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Back from the Dead: 3dfx's Unreleased Voodoo5 6000 Quad-GPU Card

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This review looks at the unreleased 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 video card -- except it was hand-made by an enthusiast who specializes in retro hardware resurrections. It's a quad-GPU monster that competed with the likes of NVIDIA back in the day. This piece looks at the history of 3dfx, spanning the late 90s to early 2000s, and tells the story of the company's rapid, fiery rise and collapse. Modder Anthony ZXC-64 hand-built these cards using REAL 3dfx GPU silicon with a custom-designed PCB with hand-placed components. The review looks at the GeForce 2 GTS, the Intel i740, and the Voodoo5 6000, which we can use in single-GPU mode to simulate older 3dfx cards. It is a masterful work of art that this technology was able to be salvaged from scrap and restored to a physical, working product. That modders like ZXC-64 can combine hardware, software hacks, and find and patch-up drivers to bring passion projects to life is what makes computer hardware such an amazing hobby. Join us for the ride as we walk through the history of 3dfx and benchmarks with real 3dfx GPUs.
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A blast from the past.
3dfx made the coolest looking graphic cards box arts I'd ever seen. Their graphic cards kind of started the massive advancements which we have in today's gpus.
Shame they bankrupted before releasing the Voodoo5 beast.
 
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Not watched the video yet but will be doing later tonight. 3dfx was my introduction to pc gaming. I had a 12mb Voodoo 2 card and then later a Voodoo 5 5500 64mb. I think may have had a Voodoo 3 in between though two cards but don't really remember.
 
raralis said:
A blast from the past.
3dfx made the coolest looking graphic cards box arts I'd ever seen. Their graphic cards kind of started the massive advancements which we have in today's gpus.
Shame they bankrupted before releasing the Voodoo5 beast.
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Did they actually release any cards themselves? I'm sure I had a Diamond monster 2 version of the Voodoo 2 (eventually in SLI)
 
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Shame they benched it against a GF2GTS instead of an Ultra which would have been the main competition in that price bracket, guess it depends on what they could get their hands on though.
4% scaling with VRAM was a big surprise, even 128MB was a huge amount in those days, but I guess each GPU might be limited in what it can access or something so maybe it's like the equivalent of having a quarter of the VRAM, like SLI I guess....
 
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raralis said:
A blast from the past.
3dfx made the coolest looking graphic cards box arts I'd ever seen.
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I remember thinking they were awesome as a kid when I saw them in adverts and such. Was never in a position to afford one back then though (and was much more invested in console gaming anyway). Still always get tempted to finally buy one when I see them pop up on Ebay, but they go for hundreds these days. Especially boxed ones.
 
HangTime said:
Shame they benched it against a GF2GTS instead of an Ultra which would have been the main competition in that price bracket, guess it depends on what they could get their hands on though.
4% scaling with VRAM was a big surprise, even 128MB was a huge amount in those days, but I guess each GPU might be limited in what it can access or something so maybe it's like the equivalent of having a quarter of the VRAM, like SLI I guess....
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1999 onwards I was addicted to EverQuest, I seem to remember the initial game assistance was done alongside ATI (100%) and 3DFX as it also had glide running from the getgo.

I went through the following cards when playing the game everyday:
(1999) ATI All-in-Wonder Pro 4MB PCI + 3DFX STB Blackmagic 3D graphics card - Voodoo 2 - 12 MB
(1999) Creative 3D Blaster Riva Nvidia TNT2 32MB
(2000) ELSA GLADIAC Nvidia GeForce 2 GTS 32MB
(2000) 3DFX – Voodoo 5 5500 64MB (£249.99 from Dixons!):cry:
(2004) MSI ATI X800 XT P.E 256MB (£359.99):eek:
(2006) HIS ATI Radeon X1900XTX IceQ 3 Turbo 512MB
(2007) OCZ Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX 768MB (From USA! 2 $ dollars to the £ pound):(

The image quality and performance of those Nvidia cards was absolutely dreadful, it wasn't until the 8800GTX came out in 2007 the image quality was on par with the previous ATI / 3DFX cards back to 1999 but performance way way ahead.

Can easily be run on onboard graphics with even a 2500k these days, CPU bound game in reality.
 
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Gerard said:
The nv fanboys back in the day were rambling about how the card (and the 5500) was so big it would block airflow, like that was such a big factor back then with a lot of cases having minimal fan mounts.
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back in the beige box days, no fans on the front maybe a side intake and back exhaust if you were lucky
 
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