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#Post#: 14--------------------------------------------------
3dfx
DIR By: Mr Horse
Date: December 17, 2017, 2:16 pm
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General 3dfx information
3dfx cards - namely their proprietary Glide API - can be
considered one of the prime reasons to use vintage hardware
today, because many early 3D games starting from 1996 had
versions for at least some 3dfx cards, and in many cases these
cards brought the superior image quality. A notorious example
for this is Unreal (1998), a game that was geared towards
software rendering at first, but had a Glide renderer added
during development as soon as it was clear that Voodoo would
come out as the best 3D accelerator. The game also had Direct3D
and OpenGL renderers, but Direct3D was well in its infancy back
in the day and even the OpenGL renderer wasn't their best
effort, therefore players with competitor cards had to wait for
Epic's patches to improve the graphics, but in the end it would
take fanmade patches to provide competitive renderers.[1]
It was also common for game developers to put 3dfx logos on
their games' boxes, leading to misconceptions for a decent
amount of games ostensibly supporting Glide which actually do
not at all, or only provide a special MiniGL driver for 3dfx
cards. This was again due to 3dfx being the dominant 3D solution
at this time, and also a commonly known brand with PC gamers. If
software does not straightforwardly access either glide.dll,
glide2x.dll/ovl or glide3x.dll, it cannot be said to directly
support the Glide API.
Since Glide was a proprietary interface, there were 3rd party
efforts from early on to bring it to all 3D cards. Glide
wrappers are at a level where they can properly emulate how
those games would look on a real Voodoo card and can be
considered a viable alternative to the real cards. A problem
with them is that games written for Win9x are not necessarily
compatible with modern operating systems, so only a (at best)
period-correct Win9x system can be guaranteed to play all Glide
games properly.
The main weak points of all vintage cards apart from
incompatibility with modern mainboards/operating systems are
lack of full screen anti-aliasing (addressed with V5) and
anisotropic filtering (implemented in GeForce 256, only started
to be useful with about GeForce 3).
A disadvantage of 3dfx's SLI multi-GPU solution (V2 SLI/V5 for
consumer cards) is that it is somewhat prone to slight
horizontal artifacts somewhat akin to screen tearing, which
results from the multiple chips not fully working synchronously.
This can be prevented by activating VSync in the drivers or in
the games, a solution which itself has the problem of causing
mouse lag in many cases.
All AGP 3dfx cards use the port as a mere 66 MHz PCI port and do
not utilize any of the special features that AGP offers. All AGP
3dfx cards are AGP 2x (3.3V) and must not be used in newer 1.5V
slots. Only retail Voodoo 4 4500 cards are AGP 4x 1.5V capable.
PCI and AGP versions of 3dfx hardware were considered to perform
virtually identically with contemporary games, but testing has
shown that later games can largely profit from higher bus
bandwidth.[2]
Cards of Voodoo2 SLI/3 grade speed scale with CPUs up until
about a ~1 GHz Intel Pentium III Coppermine, although a PIII 500
Katmai should be enough to play all Glide games fluently. AMD's
K6 line can be considered second choice when building a 3dfx
centered PC, because these CPUs can be a significant bottleneck
with some later games. Pentium Classic and Pentium MMX CPUs will
only be able to run early Glide titles full-speed. Older games
should be able to cope with faster CPUs; exceptions are listed
here. Lastly, it should be noted that Voodoo Graphics cards will
not work with K7 (Athlon) CPUs, and Voodoo2 cards will need
special 3rd party drivers to work with these CPUs.
Community-made resources for 3dfx cards include drivers, such as
Amigamerlin, x3dfx and SFFT, which can provide more features and
speed than the latest official drivers from 2000 and some of
which allow the cards to be run under Windows XP, or tools such
as V.Control which provide more in-depth tweaking options. For
potentially better OpenGL compatibility or speed, one can try
the MesaFX standalone OpenGL driver or Metabyte's WickedGL
MiniGL driver.
A method to improve texture quality with Voodoo cards is setting
a negative LOD bias in the driver settings, resulting in a
sharper image. However, this causes a slight performance hit and
leads to very noticeable texture shimmering. The function is
essentially only usable with FSAA on VSA-100 cards due to
this.[3][4]
All 3dfx cards besides Banshee share the fact that the graphics
core and memory always run at the same frequency. This makes
overclocking generally harder than on other cards, because in
many cases the memory will hit the limit earlier than the core.
