Now here is something truly amazing. A hardware modder who goes by the name Anthony has reverse-engineered the 3DFX Voodoo 5 6000.
This modern clone of the 3DFX Voodoo 5 6000 includes four VSA-100 graphics chips operating at 166MHz. Instead of using an AGP interface, this clone uses a PCI (not a PCI-express) interface. Moreover, it uses a 4-pin power connector (instead of an external connector like the original model did).
Similar to other Voodoo GPUs, users must use it alongside another GPU. The performance of the clone is also exactly the same as the one of the original version. It uses the same BIOSes, the same drivers, and suffers from the same bugs.
Anthony plans to create numerous versions of this clone and sell them. He also plans to create new original boxes for these GPUs.
Now since this is a clone of the Voodoo 5 6000, it can only run specific games. Those that decide to purchase it will be able to play some classic games via the GLIDE API. However, don’t expect to be playing any modern-day game on it.
3DFX, and especially Voodoo 2, has a very special place in my heart. So yeah, it was a given that I’d report on this incredible reverse-engineered version of the 3DFX Voodoo 5 6000.
Thanks PCGamer
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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While this is definitely cool aF. I really don’t understand why anybody would buy one?
The people who want to build a new/retro computer to play old games. I have this idea on my mind.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2f9919ee09c04af336966684624ccebb6a96fd18b8daf45f8bc1ed1892dfc85d.png
Indeed, brings back memories of my old Voodo 1 3D accelerator and Voodo Rush video cards, first steps in what has now evolved into GPUs.
Started gaming on ZX Spectrum and C64 (with a tape deck for loading programs).
I think what is even more sad is how the industry has killed off dedicated, spacial audio cards. I’m looking at you Diamond and Aureal. What ever happened with Diamon Monster Sound MX400 and Monster 3D, and their legacy?
The old reverb effects and the like have been done in software for games since the driver API for Windows Vista killed off the hardware accelerated audio market. Nobody needs to buy a special card to get such DSP effects for games made since at least 2008.
Having a dedicated card with superior quality DACs and the like were made redundant by 100% digital audio interfaces like HDMI. I personally output audio processing from my GPU to my external home theatre AV receiver.
Reverb effects were just the tip of the iceberg. I do the same with HDMI eARC etc, but what ever happened to upping and improving channel separarion and signal fidelity (SnR, sampling rates, bit depths), offloading sound processing to dedicated hardware and supporting true spacial positioning, quadrophonics, etc? Dolby Atmos, DTS etc and 5.1 or 7.1 pass through aside. Guess all this died, at least for the consumer market, 15-20 years ago.
The majority of games released since the late 00s which had discrete multi-channel audio options on console retain them for the PC. There’s no need to have dedicated software to code them to a specific format like Dolby or DTS for bitstreaming to external AV receivers. Good ol’ uncompressed PCM is used, which is usually frankly better than some compressed format anyway. You just have to have your Windows audio setting reflect the number of channels used by your hardware set-up.
i still have my original voodoo 3. Just put in a retro 1998 style build not long ago but I noticed a line across the screen, maybe a bad cap or something?