Written: 6/18/2000
Written by: John "Moto" Chow
Price: $299.99US
Manufactured by: 3dfx

It's wasn't long ago when 3dfx ruled the 3D world. I still remember the original Voodoo Graphics card. Nothing on the market even came close to the sheer power that first 3D video card put out. 3dfx followed up the Voodoo Graphics with the Voodoo 2 and once again, show the world that 3dfx was the king of 3D graphics. Things have changed since those days.

Today 3dfx finds itself playing catch up to nVidia, who since releasing the first TNT video card, has been on a unstoppable winning streak. The Voodoo 5 is what 3dfx hopes will help it regain its lost glory. The Voodoo 5 is the card that answers many of the short comings of the Voodoo 3, like lack of 32 bit color, lack of support for large textures and lack of support of a bunch of other stuff.

The Voodoo 5 5500 we had for testing is the final retail product. Because the card was shipped late you will find a little gift inside the box, a nice 3dfx mouse pad! While it's no match for a Ratpadz, it is a nice way of saying you're sorry for being late.

The first thing you notice when you look at the new Voodoo card is the size. This thing is just a monster! It's so long it may not fit into some cases. The Voodoo 5 5500 uses two chips working in SLI mode. Basically, each video chip works together to do twice as much as can be done with one chip. The twin chips use a lot of power. So much that the card needs to be plug into your computer power supply. 3dfx supplied a pass-though power connector for this purpose.

Utilizing a scalable architecture, the Voodoo5 5500 AGP features dual 3dfx VSA-100 chips for more 3D horsepower. The chips work in parallel, producing over 667 Megatexels per second fill rate. The Voodoo 5 5500 comes with 64 Megs of SDRAM. While this is twice the RAM that a similar priced GeForce2 cards comes with, it runs at half the speed of the DDR RAM used by the GeForce2.

The one feature that 3dfx hopes will win people over is FSAA and T Buffer. Unlike the FSAA used by nVidia, the one from 3dfx seems to work. T Buffer adds a bunch of movie effects like motion blur to make a game look realistic. However, there is currently no software that supports it.

On the surface, it looks like 3dfx has a winner on their hands. Here's a 64 Meg video card that is priced less than a 32 Meg GeForce2. The FSAA works on all 3D games including your old ones. Have an old copy of NBA Live 98 or Need For Speed III hanging around? They will become a whole new game with FSAA.

Next page: Taking a closer look

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