Still it is possible: V1/V2 cards can be overclocked by
environment variables, while the other cards contain an option
in the driver for this. With most drivers this needs to be
unlocked with a special utility from 3dfx, which will also allow
the user to set VSync options for both DirectX and OpenGL.
Better cooling, e.g. through means of a case fan is advised when
overclocking.
Note that 3dfx cards can react quite sensitively to overclocked
system buses, such as the commonly attempted 133 MHz FSB on 100
MHz-specified Intel 440BX chipset boards. Such an overclock on
these boards will result in a 89 MHz (instead of 66 MHz)
frequency for the AGP bus due to the lack of a proper divider,
which can result in garbled BIOS screens and IDE drive
corruption. Finally, note that all overclocking happens at the
user's own risk.
Getting the best compatibility
For better compatibility and versatility, it is common practice
among vintage computer enthusiasts to have multiple video or
sound cards in one system. Back in the day, this was typically
widespread and necessary for 3D-only 3dfx cards with a loop
cable (V1/V2). That way, one can easily have a faster card for
OpenGL/D3D (or a card supporting one of the other proprietary 3D
APIs) combined with e.g. V2 SLI which will automatically engage
when Glide is chosen in games. This may cause issues with some
cards if for some reason OpenGL/D3D would be needed on the 3dfx
card(s).
Another way is to combine said non-3dfx card with a 2D+3D 3dfx
card, one of them being AGP and the other one PCI. Due to both
being full video cards one would need to perform the switch in
the BIOS under "Primary VGA adapter", "Boot from AGP/PCI" or
likewise (if it supports it) depending on what card is needed.
This method has the disadvantage of requiring to relocate the
monitor cable each time because there is no passthrough; a
monitor with multiple inputs or a VGA or KVM switch would solve
that problem, potentially with DVI for one of the cards if
available. This should work very reliably without any conflicts.
It is also possible to take advantage of multi-monitor support
in Windows 98, either with a multi-input monitor by switching
between inputs on the monitor itself or two monitors. However,
this has been reported to cause Windows to use the OpenGL
software fallback mode as long as the secondary display is
enabled, so it is perhaps not the optimal solution. Direct3D
hardware acceleration only works on the primary display.
Finally, for maximum Glide compatibility, one could even use
three cards (e.g. V1, V2 and V3/4/5) and switch between the
cards by copying the appropriate glide2x.dll/glide3x.dll drivers
into the game directory depending on which card the game should
run with. When using this method, it is important to install the
drivers in ascending order, so that games which access the
drivers in the Windows folder use the newest 3dfx card. For DOS
games, one would analogically copy Glide2x.ovl into the game
folder.
To get games which were originally made for Voodoo Graphics to
work with Voodoo2 boards, one can use the following SST
variables in the autoexec.bat, either directly or by an external
batchfile:
SET SST_GRXCLK=90
SET SST_FT_CLK_DEL=0x4
SET SST_TF0_CLK_DEL=0x6
SET SST_TF1_CLK_DEL=0x6
SET SST_VIN_CLKDEL=0x1
SET SST_VOUT_CLKDEL=0x0
SET SST_TMUMEM_SIZE=2
A detailed list of Voodoo2 compatible DOS Glide games can be
found here.
Voodoo Graphics
Diamond Monster 3D (4 MB)
Canopus Pure3D (6 MB)
The Voodoo Graphics chipset, based on the SST1 architecture, was
3dfx's first foray into the PC market. Its release in 1996 was
primarily made possible by EDO DRAM declining in price, allowing
good profits from an adequately-equipped ~$300 Voodoo Graphics
solution. The PCI cards, which were manufactured by board
partners, feature a frame buffer processor, a texture mapping
unit (TMU), a RAMDAC and 4 MB EDO DRAM (some later versions were
released with 6 or even 8 MB). Both the RAM and graphics
processors operate at 50 MHz, with 2 MB RAM being used as
framebuffer and 2 MB as texture memory. The RAM banks are on
independent 64-bit buses. A Pentium 90 with 8 MB RAM was
considered the minimal specifications for these cards.
