3dfx

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3dfx (written as 3Dfx until 1999) was a 3D graphics chipset manufacturer and later on graphics card manufacturer. Founded in 1994, the company was one of the pioneers of 3D graphics in the PC industry in the mid to late 1990's. They played an important role in the business until 2000, when most of their assets were purchased by Nvidia Corporation, after which the company filed for bancruptcy and officialy went defunct in 2002.

Voodoo Graphics

Canopus Pure3D
Diamond Monster 3D

The Voodoo Graphics (retroactively named Voodoo 1) chipset was 3dfx' first foray into the PC market. Its release in 1996 was primarily made possible by EDO DRAM declining in price. The cards, which were manufactured by board partners, feature a frame buffer processor, a texture processor, a DAC 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 as texture memory. 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 introduced Glide, 3dfx's own proprietary API that worked initially under DOS and later under Windows 9x and NT 4.0/2000/XP. Glide was essentially a cut down OpenGL implementation, with no support for features such as 32-bit color depth. OpenGL games were initially only supported through the use MiniGL, which were incomplete OpenGL implementations tailored for the particular target card and game. In 1999, 3dfx released a full OpenGL ICD, thus finally granting native support for OpenGL games, which was becoming more and more important since full OpenGL support was required for the then-upcoming Quake 3.

The main disadvantage of the cards was that they could only do 3D, meaning that they had to be used in conjunction with a standard 2D card through means of a passthrough cable. During boot and regular PC operation the 2D card would display the image like usual and run the signal through the Voodoo; however, when a compatible game was ran, the Voodoo Graphics would be enabled, taking over the host card. Combinations with S3 Graphics cards, as well as Matrox cards were quite popular. Unfortunately, the passthrough method was very dependent on the build quality of the used cable and could potentially lead to blurriness.

Thanks to 3dfx's efforts with videogame developers and publishers - the company's technology was quickly adpoted as the de-facto standard in PC 3D gaming - the Voodoo 1 enjoyed a lengthy support from game developers. Despite only supporting resolutions as high as 640x480 (800x600 without the usage of Z-buffering) and 16-bit depth, the card was more or less usable until 1999, when its performance in new games would have been slow.

The prime competitors upon its release were the PowerVR PCX1 and Rendition Vérité V1000 chipsets, the later of which already featured 2D processing onboard. Other competitors include the Matrox Millenium II/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.

Today: The card's prime usage would be 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.

Voodoo Rush

The first 2d and 3d in one graphics card by 3dfx.

Voodoo 2

Provideo PV830 (reference Voodoo 2)

Released in early 1998, the Voodoo 2 chipset expanded upon its predecessor by adding a second texture processor and featuring 12 or 8 MB EDO DRAM. The clock was increased to 90 MHz, therefore almost doubling the performance. Since the V2 features single-pass multitexturing and single-pass trilinear filtering (and therefore supports Direct3D 6), performance in games utilizing these features is even more increased, with the first notable one being Quake II (1997). Additionally, the cards support SLI (Scan-Line Interleave), a technique which allows 2 cards to be run simultaneously and draw the lines of the image in turn, further increasing performance and enabling resolutions up to 1024x768. With one card installed, up to 800x600 is possible.

A large amount of cards from different manufacturers was released, with some deviating from the reference design and/or featuring extra cooling and even slight factory overclocks. The Voodoo 2 remained the best 3D accelerator card throughout 1998.

Today: The iconic Voodoo 2 SLI setup holds nostalgic value for some people that experienced it back in the day. Thanks to the PCI interface, they can theoretically be used even in some modern mainboards, although there are rumors of them overheating in modern systems. In any case, the setup remains viable for the vast majority of Glide games released and can even play some Glide games originally only designed for Voodoo 1 through a special batch file, although for later games, the newer cards have to be considered superior.

Banshee

Voodoo 3

Voodoo 3 3000


Voodoo 3 3500

Voodoo 4

Voodoo 4 4500

Voodoo 5

Voodoo 5 5500