If you don’t know who 3dfx is, we’ll give you a quick summary. Believe it or not, it was for years ATI’s (now AMD) main rival in the graphics card business. A series of bad decisions led to 3dfx bankrupt and I end up being absorbed by NVIDIA. It is largely thanks to this agreement that NVIDIA is so strong in the graphics card market.
They release a driver for 3dfx Voodoo 5
Since 2002, the 3dfx company, as such, no longer exists. Patents and developments have been acquired by NVIDIA. The the last 3dfx graphics card was the Voodoo 5 5600of which only a few dozen units were manufactured and which were never marketed.
This chart had the distinction of being the first chart with four graphics chips. Graphics cards to date had at most two graphics chips on a single PCB. It was a rather rare bet and perhaps well ahead of its time.
Now 3dfxzone forum fans have posted a new Voodoo 5 graphics driver. This is to improve compatibility with modern monitors. Added support for 1080p and higher resolutions. Note that when this graph was created, the monitors were of the CRT type and had resolutions of 800×600 and 1024×768.
Support has also been added for 16:9 and 21:9 aspect ratios. This allows the graphics card to be used with newer LCD monitors.
Note that this graphics card, in theory, cannot works with Windows 98 and Windows ME. These new drivers are said to add support for Windows XP, although this is unclear.
The Voodoo 5 6000 is a graph withn Four VSA-100 graphics chips based on TSMC’s 250nm process and has only 14 million transistors. These chips operated at a Frequency 166MHz and were accompanied by 4 SDRAM chips of 32MB each. This allows us to see how the material has evolved in 20 years,
For those who want to know more about the history of this graphics card manufacturer, we recommend Martín Gamero’s 3dfx legacy. A highly recommended book where the history of this mythical company is collected.
What does it matter today?
It has a certain relevance, although it cannot be thought of and it goes beyond simple DIY. This means that there are people researching and developing on clearly outdated hardware. Despite this, since 3dfx is the basis of modern NVIDIA, a lot can be learned about these graphics.
Something we already knew, thanks to Atari and other brands, that some things still last, especially for the old school. But it is that, in addition, it is the history of the material that has brought us to the present day. It would be like studying the historical period of the Middle Ages. Knowing him, we can see how we have evolved as a society. Here we can see how the hardware has evolved over time.
