The other day I found an old PC on the street. took it home to open it and to my surprise, it had a voodoo3 2000 alongside an AMD K6-2 500MHz processor with 128MB of RAM, and a 10gb WD hard drive!
Voodoo 3 is also solid constructed. My exactly same version was left in the barn on a rural village and after three winters (under -40, this is Siberia) it was still alive and could run Half-Life and Unreal even with overcloking. However, one year later Voodoo died... Long live the Voodoo!
"Just works" is a great description. Simple drivers, simple configuration, really didn't need to tweak anything for games that supported it. This appears to be the case from the V2 all the way to the V5 in my experience.
I was 6 years old when i got my pair of stb voodoo 2s for sli man that was an amazing birthday XD. I thankfully kept all my computer hardware and game consoles so I still have those v2s in my Slot A Athlon windows 98 rig :D
@@SimmeringPotpourri The V5 5500 isn't really a collectors item, it's just been overhyped and price gouged by "retro" gamers. For well over a decade after 3dfx went bankrupt, you could get a V5 5500 on Ebay for a reasonable price under $100. Now they sometimes go for more than the original MSRP which is ridiculous. 3dfx cards which were collectible were the non-standard configurations like 6/8 MB Voodoo1 cards, 12/16/24 MB Voodoo2 cards, any Quantum3D gear and the Voodoo5 6000. There are also around 5 Spectre engineering boards out in the wild. Many 3dfx cards are now suffering the same problem as Apple Macintosh machines from the mid 90s with leaking/dead SMD electrolytic capacitors. I've already had to completely recap my V5 5500 and a couple of my V3 cards. Unless you have skill reworking SMD parts, it's a crapshoot if you'll get a working card, or a marginal card that works now but fails down the line. The caps start leaking because the rubber plugs in the base dry rot and either let the electrolyte out, or let air in to dry it out and the capacitor dies.
Thanks for the reply guys. I got it around 10 years ago in as new condition for $50 (which I felt was expensive at the time but really wanted it). The caps are still good surprisingly! I have a capacitor ESR (equivalent series resistance) meter so I can check to see if the caps are still healthy whilst still on the graphics card. If they do go bad, I’ll just recap it, no biggie. 👍🤓
I have had one of those too and regret selling it after I had it in a retro machine for just a year or so. This was back in 2006 when the card were not as expensive. Now I kinda miss it. But I'll not pay the money people want for it today.
@@PierreVonStaines It's not possible to accurately check capacitance or equivalent series resistance while a capacitor is in circuit. At least one leg of the capacitor has to be disconnected, and that's not easy with crusty two decade year old SMD caps.
Still have my first machine that I put together back in 99 collecting dust in my closet. ASUS MB, Pentium II 400 mhz, Sound Blaster 64, altec speakers w/ subwoofer, and of course the 3dfx voodoo III 3000. I was the envy of all my friends, for about 3 months lol.
I have 2 Voodoo 3 3000 AGP cards, 1 Voodoo 3 1000 AGP, a Voodoo Banshee AGP and a Voodoo 1 PCI card. They are all in different retro builds and I am holding on to them. I never had them in the past but experiencing them now in 2019 is a joy. I see why people loved them in the 90s.
I will never forget my friends face when he saw me playing Need4Speed with my V3 3000 the first time. Omg, the dust looks so real... 20 years later i still own it and it has its vip place on the wall, that good old mate.
My first big box store PC purchase was from Gateway back in late '99. I went for the Pentium 3 @ 450 mhz, combined with 256 megs of PC100. And the Voodoo 3 3000 with 16 megs of dedicated video ram! I kept that system up and running well into the mid 2000's with CPU and RAM upgrades. Upgraded to an ATI Radeon 7800 for a brief period. Then got the big dog. An nVidia Geforce ti 4600 with 128 meg.
At the start yes but by the time Voodoo 3 came out 3dfx were already falling apart and falling behind. The Voodoo 3 line traded blows with the RIVA TNT2 but only months later the GeForce 256 came out and that was it for 3dfx. I'll always have a soft spot for 3dfx though and my Windows 98 PC has a Voodoo 3 2000 installed in it.
The Voodoo 3 silicon was meant to be branded as the Voodoo Banshee 2, But the delay in the vsa-100 silicon that was later branded as Voodoo 4/5 meant 3dfx had to create a stopgap model to compete with the Nvidia riva Tnt 2. and thus, the Voodoo 3 was born.
Five years ago I bought my first 3dfx card, a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI and I installed it in a mini tower pc with a s370 P3 800MHz and a SB Live! 5.1. This is also my first retro pc and probably the most unique as it is running Win ME! I also have another drive installed in this system with WinXP. Total amount of games running in this system? 65!
On my first PC back in 98 I had a 3S Virge , then I got a Voodoo Banshee when my good neighbor gave me his as a present when he bought his Voodoo 3 :).
