map with the Hw T’n’L block, firewood developers sawed an easter egg for especially fanatical cases. A month later, I did find it in the forest of options:
If it is off , then:
- Max Payne will tell you this:
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time will say this:
If option
enabled
:
- Max Payne will say this:
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time will say this:
However anyway :
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time will not start.
- Painkiller will not start.
- Max Payne will show this:
- Well, Star Wars: BattleFront will show this:
In general, voodoo5 had a short age …
What else is interesting .
..
- DOS compatibility
In fact, you won’t believe it! I was able to run Carm and Pyl on this card.Separately, I would like to tell you about Pyl. Under Windows on voodoo5 it won’t start — only under DOS and then not right away 😉 Yes, it’s true, I’ve seen Dust in Glides!!! And there is indeed smoothing in itself. nine0004
But, to see, first I had to configure the DOS drivers so that those_that_enough_everyone was enough to start right up, and then I had to drive onto the card with new, nowhere described variables that I had to find, do not believe it, in the HEX code glide2x.ovl . I don’t ever want to repeat this. But, even running it with sound, mouse and goodies, I was just blown away. During the game, the vidyaha coped, but the screw constantly cracked, the game hung in front of each door. I messed around with the drivers again and added a smartdrive. DID NOT HELP! nine0004
In this connection, a simple question swirled in my head: “why even make such games under DOS?”Well, if you already use portal rendering, swap, write a configurator for Windows.In fact, I think I understand: they started writing the game even when they only heard about Windows, but when it was already, they immediately jammed the textures, and for dos they screwed the glide and calmed down — and so it will do!
.. is it logical to write a game for Windows only? Well, Blood was not defeated. For those who suffer, there is this page with a list of variables for voodoo5, but the purpose of the majority remains a mystery. Perhaps the answer is in glide programming guide ? (you will google, see the version — there are a lot of them walking)
- About rendering quality in 16bpp and postfilter
Two firewood options are responsible for the postfilter at once: 3D Filter Quality and Alpha-Blending . If both are pulled up respectively in High and Sharper , then the output is a 22-bit image. If anyone is interested, how do 3dfx get 22-bit color from 16-bit color.
Are you funny? But look clearly:
RIVA TNT2
VOODOO5
«.
.. And you will be wrong 🙂 In fact (if someone is not too lazy to read), the 3dfx post-filter is applied after the output to the framebuffer , therefore we can only catch a real 22-bit picture in hardware (or take a picture of the monitor) … nine0004
Or there is a 3dfx postfilter emulation method. The legend says that 3dfx shared a piece of code with the HyperSnap program, and since then it has learned not only to take shots from glide shots normally (16-bit from the framebuffer), but also, at the request of the user, to make them 22-bit on their own (after removing 16bpp- Pictures). And to choose from, using the old voodoo1 post-filter (remember the striped image?) or the fresh voodoo 2/3/4/5 post-filter.And I’m willing to bet that the picture in 22bpp looks exactly like this:
- Screenshots in glide using Prtscn you will not be able to do.
Apparently, the glide has some special way of rendering the image.
When you press Prtscn in the buffer, there is always something like this: This is definitely not related to the driver settings or the state of mind — I tried turning off the post-filter and the second chip both in the morning and in the evening. Apparently, this is precisely the feature of work slide .
3dfx gone, but NEVER FORGOTTEN But that’s all. I don’t have
giraffe 256 , but, presumably, it was all there too, only faster. And it came out in the same year with the T’n’L block, armed with 4 TMUs and equipped with DDR memory. Yes, FSAA let him down, but he was faster in games where this same Hw T’n’L was used. Or not? In fact, it’s all about the processor: with a powerful voodoo5 processor, I could easily argue with it in a lot of places, but … in 2000, GeForce 2 , and it became pointless to argue.
So it turns out that new technologies replace the old ones. Progress has gone ahead, there is a reserve, junk must be thrown away and forgotten.
In this regard, no marketing, pure progress.
In fairness, 3dfx still periodically amuses us from the grave with new tricks:
nine0095
Voodoo 5 5500
…
With new third party drivers the Voodoo 5500 can out perform the GeForce 2 and Radeon DDR
…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_5
Voodoo 5 6000
…
With regards to performance, little was known until enthusiasts were able to get pre-release hardware and run tests on it. The results showed that the Voodoo 5 6000 outperformed the GeForce 2 Ultra and Radeon 7500, which were the fastest iterations of the GeForce 2 and Radeon R100 lines, respectively. (It was rumored that GeForce 2 Ultra was intended to prevent 3dfx taking the lead with their Voodoo 5 6000.) In some cases, the 6000 was shown to compete well with the next-generation GeForce 3.
…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_5
Things like that. Everything above is only a small and positive part of what happened. I omitted thousands of successful (and not so) swear words and attempts to poke around with the settings and look at the result, which does not have any practical meaning.
Thanks
- First of all, I want to finally reveal the truth to the world. I bow to two engineers from one St. Petersburg office, who helped with the details and even soldered them for me! Without them, this voodoo5 review simply would not exist! nine0098
- The administration of old-games.ru for the opportunity to quickly and free download 20 games in bulk just to check out the file structure and run it once.
- Openers of horizons and rippers — VOGONS community. For a bunch of unique research and developments!
…TBC…
Literature used
- In such cases, everything starts, as a rule, always with a wiki.
- For dessert — vogonswiki.
- Of course, the logos 3dfx I painstakingly modeled in 3DSMAX
nine0095 Always followed by ixbt, 3dnews and hwp.
Voodoo Cave Quest in Moscow on Questinfo
8.9
24 ratings
- Players 2-6
- Time 60 min
- Complexity
Medium - Fear
4/5
nine0585
Price
from 3000
Watch the trailer
Schedule temporarily unavailable! nine0007
At the moment the quest is not available for online booking, but you can choose and
book another
quest or choose from similar ones on this page.
Similar games
Description of the quest «Voodoo Cave»
It happened only once, but people disappeared forever!
Terrible black smoke descended into the cave, and the people disappeared, screaming in pain and anguish.
Locals say that this is the punishment of the gods for the reckless behavior of tourists. Others say it’s a scientific experiment, others say it’s a natural disaster…
Everyone agrees on one thing: people have disappeared and now there are no more people who want to visit this place!
Do you have the courage to follow in the footsteps of the dead or not — it’s up to you! The locals believe that a big reward awaits those who make it to the end!
Quest «Voodoo Cave» Video review
quest category
for adults
Family
For large
companies
SELLECTIONS
For beginners
for teenagers
for schoolchildren
Player rating
8.9
Random feedback
A lot of positive emotions remained from visiting this quest.