The chipset was rich in features, boasting perspective correct
texture mapping, bilinear texture filtering, level of detail MIP
mapping, sub-pixel correction, polygonal-based Gouraud shading
and texture modulation. It natively supported Direct3D 5 and was
notable for supporting all of its required features with
adequate speed, unlike previous 3D chipsets such as S3 Virge and
Matrox Mystique. It also introduced Glide, 3dfx's own
proprietary API that worked initially under DOS and later under
Windows 9x and NT 4.0/2000. Glide was essentially a subset of
OpenGL, with no support for features deemed unnecessary for PC
gaming at the time, and for some functions not supported by the
SST1 architecture. OpenGL games were initially only supported
through the use of MiniGL, which was an OpenGL driver with only
the necessary functions implemented for a specific game, most
notably Quake engines. In May 1999, 3dfx released a full OpenGL
ICD, providing support for all OpenGL applications.
Voodoo Graphics does not have 2D functions like VGA or GUI
acceleration, meaning that it has to be used in conjunction with
a standard 2D card by means of a VGA passthrough cable. Voodoo
cards have relays onboard that switch between passthrough mode
and output mode, controlled by the driver or DOS game/Glide.
Unfortunately the passthrough impacts 2D quality because of the
signal passing through additional circuitry that may not be of
optimum quality. High resolution GUI modes are most noticeably
affected.
Thanks to 3dfx's efforts with game developers and publishers and
the excellent performance of their solution, the company's
technology was quickly adopted as the de-facto standard in PC 3D
gaming. Voodoo 1 enjoyed lengthy support from game developers.
Despite only supporting resolutions as high as 640x480 (800x600
without the usage of Z-buffering) and 16-bit color depth, the
card was usable with games into 2000.
It has been reported that Voodoo1 cards produce artifacts on the
screen and do not play most DOS Glide games correctly when the
FSB is higher than 100 MHz, even if the PCI bus runs at default
clock speeds.
The prime competitors upon its release were the PowerVR PCX1 and
Rendition Vérité V1000 chipsets, the latter of which already
featured complete 2D processing onboard. Other competitors
include the Matrox Millenium II/Matrox Mystique, ATI Rage II, S3
Virge and NVIDIA RIVA 128, all of which had 2D functions, but
only the RIVA 128 can be said to match the Voodoo 1 in
performance, while of course lacking Glide support.
Bottom line: The card's prime use case would be early
statically-linked Glide games in DOS that depend on the first
Voodoo chipset. Later games, starting with ca. 1997, are better
played with the subsequent Voodoo cards.
Cards with higher than 4 MB are a trade-off: they have somewhat
higher compatibility to later games, but lose some compatibility
with first generation titles. 6 MB versions only have more
texture memory and are therefore still limited to 640x480; 8 MB
boards are able to show 800x600 resolutions due to extra
framebuffer memory. Both offer somewhat smoother frame rates in
games with more texture memory usage, such as Unreal and Quake
2.
Voodoo Rush
Jazz Adrenaline 3D (Alliance ProMotion)
Procomp G108 (Macronix)
Voodoo Rush was released in August 1997 for the PCI bus and
addressed the main shortcoming of the Voodoo Graphics by being a
complete 2D/3D solution. The chipset combined either an Alliance
Semiconductor AT25/AT3D or Macronix 2D core on the same board as
the exact same Voodoo chipset (on some cards the 3dfx part came
as a daughterboard).
The combination of two independent chipsets led to a bottleneck
for the 3dfx part and therefore about 10% lower performance. The
cards had 4, 6 or 8 MB total memory, with only 8 MB versions
offering 4 MB for texture space, similarly to Voodoo Graphics.
Some cards had slightly higher clocks to close the performance
gap. The cards also sometimes weren't fully compatible to
existing games, leading to specific Voodoo Rush patches for some
games, e.g. Tomb Raider.
The AT3D chipset has rudimentary 3D functions which can be
activated, meaning that Rush cards that feature it have two 3D
chipsets.
Bottom line: Rush cards were an infamous early attempt at a
2D/3D card by 3dfx and should be avoided when building a vintage
gaming system. Primarily a curiosity. Despite that, the cards
may be potentially useful in fringe cases like in a system with
only a single available PCI slot that does not support a Banshee
or Voodoo 3 because of a weak power supply or weak voltage
regulators. They shouldn't be difficult to acquire since the
demand is not as high as for other 3dfx cards.