The Vodoo Banshee was my only 3dfx card. It was a night and day difference in games to the Matrox Mystic II which I had before. Seeing Phil play all these popular older games brings back memories. :)
my first 3D card. 2nd hand. Good memories. Half-life, AvP, Thief, Uneal, UT, Q1, 2, 3, Wheel Of Time,, and others. A great time for games.Then sold it to buy a 2nd hand Voodoo 5.
I was never fortunate to own a 3dfx card. During the late 90s I had a NVIDIA Riva TNT. I loved that card and then I eventually moved on to the GeForce2.
Around that time I had an older Mac with just a 75mhz PPC processor that I mainly used for graphics design (studied that), and when I needed a new monitor the sales guy mentioned that I might need a better graphics card to support it's resolutions. And handed me a Voodoo 3 2000, which not only got unofficial-official Mac support by 3dfx by that time with a set of beta drivers, but was also dirt cheap compared to anything else on the Mac market. And what can I say, it turned my old Mac into a gaming machine! Of course there weren't too many Mac games, but Tomb Raider 3, Unreal Tournament etc. ran so incredibly well on that old CPU thanks to GLIDE that I quickly spent my time more in games than in design. This was an incredible card. :)
I no longer have my retro gaming PC, but for some reason I decided to keep my STB Voodoo 3. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come in terms of technology, and of course game development.
I have a voodoo 3 2000 in my retro gaming PC. I remember buying the Voodoo 1 back in the day, it was my first 3D Accelerator used it for a few years before switching to a Nvidia TNT2 Ultra 16MB. I still had the card up until 5 years ago when I had to clear out the garage it was stored in and it went to hard rubbish.
I had a couple of Voodoo 1 cards (Diamond 4mb and Canopus 6mb), two Voodoo 2 in SLI (Diamond), a Voodoo 3 3000, and a Voodoo 3 3500 TV. I have sold off the Voodoo 1 (Canopus) and the Voodoo 3 3500 TV, but I still have the others. I remember proudly displaying my "I Got A Canopus" sticker on my 17-in. CRT. Not only do I feel old... I am old!
I had the exclusive UK rights to sell the Voodoo 3 cards to the trade at launch, as I recall we sold the first 3,000+ cards in the first 2 hours of launch, I still have one of the Schott bomber jackets with the 3dfx logo on the sleeve that we made for the promotion, I think we only had 25 made, so I guess I might think of putting it on eBay :) it's in mint condition too.
In the late 90's/early 2000's, our family computer was a Compaq desktop. When we started having issues, I called tech support, and it was determined that the issue was caused by a faulty graphics card. For some reason, they couldn't replace it with an identical card, so they sent us a Voodoo3 3500! Imagine my shock to see it featured in this video!
Hi Phil great video used a Voodoo 2 back in Australia, but these days still using my old Voodoo 3 300 had since new. Still using it on a Pentuim 4 1.7 ghx with a AGP 2x.still having a lot of fun with it CHEERS Pete from Turkey mate.
3DFX Voodoo was what got me hooked into 3D gaming. My first 3D card was a Canopus Pure3D with 6mb memory. It was then followed by a Voodoo Banshee. My last Voodoo card was the Voodoo 3 2000 before finally moving to an Nvidia Geforce2 MX 256 since by that time 3DFX unfortunately kicked the bucket already.
So many memories :) :) :) I had PCI Voodoo 2 first, through and S3Trio card and then I got a VooDoo 5500 AGP which was so expensive at the time, it took me three paydays to pay it off but it looked amazing :) Thanks Phil keep up the great content :)
I remember buying that same card a 16 mb pci voodoo card from Walmart in July of 1999. Remember I installed it in a Compaq Presario desktop PC that we bought in April of 1998.
I still have my 3500 TV stored somewhere in my storage room. I remember modding it to output vga without that cumbersome snake cable. Before it, I had a Voodoo2 SLI setup. The Voodoo3 at 183Mhz outperformed the SLI in a Pentium 3 750, using only one slot instead of three from the Voodoo2. I used to play Unreal Tournament and Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed in it. Good times.
I have 2 of 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 AGP both came from a Gateway 2000 PCs. One of them is still in one. I am privileged to have them as well. Its the 2D/3D card that just works for mid/late 90s era of PC gaming.
I recently bought my first Voodoo 3 (2000 AGP) for my retro PC. I'm not sure sure, if this makes sense, because im running my retro PC with Voodoo 2 SLI, but it was cheap enough on eBay to "trigger" me, while still being more expensive than you reported in your vid. But you'r right: It's not 10 years later, but prices are increasing.
Damn Now I need to build a A new Vodoo system, locally i just haven't seen a Voodooo of any kind EVER not even when it was in stores, had to drive several hours to get one when they were even in stores.
I was one of those people who had 3DFX everything. If they released it, I got one. The Banshee was the best Voodoo2 model as it was a combined 2D/3D card. With the 3000 series, I knew about the 3500TV version ahead of time and waited for it. Worth the wait as it was the best of the Voodoo3 series. The 5500 was the pinnacle 3DFX card. After 3DFX was bought by NVidia, I switched over to ATI Radeon cards.
