A look back at the 3dfx Voodoo 2 – the last dedicated 3D graphics card

[erek]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/3dfx-voodoo-2

 

[Azzkiker]

Nostalgia!

The first PC I built for myself from individual components had 2 of these in SLI. I don't recall if I had a Matrox G400 or a TNT2 for 2D, maybe I had one and then swapped it for the other at some point.

 

[funkydmunky]

Nostaliga!

The first PC I built for myself from individual components had 2 of these in SLI. I don't recall if I had a Matrox G400 or a TNT2 for 2D, maybe I had one and then swapped it for the other at some point.

Hopefully the G400 in that case then

 

[Sycraft]

My very first 3D card. My mind was totally blown by what it did for game visuals.

 

[gtrguy]

I remember my Canopus Pure3D with it's staggering 6MB of RAM. Mind blowing!

 

[Darunion]

I had one, but as I was young and it was bought with lawn mowing money, by the time i saved up for a 2nd one to sli it, it didnt make sense to do that anymore and I got a voodoo 3 3500 i believe?

 

[Lghost]

I had a card each from the first three generations of 3DFX, still have the first two hanging on the wall in my shop. Weird to think about the 16 bit color restriction now, and the glide protocol, and the Voodoo 4&5 launch disaster... Lots of memories. (I still have my Kyro 2 on the wall as well, they all seem too historically interesting to throw away)

 

[Spirit_Retro]

I still have one of these. I've held onto it for the day I want to play the original Unreal.

Pretty sure that day isn't going to happen. But just in case.

It's the same reason I hold onto a couple of Dakota based PPC MAC prototypes.

 

[CPCEleet]

I still have my Diamond Monster 3DII — the very first 3D graphics card I had. It was fitted into the family’s desktop PC - a Pentium II powered Dell Dimension XPS R400 with a Diamond Fire GL 1000 Pro card for 2D work.

I’m holding on to the Monster 3D not only for nostalgic reasons, but also for the day when I decide to acquire a Pentium II or Pentium III desktop and build a retro machine to play some old Win 95/98 games.

 

[revenant]

The voodoo original 4mb card was really the game changer for me... winamp plugins with the dancing coke can lol.. and tomb radier and quake2.. I totally missed the whole voodoo2 bus! ...and scan line interleave mode with 2x voodoo2's.. I think I had a RIVA128 and then a TNT, TNT2 etc.... I did finally get a couple pairs of them on eBay a few years ago and ran those in SLI ... played Unreal all the way through on them! And then Gamers Nexus actually used one of my photos of them I posted here on the [H] for their video a while back covering them. Crazy!

 

[Spirit_Retro]

The voodoo original 4mb card was really the game changer for me... winamp plugins with the dancing coke can lol.. and tomb radier and quake2.. I totally missed the whole voodoo2 bus! ...and scan line interleave mode with 2x voodoo2's.. I think I had a RIVA128 and then a TNT, TNT2 etc.... I did finally get a couple pairs of them on eBay a few years ago and ran those in SLI ... played Unreal all the way through on them! And then Gamers Nexus actually used one of my photos of them I posted here on the [H] for their video a while back covering them. Crazy!

Well... I'll make an assumption here:

We are of a generation of gamers who were there for the genesis of both the games and the industry. It was exciting for us wasn't it? My god the number of computers and upgrades I did to play the latest game is not really countable.

And back then- many of the new games were game formats that had not been seen before. It was interesting, gameplay was challenging, and building machines had a bit of voodoo involved with it.

Today- well... you know the complaints. Everyone is an expert. Big companies are selling designs that people pioneered in their bedroom or home office.

The thing that gets under my skin a little was how corporations built in chat, social, forums, server hosting, and anything else that gamers could do independently- essentially destroying the community.

I was in the Quake clan/server world. And there some VERY talented people making contributions in for the form on mods/skins to the Quake III platform.

This no longer exists. So while we are remembering the great hardware- take a moment to think about the great people who made those communities, game types, web sites, and generally moved things forward.

Just a thought.

 

[revenant]

Well... I'll make an assumption here:

We are of a generation of gamers who were there for the genesis of both the games and the industry. It was exciting for us wasn't it? My god the number of computers and upgrades I did to play the latest game is not really countable.

And back then- many of the new games were game formats that had not been seen before. It was interesting, gameplay was challenging, and building machines had a bit of voodoo involved with it.

Today- well... you know the complaints. Everyone is an expert. Big companies are selling designs that people pioneered in their bedroom or home office.

The thing that gets under my skin a little was how corporations built in chat, social, forums, server hosting, and anything else that gamers could do independently- essentially destroying the community.

I was in the Quake clan/server world. And there some VERY talented people making contributions in for the form on mods/skins to the Quake III platform.

This no longer exists. So while we are remembering the great hardware- take a moment to think about the great people who made those communities, game types, web sites, and generally moved things forward.

Just a thought.

I don't forget the people who made these communities and brought things forward, shit I was one of them. Yeah the server hosting community did get wiped but when I played Apex regularly I had the same fun experience I did playing Q2 CTF.. probably even more fun.. I call 2019 the summer I spent in Skull Town. God I had so much fun. There is still a huge modding community for free mods of all kinds of games and generally great community of gamers.. I met so many amazing people on discord and some are my good friends now.. and I mean we're all [H]ere! I feel like things have for sure changed and in some ways for sure for the worse but also in some ways for the better. It's just the evolution of things. and yeah it's good to remember our gaming roots for sure.

Honestly I am more upset that there aren't more coin-op arcades around anymore.. I mean MAME is great.. but there's no replacement for the vibe of an 80s arcade.

I know I am helping derail this thread...

..back on track here.. I think this is the photo gamers nexus poached for thier video: (MSI K7N2L Athlon XP 3200, TNT (2d), SB audigy - I think the voodoo2's were STB)

 

[Aurelius]

The funny thing: I was big on 3D acceleration, but I never had a Voodoo card. I jumped in early with Rendition-based cards and jumped to ATI/NVIDIA when those companies hit their stride. I was generally happy, but it was hard not to be a little envious of people who had dual Voodoo 2 boards.

 

[GoodBoy]

I never had the original voodoo's couldn't afford it back then.

But now I got this...

Notice the chip part# -320

the 355-0026-320 is the 200Mhz VSA100 chip, vs the -220 166Mhz version widely used on the voodoo 4's and 5's.

Those pictures taken by the builder before being shipped to me.

The box says 166Mhz but they are the 200's, special ordered. Now he is out of the 200Mhz chips... but you can get one of these built with 4 166's. Comes with double the vRam that the prototype voodoo5 6000's had.
66Mhz PCI slot, so that limits the mobo choices, but it's fully compatible to any 66mhz slot. The chips actually interface in PCI, the AGP boards have to use a converter chip to transform the signals to PCI.. So this is as fast as they can go. You can get them in AGP 1.0 as well, but need to find a compatible mobo.