Anthony's Voodoo5 6000 remake project, Seems exciting for sure!

  • Well that is not going to happen in 1.75 Billion years.

    And no I don't speak Russian, left alone read or decipher it, only Australian English and Dutch, I am not going join a Russian board, my anxiety says no big time.
    Besides I don't know anyone there, so that is not going to happen anyway.

    Fans will always support any kind of project, it's great what you have done, no one has ever achieved what you have done and that is fantastic to see how far you pulled this off :)

    Even tho nothing is perfect, there is always room for improvements, I just don't agree on some things and that too should be respected as I respect those that support your line of work.

    The Voodoo5 6000 was designed to have a 66Mhz Bus speed, lowering would not of done the card any better, the V6K FAQ is dead-on accurate when it comes to such details, as said I don't agree with your design on certain aspects, but overall it's really not bad :)
    The PCI Connector should of been universal PCI meaning it should have two notches like the V5 5500 PCI's have :



    And it's great others do love on what you do, I do understand that from their perspectives.

    5 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (26. Mai 2021 um 10:28)

  • Anthony

    What PLX Bridgechip are you using on the card?

    As far as I understand the PCI specifications, the notch only determines if a card is 5V or 3.3V or universal (2 notches). The speed of the Bus is determined by the PCI chipset that is operating the Bus.

    https://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/ootf/FAQs/pci-overview.pdf

    So if the PLX Bridge supports 66MHz and your PCI chipset supports it too and you have no other devices degrading the Bus to 33MHz, there should be no problem using 66MHz Bus.

    As I said earlier somewhere: incredible work Anthony - do you have new images from cards that are no more prototype status?

  • Considering the Voodoo 5 6000 needs 3.3Volts to work, the card Anthony made has a 5 Volt PCI 32 Bit connector, shouldn't this be the 3.3Volt connector or just the Universal one like 3dfx did for their Avenger, Daytona & Napalm PCI Cards?


    Here Anthony's Voodoo5 6000 PCI 128MB using the 5 Volt PCI 32 Bit connector:


    Problem remains Conventional 1CPU boards will only provide 33Mhz PCI bus speeds, 40Mhz at max if lucky.
    So to get the max out of that 66Mhz bus you are forced to use the Server or workstation based boards.

    Now if the card had a 3.3Volt AGP x2 connector everyone could use this card in their AGP mainboards without much worries.
    And if there are those with a mainboard that has no AGP port the AGP .5 convertor could be used or say the AGP2PCI Convertor.

    This would of been a far better solution and since most Voodoo5 users have AGP anyway, this is all I am referring to and why I disagree with using the 5 volt PCI 32Bit connector at hand, it's kind of senseless imo, but oke.

    All original 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP 128MB's had an AGP x2 connector with 66Mhz Bus support, take this Rev.A1 1500 as example.

  • All Mainboards I recently looked up (for example Intel 875 based, KT133, AMD761, KT333, X58 and more modern ones) have PCI Slots with the notch in the right place to use Anthonys card, so I don't see any problem there. Even my Gigabyte H470 HD3 Socket1200 Board has a PCI with the notch in the right place, so I could use this card even with my 11600KF :spitze: (I know, no legacy OS support etc, just for theoretical example).

  • All Mainboards I recently looked up (for example Intel 875 based, KT133, AMD761, KT333, X58 and more modern ones) have PCI Slots with the notch in the right place to use Anthonys card, so I don't see any problem there. Even my Gigabyte H470 HD3 Socket1200 Board has a PCI with the notch in the right place, so I could use this card even with my 11600KF :spitze: (I know, no legacy OS support etc, just for theoretical example).

    that's true, but not all of these have good pciex-pci bridges. so far, i865/875 and nforce 3 are known for the highest pci bandwidth. final reality bus test exposes pci/agp bandwith very well.

  • bridge chip is pci6152 as on original v56k, no way to change it.

    will post images of the second batch card soon.

  • any of these cards able to operate at 66mhz with a pci to agp adapter. but they intended to be a second after the x850 for instance:

    https://scontent.fhel6-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/18…2e5&oe=60D38B11

    btw, i had a chance to play with a supermicro x8sax board: https://www.supermicro.ru/products_spec_1023.html

    what a beast, very flexible pci slots config due to a proper pciex-pci bridge. very good performance. on a 66mhz bus my cards hit 5000 points in 3dm01 default settings. i believe with a 320 chips 6000 marks is achievable.

    2 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Anthony (26. Mai 2021 um 16:01)

  • Anthony, keep up the great work. A long mistery for me is why PCI cards can´t get the 66Mhz that was implemented with PCI 2.0 specs in 1996. Even a really old Asus P2B is specified as 2.1. When one uses Dos HWutils, they will tell you your slot can do 66MHz but i never found an actual card (3.3V/32bit) making use of this.

    Second thing, don´t get bored here in this forum because of Gold Leader, he is one individual. I am convinced that 99% of people in VA know and value this project and give it the credit it deserves (and not just emotional complaining with sparks of constructive criticism).