Owned a 3dfx voodoo 3 2000 PCI (replaced an S3 virge DX), and the first time I played unreal and UT99 and walking up to a wall or a box and seeing the added effect of texture was amazing for back in the day (something you didn't talk about in the video).
Voodoo 3 3000 16MB AGP was the card I ran back then. It was paired with a Pentium II 266MHz at first but that was swapped for a Pentium III 700MHz (which I ran at 933MHz). Those were good times.
Back then our first Family PC had an ATI Rage 128. I bought my first Voodoo card a 2 or 3 years ago and I opted to go High-End with the 5500. Love that card, makes playing those game from the 90's a real pleasure. But I have to say that it feels a bit weird that the card supported 1920x1080 out of the box and seeing the Win98 Desktop in that resolution knowing that a old card is doing it is something else.
Wow I can't believe it's been 20 years since I had this card. I had the Voodoo Rush which was a single card solution for 2D/3D. I skipped the Voodoo 2 and picked up the Banshee. I had the Voodoo 3 3000 AGP and the Voodoo 5 5500 AGP.
I just found my Voodoo 3 2000 recently. haven't loaded it up yet but hopefully soon see it in action. Messing with my FX 5500 PCI graphics atm. Thanks for the video PhilsComputerLab for the review!
I believe you could use the Voodoo in SLI,pretty amazing piece of kit,remember buying a Nvidia TNT card,and playing Doom on a 486 with 2 meg of ram,needed a boot disk to play lol,happy days.No GPU needed to play Doom.OMG,it`s so long ago.
I had a Voodoo Banshee. I wanted a Voodoo 3, then I wanted a Voodoo 5. Much to my great sadness, 3dfx went bankrupt. By the time I could afford an upgrade that was any good, the GeForce 4 was out.
When a friend of mine invited me to play Half-Life on his computer with 3dfx voodoo in 1999, my mind was blown away and my jaw was near the ground - the graphics was outstanding! It was better than on my computer. Even now when I replay HL on my today's PC, the textures seem to be worse than on my friend's PC with 3dfx. Maybe it's a cognitive peculiarity )) Also thanks for Clive Barker's Undying! It was my favourite game back in the days!
3dfx cards have certain filters in the RAMDAC stage and you'll also have played on a CRT display back then so those things could make the difference compared to the look of HL on today's hardware.
Wow. Doesn't seem like all that long ago when I was secretly installing a Voodoo 2 on my folks' PC and taking it out again when I wanted to play Rogue Squadron 3D. I think I had just started working at CompUSA at the time. Cheers for the video.
Kids of today just won't understand the jump in technology that a 3D card brought. I was brought up building 386 and 486 PC's using DOS. The jump to Windows was unbelievable but when a mate first got a 3D Card from one of the computer fairs we used to go to back in the day I simply could not believe it, I was astounded at the graphics! I didn't actually believe it could do what it could do and I wasn't willing to spend that kind of money on a single card (back in the day the price of a 3D card was almost the price of a PC build!) but one look at it in action and we immediately drove back to the fair and got one! I think it was something like Turok he fired up and the graphics just seemed out of this world! Now you look back on it and it looks horrendous. These days I'm rocking a 40 series RTX card on a 55" Samsung Odyssey Ark Monitor. If I could go back in time and show my younger self what I have now he'd never believe it! What will they have in another 25 years I wonder?
I really want to get a V3 3000 PCI but prices are extreme for what it really is... I managed to get a Creative V2 12mb for 35€ and paired with a G4Ti 4200 and i think i will stick with that to get my Glide "fix" every now and then...
I played soooooo much Red Baron 3d with the 2 8 meg Voodoo 2's. The 3 was considered a weak upgrade at the time and although it didn't do Glide, the TNT was the winner and so I upgraded. Not too much longer they got bought out. Still, at the time the VooDoo's had a significant advantage.
I remember I had the V3 3000, i lapped the heatsink and put Arctic silver thermal paste on the GPU then added two CPU fans on the heatsink. then I overclocked the hell out of it. It was a wonderful card for its time. Later I upgraded to a Radeon then returned it the next day because it was actually slower.
Basically Voodoo cards, especially Voodoo 3 series, can be called "Old reliable" when it comes to retro gaming. I have been a happy owner of 1, 2 & 3. (3-3000 AGP) 1 & 2 paired with Matrox Mystique 4MB Both Orchid Righteous 3D
VooDoo3 1000 is also an OEM variant of the lineup which performs similarly to a 2000 and can sometimes be overclocked to reach that performance, but an aftermarket heatsink would help greatly since I know of no 1000 equipped with a heatsink.
