- The owner of this GPU was recently offered $15,000
by a collector.
Why?
I'll tell you why.
Because it's a ridiculously rare artifact
from the early days of 3D gaming.
The bad news is the collector wasn't me.
I know. (baby crying)
The good news is that I got my hands on it anyway.
(people cheering)
I know right?
When the deal fell through,
the owner, Ross, agreed to drive it up to Canada
for us to show it off.
And as luck would have it, it actually works.
This is the real deal, guys.
A very late stage prototype of what would've been
3DFX's final flagship card, the Voodoo 5 6000.
And this one has even been reworked
by a former 3DFX engineer to reach
what we believe would have been the final spec.
Could this beast of a quad GPU card have saved 3DFX
and change the face of gaming as we know it?
Probably not.
But that doesn't mean that we can't fire it up
and relive our wildest dreams from a parallel universe
and fire up this message from our sponsor.
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What makes this card really special is that
it's straight from 3DFX themselves,
making it the best glide gaming experience on the planet.
I mean, yes, we showed recently
that you can emulate 3DFX hardware on a modern PC,
but so far, you can only go up to the Voodoo 3.
You wanna go faster,
you're gonna need better metal.
(man grunting)
Let's ride.
Not being a 3DFX historian myself,
I wasn't a hundred percent sure what to expect.
I can tell you that I didn't expect
an external DC barrel jack, though.
Okay, sure.
Rather than just putting a bigger cooler on the front,
you just add these little heat sinks to the back
of where the dies are soldered.
I guess.
Man, I wish we'd done this video even like six months ago.
You guys would've been so impressed by the size
of this card, but now that the 4090 exists, it's like, eh.
Make up for it with your personality.
Here we go.
It's loud.
It's right next to my mic.
Wish I'd thought of that.
Hey, nice.
Athlon XP 2200+.
Oh no, no floppy disc!
Is everything working right now?
Like, capture's working and everything?
- [Producer] Capture is working.
- This is so exciting.
World of Warcraft 1.12.1.
I mean surely we can't play WOW on this.
- [Producer] Yeah, it didn't like that.
- Should we play Half-Life?
If you have a 3D card that incorporates the Voodoo 2
or Banshee chipsets, you will want 3DFX Mini Driver.
Let's go.
That is some mighty fine screen tearing.
The latency is great and this is butter smooth.
If I had to guess, and this is gonna be pretty tough
'cause I'm on a 60 hertz display, I would say probably
100 to 150 frames per second.
Like it feels very, very low-
Oh, get back here.
(man vocalizing)
Imagine having this kind of money for a computer back then.
- [Producer] And like $600 for one of these things.
- $600 GPU.
But it runs like I just-
- [Producer] Now it's worth noting
that this is a game from 1998.
- Yeah, right.
So this game came out a couple of years before
this even had reached the prototype.
Whoa, hey, hey, hey.
Stop that.
- [Producer] Yeah, hence the Voodoo 2 and Voodoo Banshee
notes in the option screen, there.
- Ah.
Okay, this thing absolutely blows away
what I would've been using at the time.
I know, obviously it looks like crap by today's standards,
but I wouldn't have been able to believe my eyes
if I had seen this back in 2000.
Can I just say how painless this was
for a prototype graphics card?
- [Producer] I don't think it was very painless to get it
working to begin with.
- Well, yeah, but it's painless for me now.
- [Ross] Yeah, so go to console
and then "timedemo" as one word, space, blowout.
- Okay, here we go.
Ooh, look at it go.
We're gonna find out what the FPS was
and this is a much more demanding scenario than
what I was looking at.
Now I feel like I underestimated it.
119 frames per second.
Okay, let's try tribes.
A Voodoo card has been detected.
If you experience oddities,
you should try the WickedGL drivers at wicked3d.com.
(intense music) (keyboard clacking)
Oh, (beep).
So first of all, 1024 by 768, right?
- [Producer] Yep.
- Bit depth 16, right?
- [Producer] Can be 16 or 32.
- Well, let's go 32.
Let's go.
Okay, I mean obviously we're just gonna
crank everything to high, right?
- [Producer] What could go wrong?
- Let's see how many FPSs we get here.
Plenty.
We're getting shot down boys.
Bro, no!
Oh wait, did I actually die?
Oh, seriously?
Okay.
How do I make this go away?
