3Dfx Voodoo3 1000
The first 3Dfx Voodoo 3 was released in March 1999. With either 8 MB or 16 MB of SDRAM and faster core and memory clocks, it was the successor to their Voodoo Banshee combined 2D/3D card from the year before.
.png) |
Released | March 1999 |
| Bus | AGP 2x | |
| Chipset | 3Dfx Avenger | |
| Core Clock | 125 MHz | |
| Memory | 8 MB or 16 MB SDRAM (128-bit bus width) | |
| Ports | 15-pin DSUB (RGB analogue out) | |
| Part # | 210-0364-003 | |
| FCC ID | - | |
| Price | At launch: $110 | |
| See Also | Voodoo 2, Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo3 2000 |
The Voodoo3 1000 was the first card released by 3dfx after their acquisition of STB Systems three months earlier. For this card, they took the 2D- and 3D-capable Voodoo Banshee core and added a second texture mapping unit (TMU), just like they had done for the Voodoo2 over the original Voodoo Graphics.
While the Avenger core was capable of 32-bit colour rendering, 3dfx opted to reduce this to 16-bit precision through dithering in order to reduce the storage capacity in the frame buffer to 16 MB.
The Avenger chip was fabricated using a 0.25 micron process.
With its 125 MHz core and memory clock, the Voodoo3 was considered a top performer in its class upon release, and subsequent variants of the Voodoo3 would see these increase up to 183 MHz.
Four months after the Voodoo3 1000 was released, 3dfx launched their first cut-down version of it, called 3dfx Velocity 100. Designed primarily for the OEM market, these came with 8 MB of video memory instead of the full 16 MB (though it did use SGRAM instead of SDRAM) and one of the TMUs disabled. This meant the Velocity was essentially the same as a Voodoo Banshee, though its clocks ran at a faster 143 MHz. Later, enthusiasts discovered they could re-enable the disabled TMU with a simple amendment to the registry.
Board Revisions
Click on one of the links above to get more detail on the specific card you are looking at.
Competition
The Voodoo3 1000 competed head-to-head with nVidia's RIVA TNT2 and ATI's Rage 128. To a lesser extend, it also competed with the Matrox Millennium G400 and S3 Savage4.
In the Media
The Voodoo3's dual-TMU architecture ladles out all the hot visual gravy you've come to expect from 3dfx, with features such as per-pixel, perspective-correct texture-mapping, a 16-bit z-buffer, and single-cycle trilinear mip-mapping. Notably absent from the Voodoo3 port, however, are next-gen features such as single-pass bump-mapping and anisotropic filtering. But these no-shows will be the least of Voodoo3's worries in the long run.
In a gaming world that's increasing populated with large textures, the Voodoo3 is an AGP 2x part without AGP texturing support. On the Voodoo3, large textures (such as Quake III's 512 x 512 textures) are automatically down-sampled to 256 x 256. Since the Voodoo3 can slam textures in and out of local memory at much higher speeds than AGP texturing allows, 3dfx figures the chipset's 256 x 256 limitation is a small price to pay for faster framerates.
Also cutting into the life span of the Voodoo3 is its lack of a full 32-bit rendering pipeline. The Voodoo3 follows in the steps of its ancestors by rendering internally at a 32-bit color depth and dithering down the output to a tame 16-bits. Even though the Voodoo3 makes great strides in image quality by banishing banding artifacts with a post-processing filter, true 32-bit rendering backed by a 32-bit z-buffer would do a lot to remove a big question mark in front of Voodoo3's future.
The Voodoo3 is currently shipping in two flavors, the 143 MHz Voodoo3 2000 and the 166 MHz Voodoo3 3000. Defining the high end of the Voodoo3 line in the multimedia-rich Voodoo3 3500 TV. This 183 MHz AGP/PCI part adds video capture (including MPEG-2 encoding on the fly), a TV tuner, high-quality video-out, an FM stereo tuner, and DVD playback support. You can expect to see the Voodoo3 3500 TV in the July timeframe."
Maximum PC, July 1999
Setting it Up
Before removing your existing 2D card switch the video driver to Standard VGA. Click Start, Control Panel. Double-click on Display.Select 640X480 and 16 colors. Accept the changes.Power off the system and remove your existing 2D card.
Install the Voodoo3 Card in a free AGP or PCI Slot. Power on the system and verify that video appears during post. Start Windows in Normal mode.
The last set of official drivers released for the Voodoo3 on Windows 9x was v1.07.00. For Windows 2000 the latest version is 1.03.00. Later drivers exist that were written by unofficial third-parties.
Downloads
All drivers support both PCI and AGP variants of the Voodoo3.
Operation Manual Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Voodoo3 Windows Drivers For 2000/3000 cards. Supports Windows 95/98.
Requires DirectX 6.1 or higher. |
Voodoo3 Windows Drivers For 2000/3000 cards. Supports Windows 95/ 98.
Requires DirectX 6.0 or higher. |
Voodoo3 Windows Drivers For 2000/3000 cards. Supports Windows 95/98.
Requires DirectX 6.0 or higher. |
Voodoo3 Windows Drivers For 2000/3000 cards. Supports Windows 95/98.
Requires DirectX 7.0 or higher. |
Voodoo3 Windows Drivers For 2000/3000 cards. Supports Windows 95/98.
Requires DirectX 7.0 or higher. |
Voodoo3 Windows Drivers For 2000/3000 cards. Supports Windows 95/98.
Requires DirectX 7.0 or higher. |
Voodoo3 Windows Drivers For 2000/3000 cards. Supports Windows 95, 98, and ME.
Requires DirectX 7.0 or higher. |
Voodoo3 Windows Drivers DirectX 8.0 support |
Velocity 100/200 Windows 3.1 Drivers This is a 3dfx Velocity Driver that should work on a Voodoo3
but will only use one TMU when used on a Voodoo3. |
V.Control 3dfx Hardware Tweaker
A Win32 (Windows 95,98,Me,NT4,2000,XP) utility for controlling 3dfx graphics adapters. Will enable custom refreshrates, overclock on the fly, restore desktop icon positions, and save registry tweaks as presets. Refreshrates and graphic processor speeds are controled by programing hardware directly. This utility will help fix Windows 2000,XP 60Hz issues with 3dfx GLIDE™, Direct3D, and OpenGL.Currently supports 3dfx Voodoo Banshee, Velocity, Voodoo3, Voodoo4, Voodoo5. |
More Pictures