Great video! Although this really made me miss my Voodoo 3 3000 & AMD K6-2 450Mhz build which was my very first own computer I bought with the money I earned and put together myself. Sadly got rid of it many moons ago because didn't think I would have any use for it anymore. Little did I know that retro gaming would become a thing I like to do... Also: God damn I feel old now! :D
For Win98 gaming i collecting for myself pc with K6-3+@570 on 112.5 fsb + new voodoo 3 3000 + 256 pc133 ram. Maybe a cpu ist not enough powerful for voodoo, but i think is still balanced system
3dfx Voodoo 3 3x00 + Aureal Vortex II = '90s gaming awesomeness! :-D (Turtle Beach Montego II user over here in the UK, only with a 128MB Palit GeForce 4 MX 440 128-bit AGP 8x card instead, for around £30 at the time of purchase, with Voodoo 3 3x00s starting at around £200 on eBay, before shooting up to around £600 complete in box now. Sigh. :-( )
I've only seen Voodoo 1 and 2 cards. When Voodoo 3 came out, no one bought it, because every tech review said it's worthless. Riva TNT 1 and 2 were dominating and soon Geforce 2 MX and 4 MX were mainstream. Lack of 32-bit color support wasn't a real issue though. Riva TNT had it, but wasn't fast enough to use it. Maybe 640x480x32 was usable, but still 800x600x16 or even 1024x768x16 were simply better looking and smoother. High resolution textures on the other hand were a big deal. This changed how engines worked. GPUs work like state machines. You set the state and you draw. Changing texture requires costly state changes, so if you have a big texture (atlas) that has images of many objects then you can draw a lot different things with single draw call (still relevant today DX12 and Vulkan are optimized to reduce Draw Call cost). With atlases you could put a lot of smaller images on 1024x1024 texture and those smaller images could have any sizes, not just power-of-two like textures. 3DFX had really big impact on PC gaming, but their success lead to their doom. Competition made better products and with really fast hardware changes back in the day, obsolete from the start Voodoo 3 didn't had a chance. It might be a good card today, when we want to build a retro PC for glide games, but back then we wanted the best PC possible for new and upcoming games. 3DFX wasn't delivering that.
My first exposure to anything 3DFX was when i was looking for a way to improve the performance of Diablo 2 and it was suggested to me that i try the Glide Wrapper for it. I had heard that Diablo 2 was a Glide game with D3D tacked on but i didn't know what that meant until i used the Glide Wrapper with it.
Recently aquired a V3 3000 AGP. debating on putting it into my P2 450 system or my socket 370 P3 1000 system. Im sure the P2 would hold the card back a little bit, but I like having a newer Geforce card in the P3 system for newer directx support/slightly newer games.
The other day I found an old PC on the street. took it home to open it and to my surprise, it had a voodoo3 2000 alongside an AMD K6-2 500MHz processor with 128MB of RAM, and a 10gb WD hard drive!
Wow, what a find!
I wish I had your luck
so now you have to give it to me
did it fire up?
hey！give me back my computer!
One of the best graphics cards ever I still miss that company
I had a voodoo 2 banshee and it was rock solid.That was the good old days.
descent 3 was the reason i bought my voodoo3 back in the day. loved seeing it in your video!
Voodoo 3 is also solid constructed. My exactly same version was left in the barn on a rural village and after three winters (under -40, this is Siberia) it was still alive and could run Half-Life and Unreal even with overcloking. However, one year later Voodoo died... Long live the Voodoo!
"Just works" is a great description. Simple drivers, simple configuration, really didn't need to tweak anything for games that supported it. This appears to be the case from the V2 all the way to the V5 in my experience.
I have many PC's but my Voodoo 3 / Pentium 3 rig definitely holds a place in my heart. :)
I had a Voodoo 3 3000 agp back then. Good times! I remember the day I bought it like it was yesterday. I feel old now lol
Same here, as well as having regrets you got rid of it instead of keeping it.
Ditto! Wish I had kept it now!
I was 6 years old when i got my pair of stb voodoo 2s for sli man that was an amazing birthday XD. I thankfully kept all my computer hardware and game consoles so I still have those v2s in my Slot A Athlon windows 98 rig :D
-My dad found one thrown out on the street-
me 2 i still have my 3dfx 3000 agp
Man, I loved that video card.
When I got it, It was a dream come true. I wish I still have it.
I'm still rocking a Voodoo 5500 in one of my Windows 98 machines! :D
You got a sweet card there! I would love to have that. Keep that collectors item safe.
@@SimmeringPotpourri The V5 5500 isn't really a collectors item, it's just been overhyped and price gouged by "retro" gamers. For well over a decade after 3dfx went bankrupt, you could get a V5 5500 on Ebay for a reasonable price under $100. Now they sometimes go for more than the original MSRP which is ridiculous.
3dfx cards which were collectible were the non-standard configurations like 6/8 MB Voodoo1 cards, 12/16/24 MB Voodoo2 cards, any Quantum3D gear and the Voodoo5 6000. There are also around 5 Spectre engineering boards out in the wild.