- [Producer] I think it's just paused you
while it tells you about everything.
- Oh, come on.
Oh, hey, here we go.
Got something to fight.
Flay Master, let's go.
What the crap am I even firing?
It's a bouncing ball.
Oh my goodness.
Bounce it up the thing.
Oh, I got one.
It's running shockingly well.
That is to say, the performance is great on that era games
and it's kind of problem free as far as I can tell.
Four flipping GPUs.
Um.
Benchmark.
I mean, she's running it.
- [Producer] Yep.
- This is about what I remember this looking like.
I remember this second run through.
Oops, uh-oh.
Okay, mostly problem free.
I thought this was pulled
from an actual Matrix game at the time.
- I don't think so. - Are you sure?
- [Producer] I don't-
You're making me doubt myself.
- [Linus] I mean the reflections are all looking okay.
- [Producer] Kind of.
- Nope, you're totally right.
It's just a Matrix inspired demo.
- [Producer] So I shazamed you?
- Okay, hold on a second.
"Faster than a Ferrari and more reliable,"
that PC world ad in the bottom?
Love it.
(person laughing)
I remember this running a lot better
on hardware a couple of years later.
- Oh, boy. - Yikes.
- [Producer] I think software rendering
would be actually faster.
- Oops.
No hardware support.
- [Producer] Rip.
- We'll talk about that later.
Oops, no hardware support.
- [Producer] Just doesn't do bump mapping at all?
- Talk about that later.
Not yet.
Pixel shader.
No hardware support. - Rip.
- Hey, 2647 3D marks.
Let's go.
There it is.
- [Producer] Yep, that's why it was so slow.
If you ran 2000 it would actually like probably
be pretty good.
Basically, NVIDIA having that was a killer app for them.
- What a cool trip to 3D gaming Christmas past.
But believe it or not, this isn't the only time machine.
There are other brand new Voodoo 5 6000s that are available
today for a fraction of the cost of this one.
Russian modder, Anthony ZX64 has made a name for himself
refurbishing and modding vintage GPUs.
And the Voodoo 5 6,000 rebuild is his crowning achievement.
Not only did he build his reproduction
with only a non-working prototype for reference,
he actually improved the design
by doubling the VRAM to 256 megabytes.
Though it should be noted
that Anthony recommends using the onboard jumper to fall
back to 128 megs to improve compatibility with older games.
Genuine 3DFX hardware or not though,
this thing was wicked fast at the time,
even if the truth is that the Voodoo 5 6000 was destined
for failure before it even got to this prototyping phase.
See, here's the thing.
3DFX had a wealth of experience using multiple GPUs together
to make FPS number go up.
But the fact is the single GPU competition was getting good,
really good.
And in 2001, the GeForce 2 and Radeon 8000 showed up
with both strong performance,
and a new technology that would radically
change the graphical fidelity of video games:
shaders.
This meanwhile, lack shaders, and was expected to cost
an estimated 600 US dollars at retail.
Unthinkable at the time,
even if it sounds pretty good today.
So as amazing as it was,
that's a turd that absolutely will not polish.
But how did 3DFX get to this point?
They were the undisputed kings
of the 3D gaming space from 1996 onward.
To understand that,
we have to understand why they were the kings,
because it's not like they were the first.
Incumbents like Matrox, ATI, and S3 had their own 3D boards
and Rendition's Verite series came out
at around the same time.
And unlike 3DFXs early cards,
none of those required a separate video card
just to run the 2D desktop.
Two GPUs?
One for 3D, one for 2D.
3DFX actually came into this market with a huge disadvantage
but what they had was as perfect a blend
of features and performance as you could possibly expect
at the time.
Not only did the Voodoo 1 support a faster fill rate
than its competitors, it had hardware support
for Z-buffer depth information,
bilinear texture filtering, anti aliasing,
and it boasted higher resolution, higher color output.
These are all things that other cards
either relied on the CPU to do for them,
or just straight up couldn't do at all.
Which meant that you could run a much lower tier processor,
like even a 486, and still get an enjoyable 3D experience.
I mean, to be clear, unlike today,
a dedicated 3D accelerator wasn't necessary to play
most games, but if you used full software rendering,
you'd be stuck at super low video quality.
I'm talking 320 by 240.
256 colors if you were lucky.
Voodoo to the rescue, then.
