Voodoo2
Encyclopedia
3dfx
3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field for several years in the late 1990s until 2000 when it underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry...
. It was released in February 1998 as a replacement for the original Voodoo Graphics chipset. The card ran at a chipset clock rate of 90 MHz and used 100 MHz EDO DRAM, and was available for the PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
interface. The Voodoo2 came in two models, one with 8 MB
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
RAM and one with 12 MB RAM. The 8 MB card had 2 MB of memory per texture mapping unit
Texture mapping unit
A texture mapping unit is a component in modern graphics processing units , historically it is a separate physical processor. A TMU is able to rotate and resize a bitmap to be placed onto an arbitrary plane of a given 3D object as a texture...
(TMU) vs. 4 MB on the 12 MB model. The 4 MB framebuffer on both cards supported a maximum screen resolution
Display resolution
The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube , flat panel or projection...
of 800×600, while the increased texture memory on the 12 MB card allowed more detailed textures
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
.
Each of the three chips present on the card had its own 64-bit RAM interface, giving the card a "total" bus width of 192 bits. The Voodoo2 had an increased chip-count compared to the original two-chip Voodoo card. Competing products such as the ATI Rage
ATI Rage
The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators.-3D RAGE :...
Pro, NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
RIVA 128
RIVA 128
Released in late 1997 by Nvidia, the RIVA 128, or "NV3", was one of the first consumer graphics processing units to integrate 3D acceleration in addition to traditional 2D and video acceleration...
, and Rendition
Rendition (company)
Rendition was a maker of 3D graphics chipsets in the mid- to late-90's. They were known for products such as the Vérité 1000 and Vérité 2x00 and for being one of the first 3D chipset makers to directly work with Quake developer John Carmack to make a hardware-accelerated version of the game ....
Verite 2x00 were single-chip products, each with integrated 2D GUI/VGA accelerators. As with the original Voodoo, the Voodoo2 was a dedicated 3D accelerator, and had to be used in conjunction with a conventional 2D graphics card. It required the same external pass-through cabling familiar to owners of the Voodoo.
The Voodoo2's third chip was a second TMU that allowed a second texture to be drawn during the same graphics engine pass, and thus with no performance penalty. At time of introduction, Voodoo2 was the only 3D card capable of single-cycle dual-texturing. Usage of the Voodoo2's second TMU depended on application software; Quake II
Quake II
Quake II, released on December 9, 1997, is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Id Software and distributed by Activision. It is not a sequel to Quake; it merely uses the name of the former game due to Id's difficulties in coming up with alternative names.The soundtrack for Quake II...
and Unreal
Unreal
Unreal is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive in May 1998...
exploited dual-texturing to great effect. In games that did not use more than one texture layer, Voodoo2 was only faster than Voodoo1 because of its higher clock speed.
The Voodoo2 introduced Scan-Line Interleave
Scan-Line Interleave
Scan-Line Interleave from 3dfx is a method for linking two video cards or chips together to produce a single output. It is an application of parallel processing for computer graphics, meant to increase the processing power available for graphics. SLI from 3dfx was introduced in 1998 and used in...
(SLI) capability to the consumer PC market. In SLI mode, two Voodoo2 boards were installed in a PC and ran in parallel, with each unit drawing half the lines of the display. Voodoo2 SLI not only doubled rendering throughput, it also increased the total framebuffer memory, and thus the maximum supported screen resolution increased to a then-impressive 1024×768. However, texture memory was not doubled because each card needed to duplicate the scene data. The original Voodoo Graphics also had SLI capability, but it was only used in the arcade and professional markets.
In late 1998, 3dfx released the Voodoo3
Voodoo3
Voodoo3 was a series of computer gaming video cards manufactured and designed by 3dfx Interactive. It was the successor to the company's high-end Voodoo 2 line and was based heavily upon the older Voodoo Banshee product. Voodoo3 was announced at COMDEX '98 and arrived on store shelves in 1999...
, which effectively replaced the Voodoo2 as the company's top-performing product. The base model Voodoo3 2000 offered slightly greater performance than a Voodoo2 SLI + 2D card, in a single card. The 3000 and 3500 models offered performance moderately to greatly exceeding Voodoo2 SLI. At the same time 3dfx also released the budget-priced Voodoo Banshee, a combination 2D/3D card that used an overclocked but incomplete Voodoo2, missing one of the texture units.
The Voodoo2 enjoyed remarkably long usage in many computer systems, as a Voodoo2 SLI setup was competitive with newer cards like NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
's RIVA TNT2
RIVA TNT2
The RIVA TNT2 was a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT . RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator...
, Matrox
Matrox
Matrox is a producer of video card components and equipment for personal computers. Based in Dorval, Quebec, Canada it was founded by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić....
's Millennium G400
Matrox G400
The G400 is a video card made by Matrox, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI, video, and Direct3D 6.0 3D accelerator...
, and even NVIDIA's GeForce 256
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Released on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, and adding...
in some situations. 3dfx's Glide API
Glide API
Glide is a 3D graphics API developed by 3dfx Interactive for their Voodoo Graphics 3D accelerator cards. Although it originally started as a proprietary API, it was later open sourced by 3dfx. It was dedicated to gaming performance, supporting geometry and texture mapping primarily, in data...
played an essential role in this longevity because some games were still tailored more towards Glide than Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
or OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
. Although the chipset is now obsolete some dedicated enthusiasts have had success running modern games with a Voodoo2, e.g. Doom 3
Doom 3
Doom 3 is a science fiction horror video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. An example of the first-person shooter genre, Doom 3 was first released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004. The game was later adapted for Linux, as well as being ported by Aspyr Media for Mac...
. http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1462
Specifications
- Voodoo2 (V2 1000) 90 MHzHertzThe hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
clock (memory and core) - 135 MHz RAMDACRAMDACRandom Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter is a combination of three fast DACs with a small SRAM used in computer graphics display adapters to store the color palette and to generate the analog signals to drive a color monitor...
, 16-bit (65536 color)HighcolourHigh color graphics is a method of storing image information in a computer's memory such that each pixel is represented by two bytes...
display - 3.1415920klcf 89 pixelPixelIn digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
s/sec sustained fill rate for bilinearBilinear filteringBilinear filtering is a texture filtering method used to smooth textures when displayed larger or smaller than they actually are.Most of the time, when drawing a textured shape on the screen, the texture is not displayed exactly as it is stored, without any distortion...
textures - LOD mipmapMipmapIn 3D computer graphics texture filtering, MIP maps are pre-calculated, optimized collections of images that accompany a main texture, intended to increase rendering speed and reduce aliasing artifacts. They are widely used in 3D computer games, flight simulators and other 3D imaging systems. The...
ping - Z-bufferingZ-bufferingIn computer graphics, z-buffering is the management of image depth coordinates in three-dimensional graphics, usually done in hardware, sometimes in software. It is one solution to the visibility problem, which is the problem of deciding which elements of a rendered scene are visible, and which...
- alpha blending