Many 3dfx cards are now suffering the same problem as Apple Macintosh machines from the mid 90s with leaking/dead SMD electrolytic capacitors. I've already had to completely recap my V5 5500 and a couple of my V3 cards. Unless you have skill reworking SMD parts, it's a crapshoot if you'll get a working card, or a marginal card that works now but fails down the line. The caps start leaking because the rubber plugs in the base dry rot and either let the electrolyte out, or let air in to dry it out and the capacitor dies.
Thanks for the reply guys. I got it around 10 years ago in as new condition for $50 (which I felt was expensive at the time but really wanted it). The caps are still good surprisingly! I have a capacitor ESR (equivalent series resistance) meter so I can check to see if the caps are still healthy whilst still on the graphics card. If they do go bad, I’ll just recap it, no biggie. 👍🤓
I have had one of those too and regret selling it after I had it in a retro machine for just a year or so. This was back in 2006 when the card were not as expensive. Now I kinda miss it. But I'll not pay the money people want for it today.
@@PierreVonStaines It's not possible to accurately check capacitance or equivalent series resistance while a capacitor is in circuit.
At least one leg of the capacitor has to be disconnected, and that's not easy with crusty two decade year old SMD caps.
Still have my first machine that I put together back in 99 collecting dust in my closet. ASUS MB, Pentium II 400 mhz, Sound Blaster 64, altec speakers w/ subwoofer, and of course the 3dfx voodoo III 3000. I was the envy of all my friends, for about 3 months lol.
I have 2 Voodoo 3 3000 AGP cards, 1 Voodoo 3 1000 AGP, a Voodoo Banshee AGP and a Voodoo 1 PCI card. They are all in different retro builds and I am holding on to them. I never had them in the past but experiencing them now in 2019 is a joy. I see why people loved them in the 90s.
I vividly remember running Quake 2 on a 3DFX voodoo 2 and I was blown away!
I will never forget my friends face when he saw me playing Need4Speed with my V3 3000 the first time.
Omg, the dust looks so real... 20 years later i still own it and it has its vip place on the wall, that good old mate.
My first big box store PC purchase was from Gateway back in late '99. I went for the Pentium 3 @ 450 mhz, combined with 256 megs of PC100. And the Voodoo 3 3000 with 16 megs of dedicated video ram!
I kept that system up and running well into the mid 2000's with CPU and RAM upgrades. Upgraded to an ATI Radeon 7800 for a brief period. Then got the big dog.
An nVidia Geforce ti 4600 with 128 meg.
...and what a time to be alive! 3DFX hardware was something else. It was doing things with graphics that could only be dreamt of with other systems
At the start yes but by the time Voodoo 3 came out 3dfx were already falling apart and falling behind. The Voodoo 3 line traded blows with the RIVA TNT2 but only months later the GeForce 256 came out and that was it for 3dfx.
I'll always have a soft spot for 3dfx though and my Windows 98 PC has a Voodoo 3 2000 installed in it.
_Everything Just Works._
You sound like a mac fan 😂
@@zilog1 It was a parody of Jensen Huang and I've never used any product made by Apple, believe it or not.
The late 90's and early 2000's was definitely good times in PC gaming and hardware. Brings back memories.
24 now, but still going strong!❤️
I had the Vodoo Banshee back in the day.
This was my first major 3D-accelerated GPU. God-damn, I'm old....
the voodoo 2 was more spectacular mind blowing jaw dropping when it first came out
The Voodoo 3 silicon was meant to be branded as the Voodoo Banshee 2, But the delay in the vsa-100 silicon that was later branded as Voodoo 4/5 meant 3dfx had to create a stopgap model to compete with the Nvidia riva Tnt 2. and thus, the Voodoo 3 was born.
And Anti aliasing, And texture compression etc etc..
Five years ago I bought my first 3dfx card, a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI and I installed it in a mini tower pc with a s370 P3 800MHz and a SB Live! 5.1. This is also my first retro pc and probably the most unique as it is running Win ME! I also have another drive installed in this system with WinXP. Total amount of games running in this system? 65!
i still have mine, and my 5500 AGP, and their boxes/kit
great cards and experiences
On my first PC back in 98 I had a 3S Virge , then I got a Voodoo Banshee when my good neighbor gave me his as a present when he bought his Voodoo 3 :).
I wish I had neighbors like that :-)
The Vodoo Banshee was my only 3dfx card. It was a night and day difference in games to the Matrox Mystic II which I had before. Seeing Phil play all these popular older games brings back memories. :)
my first 3D card. 2nd hand. Good memories. Half-life, AvP, Thief, Uneal, UT, Q1, 2, 3, Wheel Of Time,, and others. A great time for games.Then sold it to buy a 2nd hand Voodoo 5.
I was never fortunate to own a 3dfx card. During the late 90s I had a NVIDIA Riva TNT. I loved that card and then I eventually moved on to the GeForce2.
