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

  • meanwhile, testing vsa based cards on high-performance systems exposed some issues like micro freezes or stuttering in some games. looks like i865 chipset is a maximum. if we see pci-ex, we see stutters, benchmarks are ok, but real game performance suffers. no surprise, thou.

    Do you have some more information? Which systems cause stuttering and do you mean official 2000's cards or the re-imagnined V5 6000?

    Best regards,
    Raff

  • Do you have some more information? Which systems cause stuttering and do you mean official 2000's cards or the re-imagnined V5 6000?

    Best regards,
    Raff

    some games exposes unpleasant behaviour on faster systems with PCI-EX, GTA2 for example. i believe it should be noticeable on all VSA based cards with chips more than 1. in single chip mode gameplay is almost perfect. in 8x AA mode it is good also. it's not good in performance mode.

  • did you try with more drivers too ?

    Amigamerlin R13 is my favorite driver :)give a try!

    so far tests are only in win9x. you could easily try it by yourself with any v3, v4 or v5 card. gta2 is a good test bench for how smooth is a gameplay on a pci video card. i believe that issue may be related to any other pci video card too.

  • Interesting. AGP is not affected at all? I've done many benchmarks of various Voodoo cards (mainly Napalm- and Avenger-based) under Windows XP and never noticed problems like this. Maybe the NT code base or even SFFT's hard work in the following years brought the solution for this behaviour. Could you verify this with Windows XP and a more recent driver? Unfortunately, I don't have access to any of my Retro rigs at the moment.

    Best regards,
    Raff

  • agp is i865 at max if not count ugly via chipset or nforce3. these are ok, good smooth gameplay. stutters appear only on pci-ex mobos. testers were interested only in native os for glide games, which is win9x (winme in particular), so no tests performed on win2k yet. when the video card is loaded at maximum, triple buffering, aa8x, vsync on, these stutters are barely noticeable, but in performance mode it becomes an issue. most known vulnerable games are gta2 and nfs4. d3d modes not tested (except benchmarks) as not intended to be used with 3dfx hw by the testers opinion.

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Anthony (5. April 2021 um 17:29)

  • Actually four VSA-100's should work fione with the DVI-D port.

    As one of my x-3dfx tech members told me clearly:

    The way VSA 100 works is that there is one master and a variable number of slaves. The master is the only chip that actually presents a finished image even though all the chips split rendering load on the scanlines. Thats why it doesn't matter how many chips there is because the image sent to the ADC is from one VSA chip.

    Even if you have 8 or even 16 chips DVI will work just fine, the V5 5500 PCI Mac is clear evidence that this will work, 3dfx knew what they were doing back then so as the 6000 goes giving it a DVI would of been more sensible.

    Also the 33Mhz bus will limit the shit out of this card, if 3dfx knew 33Mhz PCI was fine they would of made their expensive Voodoo5 6000 Prototypes with a PCI Connector, yet they didn't.

    Most gamers use AGP and not the slower 33Mhz PCI, for a 5500 it may not differ much but when using 4 graphics chips on one card and at high resolutions like 1600x1200 this will differ a lot more.

    Games like Descent 3, Freespace 2 & UT GOTYE 1999 with the 32Bit Glide Mode + FSAA things will get very heavily loaded and the 33Mhz Bus speed will make the card suffer big time.
    Also not every PCI-X Slot can be set to 32Bit 66Mhz either, not all mainboards have that option, the card also needs a PCI 2.3 connector if you want to fit it in any PCI-X slot, 2 notches are of need,as where the Voodoo5 6000 PCI in this thread has one notch in the rear like how a Voodoo2 has, this too will form problems.

    So not much of an improvement across the board somethings are improved like the much higher quality capacitors and such

    Hank also told me that the 66Mhz Bus speed was needed to maintain optimal performance at higher resolutions.

    So in the end maybe Anthony did something wrong when it comes to saying that 4 Chips can't work with DVI, never made sense to me tbh :)

  • DVI in those days was mostly done by converting the VGA signal by a chip (often from Silicon Image, the SIL 164). These chips can be found at least on GeForce 4 or FX cards.

    It doesn't matter how this VGA signal is created. In theory you can put this chip on a dongle and put it between the VGA connector and your monitor to have DVI with every card.

    "Du bist und bleibst a Mensch und du kannst eben net deine menschlichkeit überwinden."

    Dennis_50300

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von CryptonNite (25. Mai 2021 um 05:52)

  • DVI in those days was mostly done by converting the VGA signal by a chip (often from Silicon Image, the SIL 164). These chips can be found at least on GeForce 4 or FX cards.

    Where did you get this from? The SiL 164 has no analog to digital converters of any sort built in. It's fed with digital data directly from the image source.

    This would make absolutely no sense, as the digital image would be plagued with quality issues caused by the analog-to-digital conversion. It would also require additional memory as you technically need another framebuffer.