    In the end our hobby and VA need people like you, taking things to a new level! IMHO this is the greatest thing achieved since the first 6ks showed up here. In these years (GATs Göttin/hard::overclock, aso), we all have to keep in mind that even 3dfx engineers only build faulty 6ks that Hank had to fix and yours work straight away.

  • I believe that the 33/66MHz problem arises on regular mainboards due to other devices onboard dragging the bus down to 33MHz. Remember, if just ONE device on the bus can't cope with 66MHz, the entire bus is being dragged down to the lower clock speed.

    So maybe onboard sound on PCI? Onboard ethernet on PCI? Or maybe an additional IDE or IDE RAID controller, like the common HPT370 on older mainboards?

    There's many potential sources. Also, the PCI host bridge may play a role as well (the one in the chipset). Maybe some bridges simply don't offer a 66MHz mode on PCI? Though I am not sure if this conforms to the standards and is really a thing. That one's just an assumption of mine.

    Best case for this would be a workstation board with a separate 66MHz PCI or even a 133/100MHz PCI-X controller with no other devices attached to the bus.

    1-6000-banner-88x31-jpg

    Stolzer Besitzer eines 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP Prototypen:

    • 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP HiNT Rev.A-3700

    [//wp.xin.at] - No RISC, no fun!

    QotY: Girls Love, BEST Love; 2018 - Lo and behold, for it is the third Coming; The third great Year of Yuri, citric as it may be! Edit: 2019 wasn't too bad either... Edit: 2020... holy crap, we're on a roll here~♡!

    Quote Bier.jpg@IRC 2020: "Je schlimmer der Fetisch, desto besser!"

  • Yeah, ages back i had a P5WDGS WS with such a controller. Even 33MHz cards profited from being along on a bus.

    33MHz PCI was already exhausted by IDE transfers from the Southbridge. Concerning the dragging to 33MHz you are probably right, so as 99% had a Southbridge, the statement that a board is 2.1/2.2/2.3 PCI Version was just a basic statement about being backwards compatible to their own crappy onboard bridges ;)

    Chipset

    • Intel 440BX (Seattle) / PIIX4E (82371EB)
    • NB/SB interconnection via PCI with 133 MB/s
    • Supports FSB 66/100 (66/100 MHz SDR)
    • Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)
    • Supports Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP)
    • Supports Universal Serial Bus (USB 1.1)
    • Supports up to AGP 2x (AGP 1.0, 3.3V)
    • Supports PCI v2.1
    • Supports ISA
    • Supports up to UDMA33

    That´s ironic ;) The SB 82371EB PIIX4E can only do 33MHz...unsolder that crap :steinigung:

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Tobi (26. Mai 2021 um 18:29)

  • I wasn't sure anymore whether typical, classic Southbridges were sitting directly on the FSB or on the PCI bus. It's been a while since I've been actively tinkering with an FSB system. Long while.


    Edit: Ah, alright. Didn't know/remember the PIIX already had such a limitation. That settles things for a ton of older desktop boards already.

    1-6000-banner-88x31-jpg

    Stolzer Besitzer eines 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP Prototypen:

    • 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP HiNT Rev.A-3700

    [//wp.xin.at] - No RISC, no fun!

    QotY: Girls Love, BEST Love; 2018 - Lo and behold, for it is the third Coming; The third great Year of Yuri, citric as it may be! Edit: 2019 wasn't too bad either... Edit: 2020... holy crap, we're on a roll here~♡!

    Quote Bier.jpg@IRC 2020: "Je schlimmer der Fetisch, desto besser!"

  • native support for a pci bus was till the i8xx and nforce 3 chipsets. really good pci33 performance they provide. native support for a pci66 (pci-x) was only on the server chipsets, like serverset and the intel ones afaik, i have no experience with these. pci support on later chipset is implemented via external bridge and many of these bridges cut bandwidth a lot, 2x and even more. workstations boards should provide good performance thou. 3dm01 really rocks on a fast core cpu and 66mhz bus, but not the glide games

  • As the PCI slots go the 5500 PCI mac has the Universal PCI Connectors if the 6000 PCI had those the card would be able to be used in my Supermicro H8DAE-2 for example, later Workstation boards used Universal PCI-X slots that could be set to 32Bit 66Mhz as well.


    This is why I found it strange that PCI Universal wasn't used while 3dfx did that for all their Voodoo3 , Voood4 & Voodoo5 PCI cards.
    It's kind of a limitation wit the 6000 PCI for not having this :S

    Found some more info about the AAlchemy 4116, it is in Russian, I think?
    https://www.pc4xp.ru/cpn/detail.php?ID=3380

    Not sure of these specs are accurate.
    it would be nice to have a full detailed review of this card, that is if anyone has one.

    3 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (27. Mai 2021 um 23:48)

  • As the PCI slots go the 5500 CPI mac has the Univeral PCIConnectors if the 6000 PCI had those the card would be able to be used in my Supermicro H8DAE-2 for example, later Workstation boards used Universal PCI-X slots that could be set to 32Bit 66Mhz as well.