And a big part of their special sauce was the way
that they wrapped these advantages
into a relatively easy to program package
with the Glide API.
Remember guys, this is in the days
before direct 3D or widespread open GL support.
So each vendor had their own API
that game developers needed to support.
But Glide was surprisingly similar to Open GL
in both syntax and feature set, limited, though it was.
So if a game developer had to program in support
for each vendor's API, while they were far more
likely to support Glide over say, S3D or Red Line.
This almost immediately gave 3DFX a special place
in the hearts of gamers, even if the API was proprietary.
3DFX then subsequently enjoyed a virtual monopoly
in the 3D gaming space,
while the competition either made expensive gambles
or sat with their development effectively on pause
while they waited for the first direct 3D specification.
The NV1, for example, from NVIDIA used a wildly different
rendering mode than Direct 3D would eventually use,
forcing NVIDIA to scrap their NV2
and then start playing catch up.
But while 3DFX became well known
for their robust feature set, easy development,
and their multi GPU scan-line interleave, or SLI,
which allowed for higher frame rates
and resolutions than anyone else,
success seemed like a paralyzing force for them.
And by the time of the Voodoo 3,
things started to take a turn.
With direct 3D and clearer open GL specifications to target,
the competition was catching up and fast
and in some cases even surpassing 3DFX's offerings.
For example, NVIDIA's RIVA TNT2 brought
competitive performance, 32 bit color rendering,
and maximum texture sizes that were eight times larger
than the Voodoo 3, which could still only display
16 bit color in game.
Meanwhile, 3DFX, rather than investing in GPU R&D,
invested in a litany of side projects
and attempts to stave off the competition.
The failed bid to provide chips for the Sega Dreamcast
was a major blow that ended in a lawsuit
and while the terms weren't disclosed,
Sega had intended to purchase the rights
to use 3DFXs technology so as to prevent the competition
from being able to, and it's likely they got their way.
You can get your way, by the way,
with a desk pad from lttstore.com, same price, any size,
and now available in our stealthy circuit pattern.
And, while they didn't know it then, 3DFX'S 1998 purchase
of their biggest board partner, STB Systems,
ended up being not the monopolistic takeover
of the market that many feared,
but rather the beginning of their end.
In effect, it changed 3DFX's relationship
with their board partners from chipset provider and partner,
to competitor, which incentivized their partners to support
the real competition, primarily NVIDIA and ATI,
whose rapid hardware development cycles became popular
with system integrators like HP and Dell,
which 3DFX had no interest in catering to.
So without chips going into game consoles
and with their board partners mutinying
and taking over the system space,
3DFX was left in the unenviable position of relying on
only the enthusiast segment as their customers.
And better options were now
beginning to emerge for them, as well.
Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall,
3DFX purchased Gigapixel in mid 2000,
after that company lost its bid to provide chips
for the original Xbox.
The idea, it seems, was to finally get their next
gen GPU rampage across the finish line.
That GPU had been in development since 1998
and had it released when 3DFX would've liked it to,
it's possible that they could have stayed competitive
with the GeForce 2 that they were staring down in 2000.
Unfortunately for them, their creditors were fed up
by year's end, voting for bankruptcy
and liquidating the company.
NVIDIA would go on to acquire
all of their intellectual property.
Pretty bitter pill to swallow.
The parallels between 3DFX's downfall and NVIDIA's behavior
lately is kind of ironic if you think about it.
'Cause they've been going down a very similar path,
antagonizing their board partners, diverting attention
to side businesses, like crypto mining
autonomous vehicles, machine learning, you get it.
But fortunately for NVIDIA, it seems
like they've got a wide enough mode around them
and enough cash on hand to weather
pretty much an apocalypse.
And there are no existential threats
to them like 3DFX faced during their decline.
At least not yet.
This, my friends, is why competition is so important
in the industry because it can and will light a fire
under a company that's grown complacent, like 3DFX did.
If they'd had less debt, if they'd gotten the Sega contract,
or simply made different decisions,
who knows what might have happened when
the competition heated up?
A 3DFX forced to compete while they still could
might have survived.
Unfortunately for this timeline, they chose the Voodoo 5
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If you enjoyed this video, go check out our video
on the 3DFX Voodoo 2 SLI gaming setup
for a little more on just how good 3DFX used to be
and how much they allowed to slip through their fingers.