    Technically, it would be have been even easier to abandon the RAMDAC and the classic, analog VGA port. What the RAMDAC does is simply reading the framebufffer and outputting it as analog signals via VGA. With a digital connection such as the DVI port, you can simply serialize the framebuffers content and therefore display it without the losses you'll get over an analog connection.

  • it's hard for me to explain the same things over and over. just search for difference between earlier (intel) and later (plx) v56k prototypes.

    for those who own the very first revision of this card, and would like to run it on a 66mhz bus, i made a special gift:

    https://www.modlabs.net/uploads/gallery/blogs/mini/1121.jpg

  • DVI in those days was mostly done by converting the VGA signal by a chip (often from Silicon Image, the SIL 164). These chips can be found at least on GeForce 4 or FX cards.

    Where did you get this from? The SiL 164 has no analog to digital converters of any sort built in. It's fed with digital data directly from the image source.

    This would make absolutely no sense, as the digital image would be plagued with quality issues caused by the analog-to-digital conversion. It would also require additional memory as you technically need another framebuffer.

    Hast Recht. Hab heute früh das Datenblatt falsch verstanden. Dennoch wurde der Schaltkreis oft genutzt.

    "Du bist und bleibst a Mensch und du kannst eben net deine menschlichkeit überwinden."

    Dennis_50300

  • Those cards ran with a 66Mhz bus and not a 33Mhz bus that would of limited those cards.it i fine to be wronng ya know , all you have to do is to admit it, apparently you lack that perk.

    333Mhz Bus will castrate the needed bandwidth for a Voodoo5 6000, all 6000's 3dfx made use a 66Mhz bus, I know this as a fact thanks, the people that created the cards told me in person and I am sure they are in the right here ;)

    My friend at x-3dfx is right he at least gets it hehe, your design isn't all too improving if I really have to be honest, the original 3dfx cards use the 66Mhz Bus via the AGP port, it's just more sensible, GrandAdmiralThrawn you made valid points when it comes to this. at 33Mhz bus the card will suffer big time.

    For the blind ones:

    As the V6K FAQ that I help make with, omega_supreme, Nightbird, osckhar, Gary, Hank and some others clearly explains

    http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/v6k_faq.htm


    It's important to STRESS that you must NOT overclock the AGP/PCI bus as it is a sure fire way to piss off the HiNT chip and leave you with a DEAD V5-6000!!!!


    --> 66 mhz is what it was designed for and you should not exceed that at any time if you value your V6K.

    So coming back to that the 6K was designed to have a 66Mhz bus and not a 33Mhz Bus ;)
    Yes they were seen as Voodoo5 6000 PCI, but with a 66Mhz Bus never a 33Mhz Bus, that would simply Cripple the card like crazy.

    I am pretty sure 3dfx was aware of this, or all the 6K's would of had 33Mhz PCI Connectors which is not the case.

    2 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (25. Mai 2021 um 20:13)

  • Hast Recht. Hab heute früh das Datenblatt falsch verstanden. Dennoch wurde der Schaltkreis oft genutzt.

    Kein Ding ;) es kann durchaus Sinn machen, dass man die DVI Anbindung (besonders auch in Bezug auf HDCP und so Spässe) gar nicht in die GPU packt, sondern eben einer Lösung "ab Stange" anvertraut.

  • Hast Recht. Hab heute früh das Datenblatt falsch verstanden. Dennoch wurde der Schaltkreis oft genutzt.

    Kein Ding ;) es kann durchaus Sinn machen, dass man die DVI Anbindung (besonders auch in Bezug auf HDCP und so Spässe) gar nicht in die GPU packt, sondern eben einer Lösung "ab Stange" anvertraut.

    The Voodoo5 6000 has no GPU's to be a GPU a T&L Geometry Processor would be of need the VSA-100 is nothing but a Rasterizer :topmodel:

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (25. Mai 2021 um 20:43)

  • My comment was about the SiL 164 in general, not about any of the 3dfx products.

    Might be best to keep things English in this thread the majority of posts do post in English, it just reads confusing if otherwise the translators are terrible hence the result.
    I mean I could reply in a Dutch Dialect you could not even translate and I bet none of you will have an idea wtf I am on about the same I get when people type in their Germanic language in my topics :/:topmodel:

    it's that I have been here for many years now, I am sure many of you should know this by now, there is hoping anyways... we shall see.

    2 Mal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (25. Mai 2021 um 21:03)

  • i see there's nothing that needs to be commented on by me. all cards from the first batch found their happy owners, nothing to discuss no more.

    if you wish you could express your passion here: https://www.modlabs.net/forum/topic/60674/
    all owners will see that for sure. at this place it's just scream in vain.

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Anthony (26. Mai 2021 um 02:47)