Around that time I had an older Mac with just a 75mhz PPC processor that I mainly used for graphics design (studied that), and when I needed a new monitor the sales guy mentioned that I might need a better graphics card to support it's resolutions. And handed me a Voodoo 3 2000, which not only got unofficial-official Mac support by 3dfx by that time with a set of beta drivers, but was also dirt cheap compared to anything else on the Mac market. And what can I say, it turned my old Mac into a gaming machine! Of course there weren't too many Mac games, but Tomb Raider 3, Unreal Tournament etc. ran so incredibly well on that old CPU thanks to GLIDE that I quickly spent my time more in games than in design. This was an incredible card. :)
I no longer have my retro gaming PC, but for some reason I decided to keep my STB Voodoo 3. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come in terms of technology, and of course game development.
Screamer 4x4 still has great driving physics and car modelling even today.
I have a voodoo 3 2000 in my retro gaming PC.
I remember buying the Voodoo 1 back in the day, it was my first 3D Accelerator used it for a few years before switching to a Nvidia TNT2 Ultra 16MB.
I still had the card up until 5 years ago when I had to clear out the garage it was stored in and it went to hard rubbish.
I had a couple of Voodoo 1 cards (Diamond 4mb and Canopus 6mb), two Voodoo 2 in SLI (Diamond), a Voodoo 3 3000, and a Voodoo 3 3500 TV. I have sold off the Voodoo 1 (Canopus) and the Voodoo 3 3500 TV, but I still have the others. I remember proudly displaying my "I Got A Canopus" sticker on my 17-in. CRT. Not only do I feel old... I am old!
I had the exclusive UK rights to sell the Voodoo 3 cards to the trade at launch, as I recall we sold the first 3,000+ cards in the first 2 hours of launch, I still have one of the Schott bomber jackets with the 3dfx logo on the sleeve that we made for the promotion, I think we only had 25 made, so I guess I might think of putting it on eBay :) it's in mint condition too.
In the late 90's/early 2000's, our family computer was a Compaq desktop. When we started having issues, I called tech support, and it was determined that the issue was caused by a faulty graphics card. For some reason, they couldn't replace it with an identical card, so they sent us a Voodoo3 3500! Imagine my shock to see it featured in this video!
Cool! this brings back memeories!
Hi Phil great video used a Voodoo 2 back in Australia, but these days still using my old Voodoo 3 300 had since new. Still using it on a Pentuim 4 1.7 ghx with a AGP 2x.still having a lot of fun with it CHEERS Pete from Turkey mate.
3DFX Voodoo was what got me hooked into 3D gaming. My first 3D card was a Canopus Pure3D with 6mb memory. It was then followed by a Voodoo Banshee. My last Voodoo card was the Voodoo 3 2000 before finally moving to an Nvidia Geforce2 MX 256 since by that time 3DFX unfortunately kicked the bucket already.
So many memories :) :) :) I had PCI Voodoo 2 first, through and S3Trio card and then I got a VooDoo 5500 AGP which was so expensive at the time, it took me three paydays to pay it off but it looked amazing :) Thanks Phil keep up the great content :)
I still have Voodoo 3 2000 it still works great
I remember buying that same card a 16 mb pci voodoo card from Walmart in July of 1999. Remember I installed it in a Compaq Presario desktop PC that we bought in April of 1998.
Seeing that ebay listing for 13 dollars makes me wanna cry as someone getting into the hobby makes me wanna cry lol
I know right?
I remember my first 3dfx card! It was a Voodoo Banshee. Beautiful times!
Played a lot of Quake 3 with my 3500 AGP. Ah, the days!
I still have my 3500 TV stored somewhere in my storage room. I remember modding it to output vga without that cumbersome snake cable. Before it, I had a Voodoo2 SLI setup. The Voodoo3 at 183Mhz outperformed the SLI in a Pentium 3 750, using only one slot instead of three from the Voodoo2. I used to play Unreal Tournament and Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed in it. Good times.
I have 2 of 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 AGP both came from a Gateway 2000 PCs. One of them is still in one. I am privileged to have them as well. Its the 2D/3D card that just works for mid/late 90s era of PC gaming.
Hard to believe its been 20 years.
I recently bought my first Voodoo 3 (2000 AGP) for my retro PC. I'm not sure sure, if this makes sense, because im running my retro PC with Voodoo 2 SLI, but it was cheap enough on eBay to "trigger" me, while still being more expensive than you reported in your vid. But you'r right: It's not 10 years later, but prices are increasing.
Damn Now I need to build a A new Vodoo system, locally i just haven't seen a Voodooo of any kind EVER not even when it was in stores, had to drive several hours to get one when they were even in stores.
I owned a voodoo 2, 3 3500, and a 5 5500. Ah, the memories 😊
I was one of those people who had 3DFX everything. If they released it, I got one. The Banshee was the best Voodoo2 model as it was a combined 2D/3D card. With the 3000 series, I knew about the 3500TV version ahead of time and waited for it. Worth the wait as it was the best of the Voodoo3 series. The 5500 was the pinnacle 3DFX card. After 3DFX was bought by NVidia, I switched over to ATI Radeon cards.