Voodoo2
Provideo PV830 (reference Voodoo2 with 110MHz rated RAM)
Voodoo 2 with 8MB (bottom) and 12MB (top)
Released in early 1998, the Voodoo2 chipset (SST96) expanded
upon its predecessor by adding a second texture processor,
featuring 8 or 12 MB EDO DRAM and supporting Direct3D 6. The
clock was increased to 90 MHz, almost doubling the performance
compared to Voodoo1. Performance in games utilizing the
Voodoo2's second texture unit by means of single-pass
multitexturing is further increased. The first notable games to
do so were GLQuake, Quake II (both 1997) and Unreal (1998).
Single-pass trilinear filtering was possible as well.
The cards also support SLI (Scan-Line Interleave), a technique
which allows 2 cards to be run simultaneously and draw the lines
of the image in turn, boosting performance and enabling a
resolution of up to 1024x768. With one card installed, up to
800x600 is possible regardless of memory. For SLI operation a
special SLI cable is required. It is also possible to use a
modified floppy drive cable.
Following the same principle as the Voodoo1 there are three
independent 64-bit RAM buses, one for the frame buffer processor
and one for each TMU. While 4 MB RAM are available for the frame
buffer, the textures have to be copied into the RAM of both
TMUs. So even though there are technically 4 or 8 MB of texture
memory on a card effectively there are only 2 or 4 MB available
for textures. With SLI this amount does not grow, instead the
textures will be copied two more times.
Voodoo2 still requires the passthrough cable and use of a
separate 2D card. However, the chipset does have some 2D
features and there is a driver for Linux that allows one to use
Voodoo2 as a GUI accelerator.
A large number of cards from different manufacturers were
released, with some deviating from the reference design and/or
featuring extra cooling and even slight factory overclocks. The
Voodoo2 remained the standard for PC 3D accelerator cards
throughout 1998.
Competitors included the NVIDIA RIVA TNT, ATI Rage 128 and the
Matrox G200.
Bottom line: The iconic Voodoo2 SLI setup holds nostalgic value
for some people. Voodoo2 SLI is viable for almost all Glide
games, and has the advantage over Voodoo 3 that it can play more
Glide games originally only designed for Voodoo1, with necessary
environment variable configuration. Weak points include
occasional slight stutter in texture intensive games due to
texture trashing and possible image quality problems resulting
from the passthrough design.
Banshee
Quantum3D Raven PCI (16MB Banshee)
Released in 1998, the Banshee was 3dfx's first fully integrated
2D+3D card. It combines a new 2D core, a single-TMU Voodoo2 and
a 250 MHz RAMDAC into one chip. It is clocked at 100 MHz,
meaning that the midrange Banshee was actually slightly faster
in then prevalent single-textured games than the high-end
Voodoo2, yet clearly falls behind in games utilizing
multi-texturing. Banshee cards were the first 3dfx cards to
universally feature some kind of cooling solution and came
equipped with 8MB/16MB SDRAM or SGRAM, with PCI and AGP versions
existent.
Its 2D acceleration was very capable. It rivaled the fastest 2D
cores from Matrox, Nvidia, and ATI, consisting of a 128-bit GUI
engine and a 128-bit VESA VBE 3.0 VGA core. DirectDraw is
accelerated, and the GUI portion supports all of the Windows
Graphics Device Interface (GDI) in hardware. The GUI engine
achieved near-theoretical maximum performance with a null driver
test in Windows NT.
Banshee is notable for being the only 3dfx card which can run
with asynchronous core/memory clocks; cards which are factory
overclocked in this fashion do exist. It also was the first to
have the "22-bit" 2x2 filter (see below).
Bottom line: Banshee cards are far superior to Voodoo Rush,
although they have a few bugs in various areas such as video
playback and DOS VESA modes. As such they are not ideal gaming
choices, although they can be still useful for some games.