    6000 works at best with 98SE, have tried 2K but was very bad experience, Dont know why you want to use the card on this Bord?

    use only 15% of its power with 98SE or tons of problems with 2K... ???

    Best board would be a Pentium-M based Board with 66MHz, like DFI 855GME-MGF

  • I think its much easier to create a new good working driver for XP than build the ultimate Mainboard ^^

    I think they "could" do both, let's see what the future holds.

    Let's remember what it started from and look where it arrived:

    Voodoo 1 Sli how it should be?

    Now nothing surprises me anymore, or almost ...;)

  • As the PCI slots go the 5500 CPI mac has the Univeral PCIConnectors if the 6000 PCI had those the card would be able to be used in my Supermicro H8DAE-2 for example, later Workstation boards used Universal PCI-X slots that could be set to 32Bit 66Mhz as well.

    6000 works at best with 98SE, have tried 2K but was very bad experience, Dont know why you want to use the card on this Bord?

    use only 15% of its power with 98SE or tons of problems with 2K... ???

    Best board would be a Pentium-M based Board with 66MHz, like DFI 855GME-MGF

    That is something I can't agree with man, Dual Socket F 6 core Opterons destroy the Pentium M easily and can run WinXP x64 just fine, GrandAdmiralThrawn has good experience when it comes to WinXP x64 and that OS can be amazing even for 3dfx Napalm based cards.

    Win2K Pro + SP4 is the best OS for the Voodoo5 6000 AGP 128MB Rev.A2 2600, Rev.A3 3400, Rev.A 3700 & Rev.A 3900.
    I ran Win2K pro it for 4 years with my Rev.A 3700 and never had a single issue, mainly used it for Space Combat Simulators, FPS games and 6DoF games.

    But personally I'd stick with an Iwill MPX2 and Win2K pro with Dual AthlonMP 2800+ Barton CPu's or modified AthlonXP-M 2800+ Bartons instead ;)
    Here the MPX2 for those wondering:


    A V5 5500 PCI Mac would take good advantage of the 64 Bit slots in32Bit Mode with 66Mhz Bus enabled.

    Anthony's 6000 PCI will have to suffer from the slower 32 bit 33Mhz slots because it lacks a Universal PCI connector.
    Something 3dfx did right instead when it came to their PCI cards ;)
    Here my 5500 PCI Mac (Before it's recap) with a Universal PCI Connector:


    If one is remaking 3dfx cards with a PCI Connector best to do it right and use the Universal PCI Connectors instead, rather pointless on not to do this.
    With Universal PCI you have better PCI Connector support and it won't matter what board you have either, no more annoying limited restrictions..

    Most Vodooo5 6000 members from the Voodoo5 6000 owners list I made back in 2007 mostly all preferred Win2K Pro, Hank, Gary, Omega_supreme, SWZZR, Nd4SpdSe and several others, SWZZR runs his Rev.A 3700 ina TYAN Thunder K7 Pro without issues with Win2K pro + SP4.
    it's rock solid and dead stable.
    Could be that you had an unstable system, I doubt that 2K was to blame hehe.

    98SE isn't stable with USB 2.0 cards, 98SE is useless with 2CPU Systems, 98SE is troublesome for the Voodoo5 6000, it gave me tons of issues, even I used an EPoX EP-8K3A+ a mainboard Hank Semenec & Gdonovan advised me to use, I am pretty sure they know what is good and reliable, so I followed their intructions at the time.

    Win2K Pro is by far the best and most reliable OS MS ever made, 98SE is maybe better for those that prefer to run games that don't like NTFS OS but still it's not an OS I'd ever want on any of my 3dfx builds, just never needed it really.

    CPU overhead in 98SE is plain awful, CPU's overheat more in 98SE than any other OS I have used.
    With Win2K Pro every 3dfx cards from V2 SLI and up ran dead stable.
    With that Win98SE gave me tons of drivers & stability issues, do one minor mistake and BSOD's will plague you for ever.
    98SE is a shite OS pretty much how like WinMe was.

    Heck even the Voodoo5 5000 PCI ran better with Win2K Pro than it did with 98SE.

    Win2K Pro never had an issue with USB 2.0 PCI cards and other kind of cards, no IRQ drama's either.

    So to be very honest 2K Pro works even better with the 6K main stability wise, it was also tads faster as well, yet it may depend on what drivers you are using and what workloads you are doing.

    The drivers I always used were mainly AmigaMerlin 3.1 R1,, AmigaMerlin 3.1 R11 and in the last 2 years SFFT Alpha 41 modified by ps47 & myself for OpenGL ES 1.2 Support for DXX Rebirth 0.54.1 and up.

    Then again I speak of experience by others and that of myself, mainly the owners from the list I made back in the day, also during the time I help make the V6K FAQ for Gary's website.

    in the end it's up to you what to use and not me :topmodel:

    10 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (27. Mai 2021 um 15:43)