Owned a 3dfx voodoo 3 2000 PCI (replaced an S3 virge DX), and the first time I played unreal and UT99 and walking up to a wall or a box and seeing the added effect of texture was amazing for back in the day (something you didn't talk about in the video).
Tnx for noticing Phil ! :) , have a voodoo 3 3000 in one of my pc's .
Voodoo 3 3000 16MB AGP was the card I ran back then. It was paired with a Pentium II 266MHz at first but that was swapped for a Pentium III 700MHz (which I ran at 933MHz). Those were good times.
Such a professionally well made video. I am impressed. Good job and a sub well earned!
Back then our first Family PC had an ATI Rage 128. I bought my first Voodoo card a 2 or 3 years ago and I opted to go High-End with the 5500. Love that card, makes playing those game from the 90's a real pleasure. But I have to say that it feels a bit weird that the card supported 1920x1080 out of the box and seeing the Win98 Desktop in that resolution knowing that a old card is doing it is something else.
It's like running win3.11 @1024x768x256colors, looks awesome
Wow I can't believe it's been 20 years since I had this card. I had the Voodoo Rush which was a single card solution for 2D/3D. I skipped the Voodoo 2 and picked up the Banshee. I had the Voodoo 3 3000 AGP and the Voodoo 5 5500 AGP.
I was a small kid when these were out, so thanks for this vid! Gives me ideas on cards to collect, overclock, and benchmark!
Just don't overclock the top of the line models of V3 and later, they are already running close to the edge on factory settings.
@@armorgeddon i'd be able to push it further anyhow. cap mods and other mods i can do would let that happen.
I just found my Voodoo 3 2000 recently. haven't loaded it up yet but hopefully soon see it in action. Messing with my FX 5500 PCI graphics atm. Thanks for the video PhilsComputerLab for the review!
I believe you could use the Voodoo in SLI,pretty amazing piece of kit,remember buying a Nvidia TNT card,and playing Doom on a 486 with 2 meg of ram,needed a boot disk to play lol,happy days.No GPU needed to play Doom.OMG,it`s so long ago.
i want a Voodoo 5 5500 so badly
Never had a 3d accelerator back in the day. Had to make do with a 2mb S3 trio :) But I remember reading many magazines about the Voodoo's and TNT's.
Damn time flies..
And now I feel old. ;(
I had a Voodoo Banshee. I wanted a Voodoo 3, then I wanted a Voodoo 5. Much to my great sadness, 3dfx went bankrupt. By the time I could afford an upgrade that was any good, the GeForce 4 was out.
I had the banshee too, mine came with a 3DFX version of mechwarrior :D good times.
A memorable company in late 90's and early 00's gaming. One who's namesake I've bastardized and used to this day!
When a friend of mine invited me to play Half-Life on his computer with 3dfx voodoo in 1999, my mind was blown away and my jaw was near the ground - the graphics was outstanding! It was better than on my computer. Even now when I replay HL on my today's PC, the textures seem to be worse than on my friend's PC with 3dfx. Maybe it's a cognitive peculiarity ))
Also thanks for Clive Barker's Undying! It was my favourite game back in the days!
I think modern card are bad for retro 3D games
3dfx cards have certain filters in the RAMDAC stage and you'll also have played on a CRT display back then so those things could make the difference compared to the look of HL on today's hardware.
Loved this video. Great job Phil!
Seeing the 3dfx icon on my Windows 98 system tray brings me endless joy.
I had one. Nostalgia :)
Wow. Doesn't seem like all that long ago when I was secretly installing a Voodoo 2 on my folks' PC and taking it out again when I wanted to play Rogue Squadron 3D. I think I had just started working at CompUSA at the time. Cheers for the video.
Kids of today just won't understand the jump in technology that a 3D card brought. I was brought up building 386 and 486 PC's using DOS. The jump to Windows was unbelievable but when a mate first got a 3D Card from one of the computer fairs we used to go to back in the day I simply could not believe it, I was astounded at the graphics! I didn't actually believe it could do what it could do and I wasn't willing to spend that kind of money on a single card (back in the day the price of a 3D card was almost the price of a PC build!) but one look at it in action and we immediately drove back to the fair and got one! I think it was something like Turok he fired up and the graphics just seemed out of this world! Now you look back on it and it looks horrendous.
These days I'm rocking a 40 series RTX card on a 55" Samsung Odyssey Ark Monitor. If I could go back in time and show my younger self what I have now he'd never believe it!
What will they have in another 25 years I wonder?
Thank You! Philscomputerlab. You have been a great experience on my own build's. win9x will live on with your videos. Again, Thanks >>>>>>
I wish I had my Voodoo 2 and 3 cards still. I don't have the time to put together a retro build anyways.
Thanks for your nice review, I like this card because it's the last card supporting glide dos games with less troubles.
Need to get one of these, asap!! ;) Awesome video, Phil! Thanks!
I really want to get a V3 3000 PCI but prices are extreme for what it really is... I managed to get a Creative V2 12mb for 35€ and paired with a G4Ti 4200 and i think i will stick with that to get my Glide "fix" every now and then...