Voodoo 3
Voodoo 3 1000 AGP (OEM)
Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Voodoo 3 3500 TV
The Voodoo 3, codenamed "Avenger", was announced at COMDEX in
November 1998 and released on April 3, 1999. Following the
buyout of STB, 3dfx was now manufacturing their own cards. The
Voodoo 3 was basically a higher-clocked Banshee core outfitted
with a second texture unit and some bugfixes. The cards were
released in four different flavors: the 125 MHz Voodoo 3 1000,
the 143 MHz Voodoo 3 2000, the 166 MHz Voodoo 3 3000, and the
183 MHz Voodoo 3 3500 TV with integrated TV tuner. Except for
the low-end V3 1000, which could also come with 8 MB, all cards
featured 16 MB. The V3 line came both in PCI or AGP versions,
with the 3500 being AGP-only. Some PCI versions featured SGRAM
instead of the standard SDRAM. Thanks to the integrated 350 MHz
RAMDAC (V3 3000/3500), the maximum resolution is 2048x1536 at
about 75 Hz. It is important to keep in mind that the Voodoo 3
3500 came with a special break-out cable, which may be difficult
to find if one only has the bare card. A regular VGA cable will
not fit, so one will either need to use its original break-out
cable or use a substitude adapter[5][6][7]
Now facing stronger competition from NVIDIA's RIVA TNT line,
which already supported 32-bit color depth, 1024x1024 textures
and AGP texturing, the Voodoo 3 line was somewhat panned by
critics and called outdated in terms of features, but was still
considered to be very competitive speed-wise, because 32-bit
rendering introduced a big performance hit on competitor cards.
At that time, 3dfx's marketing was centered around speed, but to
demonstrate that the image quality was still better than their
last year's high-end setup, they invented the term "22-bit",
describing the added 2x2 box filter that masks dithering.[8] "3D
Filter Quality" in the driver allows to select between the 4x1
linear filter from Voodoo1/2 and the 2x2 box filter.
Its prime competitor was the NVIDIA RIVA TNT2, of which the TNT2
Ultra was widely considered to be the better choice overall by
reviewers, mainly due to superior Direct3D performance and more
features. Still, arguably 2048x2048 textures and 32-bit
rendering were not as significant in 1999 as the better game
compatibility of the Voodoo 3. Other competitor cards included
the ATI Rage 128 Pro and S3 Savage 4.
The GeForce 256, which came out later that year, was considered
to be superior in features and performance in D3D and OGL games,
yet could still merely tie it in some Glide-centric/CPU limited
games such as Unreal Tournament.
A noteworthy problem with Voodoo 3 or other cards from this
generation was the higher power demands, which certain
mainboards at the time could not cope with. The issue lied
specifically in the voltage regulators for the AGP slot. Intel
specified 6A at 3.3V for this slot, but due to cost saving
measures some mainboard manufacturers utilized parts that were
specified for less than that. Voodoo 3 cards were reported to
demand up to 4.8A, which could cause severe thermal issues,
crashes and even hardware failures with these boards. One known
manufacturer with this problem was Gigabyte. Also Asus had a
similar issue, although only two models were reportedly
affected; only Nvidia RIVA TNT cards are mentioned, but it is
safe to assume that the issue is present for all AGP video cards
from that generation and further. Lists for both manufacturers
can be found in the links section.
Bottom line: A Voodoo 3 2000 roughly matches Voodoo2 SLI 12MB in
speed, while only taking one slot and offering better real-world
performance due to more texture memory (for 1024x768 as the
highest resolution available with Voodoo2 SLI there would be 16
- 4.5 = 11.5 MB available instead of 4 MB, nearly three times as
much). The image quality is slightly better due to more advanced
RAMDAC filtering and the end of the passthrough design.
Like with all Voodoo cards, V3 will run games requiring early
Direct3D features (8-bit paletted textures or table fog). If
this is taken into account together with its good DOS
compatibility/speed, wide availability and low cost, the Voodoo
3 can be considered among the best all-around cards for vintage
gaming purposes of that time frame and before.
Voodoo 4/5
Voodoo 4 4500 PCI
Voodoo 4 4500 AGP
PowerColor Evilking IV
Voodoo 5 5500
The VSA-100 (Voodoo Scalable Architecture), codenamed "Napalm",
was the final product from 3dfx and was released in 2000. Only
the single-chip Voodoo 4 4500 and the dual-chip Voodoo 5 5500
made it to market, both clocked at 166 MHz and released both in
AGP and PCI versions. It is a further refinement of the
architecture of all previous products, with some changes and
additions such as two pixel pipelines with one texture unit each
(instead of one pipeline with two texture units), larger texture
caches and data paths expanded from 16-bit to 32-bit. The chip
supports 32-bit color depth 3D rendering, 2048x2048 textures,
FXT1 and DXTC texture compression.
Voodoo 4 4500 cards have 32 MB SDRAM. Voodoo 5 5500 cards have
64 MB SDRAM, although only 32 of it are actually usable due to
the SLI method used, much like with Voodoo2 SLI. Voodoo 5 cards
require supplementary power in the form of a single Molex
connection.
