Voodoo3 2000
Apparently, with the release of Banshee, 3dfx realized that the future belongs to 2D/3D chips, and that the era of purely 3D accelerators is a thing of the past.
This confirms their new product - Voodoo3. Some call this chip Banshee2, but this is incorrect. Voodoo3 is a completely new solution for professional 2D/3D applications. Voodoo3 is no longer just a gaming chip. Because of the powerful 2D part, Voodoo3 can be geared towards professional 2D work. In addition, video processing and display functions are supported, which was not available in previous 3dfx chips.
Specifications 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000
| type |
2D/3D |
| Technology | 0.25 Micron |
| Core frequency | 143 |
| Memory frequency | 143 |
| Throughput |
8 mPolys/sec |
| Fillrate | 143 - 183 Mpixels/sec 286 - 368 Mtexels/sec |
| API | DirectX 6.0/Glide |
| OpenGL | MCD |
| RAMDAC | 300 / 350 MHz |
| Memory vol. | Up to 32 Mb |
| memory type | SDRAM/SGRAM |
| Z-Buffer | 16-bit integer |
| Max 3D resolution | 1600x1200 |
| 32-bit rendering | No |
Banshee, Voodoo3 is a single video chip made using 0.25 micron technology. The Voodoo3 family is represented by three series of chips, differing in memory, core and RAMDAC operating frequencies. The Voodoo3 2000 runs at 143MHz and has a 300MHz RAMDAC. The Voodoo3 3000 runs at 166MHz and has a 350MHz RAMDAC. Voodoo3 3500 is the fastest of the Voodoo3 series. It has a frequency of 183 MHz and RAMDAC 350MHz.
The 2D part of Voodoo3 is far superior to Banshee. First of all, it's RAMDAC, whose frequency is 300MHz for Voodoo3 2000 and 350MHz for Voodoo3 3000 and Voodoo3 3500. This significantly improves the picture and allows you to work at resolutions up to 2048x1536. As in the case of Banshee, a 128-bit 2D kernel is used with an internal 256-bit bus. There is also full support for Windows GUI, DirectDraw, two-vertex polygon fill, 8, 16, 24 and 32-bit color modes. All these new features increased the speed of work in 2D applications.
The video part of Voodoo3 supports video playback in resolutions up to 2046x1536 at 75 Hz refresh.
Voodoo3, like all its predecessors, did not support rendering in 32-bit color, large textures, 32-bit textures, and the ability to use AGP texturing (which can be explained by the fact that 16 megabytes of memory onboard Voodoo3 video cards was quite enough to store small 16-bit textures). And what was supported new in Voodoo3? Yes, actually, nothing. The chip has two TMU pipelines and one rendering pipeline. In this case, in normal mode, one pipeline is idle, and when using multitexturing, the second TMU pipeline is connected and two textures are overlaid by one pixel per clock.
Voodoo3 allowed up to 4 graphics cards to be installed in parallel in SLI.
Under normal cooling, the Voodoo3 2000 could be overclocked from 143 to 175 MHz, which is close in speed to the Voodoo3 3500.