Hard to believe it's been 20 years. I bought mine from a local game shop. Time sure does tick on.
I remember being so psyched getting that card.
I played soooooo much Red Baron 3d with the 2 8 meg Voodoo 2's. The 3 was considered a weak upgrade at the time and although it didn't do Glide, the TNT was the winner and so I upgraded. Not too much longer they got bought out. Still, at the time the VooDoo's had a significant advantage.
I remember I had the V3 3000, i lapped the heatsink and put Arctic silver thermal paste on the GPU then added two CPU fans on the heatsink. then I overclocked the hell out of it. It was a wonderful card for its time. Later I upgraded to a Radeon then returned it the next day because it was actually slower.
I had voodoo 1 (Monster 1) and 2 (Monster 2) (I was Diamond Multimedia´s fan), best years.
To paraphrase sweeney Todd, at last! my week is complete again.
Basically Voodoo cards, especially Voodoo 3 series, can be called "Old reliable" when it comes to retro gaming.
I have been a happy owner of 1, 2 & 3. (3-3000 AGP)
1 & 2 paired with Matrox Mystique 4MB
Both Orchid Righteous 3D
Yea, every single 3dfx card I have, still works!
I ordered mine from Bobo & Lobo & Freinds' PC Computer & Technology Shoppe Inc. back in 1999 and still, haven't received it yet.
LOL! That reminds me of the many original orders for Duke Nukem Forever.
VooDoo3 1000 is also an OEM variant of the lineup which performs similarly to a 2000 and can sometimes be overclocked to reach that performance, but an aftermarket heatsink would help greatly since I know of no 1000 equipped with a heatsink.
I bought a voodoo 3 about 10 years ago off ebay. It was still sealed in the box, and took it out and threw the box away. I hate myself now :(
Great video! Although this really made me miss my Voodoo 3 3000 & AMD K6-2 450Mhz build which was my very first own computer I bought with the money I earned and put together myself. Sadly got rid of it many moons ago because didn't think I would have any use for it anymore. Little did I know that retro gaming would become a thing I like to do...
Also: God damn I feel old now! :D
Use to have voodoo pass through
Switching to 3dfx was a thing. Everything became so smooth...
For Win98 gaming i collecting for myself pc with K6-3+@570 on 112.5 fsb + new voodoo 3 3000 + 256 pc133 ram. Maybe a cpu ist not enough powerful for voodoo, but i think is still balanced system
The Voodoo 2 Banshee does 2D and 3D.
funny how i have one sitting just over on my desk
3dfx Voodoo 3 3x00 + Aureal Vortex II = '90s gaming awesomeness! :-D
(Turtle Beach Montego II user over here in the UK, only with a 128MB Palit GeForce 4 MX 440 128-bit AGP 8x card instead, for around £30 at the time of purchase, with Voodoo 3 3x00s starting at around £200 on eBay, before shooting up to around £600 complete in box now. Sigh. :-( )
Yea, nice combo.
I've only seen Voodoo 1 and 2 cards. When Voodoo 3 came out, no one bought it, because every tech review said it's worthless. Riva TNT 1 and 2 were dominating and soon Geforce 2 MX and 4 MX were mainstream.
Lack of 32-bit color support wasn't a real issue though. Riva TNT had it, but wasn't fast enough to use it. Maybe 640x480x32 was usable, but still 800x600x16 or even 1024x768x16 were simply better looking and smoother.
High resolution textures on the other hand were a big deal. This changed how engines worked. GPUs work like state machines. You set the state and you draw. Changing texture requires costly state changes, so if you have a big texture (atlas) that has images of many objects then you can draw a lot different things with single draw call (still relevant today DX12 and Vulkan are optimized to reduce Draw Call cost).
With atlases you could put a lot of smaller images on 1024x1024 texture and those smaller images could have any sizes, not just power-of-two like textures.
3DFX had really big impact on PC gaming, but their success lead to their doom. Competition made better products and with really fast hardware changes back in the day, obsolete from the start Voodoo 3 didn't had a chance.
It might be a good card today, when we want to build a retro PC for glide games, but back then we wanted the best PC possible for new and upcoming games. 3DFX wasn't delivering that.
My first exposure to anything 3DFX was when i was looking for a way to improve the performance of Diablo 2 and it was suggested to me that i try the Glide Wrapper for it. I had heard that Diablo 2 was a Glide game with D3D tacked on but i didn't know what that meant until i used the Glide Wrapper with it.
This was my first GPU that actually turned my 233mhz machine into a gaming beast!
Recently aquired a V3 3000 AGP. debating on putting it into my P2 450 system or my socket 370 P3 1000 system. Im sure the P2 would hold the card back a little bit, but I like having a newer Geforce card in the P3 system for newer directx support/slightly newer games.
A few days ago I dug up my 20 years old V3 2000 :)
I thankfully have a Voodoo 5500 AGP and I am not going to give it up.