The marketing was now more centered on image quality ("cinematic
effects") than speed: Through the added "T-buffer" the Voodoo 4
4500 is capable of 2x RGSSAA (rotated-grid supersampling
anti-aliasing), while the Voodoo 5 5500 supports up to 4x
RGSSAA.[9][10] Compared to other methods such as MSAA
(multisample anti-aliasing), this variant is considered higher
quality, because it smooths the whole screen and eliminates
texture flickering to a great extent, therefore generating a
much "calmer" and more realistic image especially when moving in
the game. Turning on 4xFSAA will automatically disable the post
filter that is used in 16-bit mode (as will playing in 32-bit
color depth).[11]
Unfortunately this comes with a large performance impact due to
the high fillrate requirements from rendering at a higher
resolution and sampling down to the actual resolution.
Additionally, it has the weakness of blurring the text and UI in
games; this undesired effect seems to be more detrimental with
the 2x mode than the 4x mode. Generally speaking, the 4x mode is
only practially useful up to 800x600 depending on the game.
Only two playable games are known to specifically take advantage
of the added T-buffer hardware for effects other than
anti-aliasing. These include a custom made Q3Test demo (ver.
1.08), in which 3dfx hacked motion blur support to promote their
then new cards. Screenshots from this demo emerged around
November 1999 and the actual program was released in December
2000, after 3dfx went bankrupt. The demo consists of three maps
and does not feature bots; the motion blur effect is seen with
weapons, powerups and moving players. It is only displayed
correctly with 4xFSAA turned on for OpenGL and there is no known
way to enable it in any other version of Quake 3.
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.
The Voodoo 5 generally performs similarly to the GeForce 256
DDR, but was not competitive with high-end GeForce 2 cards,
especially since Glide support in new games was rapidly
declining by that time. Likewise, the delayed Voodoo 4 4500 was
considered obsolete by reviewers upon its introduction due to
the GeForce 2 MX performing better at a similar price point (the
Voodoo 4 4500 was released almost four months after the Voodoo 5
5500). Despite this, reviewers pointed out that the VSA-100's
SSAA implementation was superior to the competition.
Unlike the GeForce cards which were Direct3D 7 capable, the
VSA-100 line was still limited to Direct3D 6, as it lacked
Hardware T&L. This feature, which was introduced by Nvidia a
year before, was slowly taking off in 2000 and games which use
it to a great extent are not optimally suited for 3dfx hardware.
After 3dfx came to an end, fanmade drivers tried to solve this
problem and make some 2001 and later games playable on these
cards.
32-bit color depth rendering can be forced in the driver for
games that don't natively support it (especially Glide games).
Bottom line: The V4 4500 is not a large improvement over the V3,
since it performs similarly and its new features are of limited
benefit due to this fact.[12] V5 5500 is considerably faster and
provides optimal Glide gameplay up to around 1280x1024 without
AA, with the added possibility of adding anti-aliasing for
higher image quality in lower resolutions, which may be
especially useful with older games that are locked to these
modes. For authentic hardware, VSA-100 can provide the best
visual quality in these titles.
To attain the best possible frame rates, the cards can be
combined with fast CPUs such as Athlon XPs with the KT333
chipset. AGP 3.3v support is necessary. Note that with 4xFSAA in
any resolution or 1024x768x32 with no AA the Voodoo5 hits its
fillrate limit in many non CPU limited games, making faster CPUs
effectively useless.[13]
Macintosh PCI versions of the V5 5500 have DVI outputs for
clearer image quality. Using this with DOS games may cause
problems due to locked refresh rates though.
Other 3dfx cards
3Dfx Velocity
The company also released other cards, such as the budget
Velocity (name taken after the acquisition of STB) line, which
only came with 1 TMU similarly to Banshee, although the second
one can reportedly be enabled by a registry hack. Also, 3dfx had
plans for a Voodoo 5 6000, which would have come with four
VSA-100 chips installed and would have been powered by an
external power supply, dubbed "Voodoo Volts". About 150-250 of
these were made as prototypes. These cards beat Nvidia's GeForce
2 line and are even competitive with GeForce 3 when used with
faster CPUs, and are also capable of 8x RGSSAA. The prototypes
are considered "legendary" in the enthusiast community and are
highly sought after, with prices easily as high as $1000 paid
for them
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