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Voodoo2

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Voodoo2
A Voodoo2 TMU chip
Release dateFebruary 1998; 26 years ago (February 1998)
CodenameSST2
Cards
High-endVoodoo2, Voodoo Banshee
DirectXDirect3D 5.0
History
PredecessorVoodoo Graphics
SuccessorVoodoo3
Support status
Unsupported
A Voodoo2 graphics card

The Voodoo2 (or Voodoo2) is a set of three specialized 3D graphics chips on a single chipset setup, made by 3dfx. It was released in February 1998 as a replacement for the original Voodoo Graphics chipset. The card runs at a chipset clock rate of 90 MHz and uses 100 MHz EDO DRAM, and is available for the PCI interface. The Voodoo2 comes in two models, one with 8 MB RAM and one with 12 MB RAM. The 8 MB card has 2 MB of memory per texture mapping unit (TMU) vs. 4 MB on the 12 MB model. The 4 MB framebuffer on both cards support a maximum screen resolution of 800 × 600, while the increased texture memory on the 12 MB card allows more detailed textures. Some boards with 8 MB can be upgraded to 12 MB with an additional daughter board.[1][2]

Each of the three chips present on the card has its own 64-bit RAM interface, giving the card a "total" bus width of 192 bits or 800 MB/s per chip. The Voodoo2 has an increased chip-count compared to the original two-chip Voodoo card. Competing products such as the ATI Rage Pro, NVIDIA RIVA 128, and Rendition Verite 2x00 are single-chip products, each with integrated 2D GUI/VGA accelerators. As with the original Voodoo, the Voodoo2 is a dedicated 3D accelerator, and has to be used in conjunction with a conventional 2D graphics card. It requires an external pass-through VGA cable hooked up from the 2D card into the Voodoo card’s passthrough VGA port.[1][2][3]

The Voodoo2's third chip was a second TMU that allows a second texture to be drawn during the same graphics engine pass, and thus with no performance penalty. At time of introduction, Voodoo2 was the only 3D card capable of single-cycle dual-texturing. Usage of the Voodoo2's second TMU depends on application software; Quake II[1][2] and Unreal exploited dual-texturing to great effect.[4] In games that did not use more than one texture layer, Voodoo2 is only faster than Voodoo1 because of its higher clock speed.

The Voodoo2 introduced Scan-Line Interleave (SLI) capability to the PC market. In SLI mode, two Voodoo2 boards installed in a PC run in parallel, each unit drawing half the lines of the display.[1][2] Voodoo2 SLI not only doubles rendering throughput[disputed – discuss], it also increases the total framebuffer memory, and thus the maximum supported screen resolution increased to an impressive (for its time) 1024 × 768. However, texture memory is not doubled because each card needed to duplicate the scene data.[1][2][5] The original Voodoo Graphics also has SLI capability, but it is only used in the arcade and professional markets.[6][7]

In late 1998, 3dfx released the Voodoo3, which effectively replaced the Voodoo2 as the company's flagship product. The base model Voodoo3 2000 offers in a single card slightly greater performance than a Voodoo2 SLI + 2D card in some situations. The 3000 and 3500 models offers performance exceeding Voodoo2 SLI in certain environments.[8] At the same time 3dfx also released the budget-priced Voodoo Banshee, a combination 2D/3D card that combines a 2D accelerator with an overclocked but incomplete Voodoo2, missing one of the texture units.[5][9][10]

The Voodoo2 enjoyed remarkably long usage in many computer systems, as a Voodoo2 SLI setup was competitive with newer cards like NVIDIA's RIVA TNT2, Matrox's Millennium G400,[11][12][13] and even NVIDIA's GeForce 256.[14] 3dfx's Glide API played an essential role in this longevity because some games were still tailored more towards Glide than Direct3D or OpenGL.[15] Long after the chipset's obsolescence, some dedicated enthusiasts did get later games working with a Voodoo2, e.g. Doom 3.[16]

Specifications

2x Voodoo2 in SLI
  • Voodoo2 (V2 1000) 90 MHz clock (memory and core).
  • 135 MHz RAMDAC, dithered 16-bit (65536 color) display.
  • Full-screen, 3D-only accelerator, works with another 2D or 2D/3D VGA card through a VGA pass-through cable. Picture softened slightly by analogue VGA pass-through cable.
  • Support full-screen games under DOS, Windows 95/98, etc.
  • Support for game development tools including Gemini OpenGVS, Multigen, GameGen, SGI OpenGL, Glide, Direct3D, MiniGL and Autodesk 3D Studio under DOS, Win32 and IRIX.
  • Resolution up to 800 × 600 and higher resolution through SLI (Scan Line Interleave), up to 1024 × 768.
  • Supports 8 or 12 Megabytes high speed EDO DRAM rated at 100 MHz but running at 90 MHz, 25 ns.
  • RAM configured into 4 Megabytes for frame buffer(s) and Z-buffer and 4 or 8 Megabytes texture memory.
  • 90 million fully featured pixels/sec sustained fill rate for bilinear textures, with LOD MIP-mapping, Z-buffering, alpha-blending and fogging enabled).
  • 3 million fully featured triangles/sec (Filtered, LOD MIP-mapped, Z-buffered, alpha-blended, fogging enabled, textured triangles).
  • 180 million pixel/sec with scanline interleaved configuration.
  • Bi-linear and tri-linear texture filtering.
  • Level of Detail (LOD) mipmapping
  • Supports multiple textures per pixel.
  • Bump mapping through texture composition.
  • Edge anti-aliasing.
  • Hardware triangle set-up (independent strips and fans).
  • Perspective, sub-pixel and sub-texel correction.
  • Gouraud shading and texture modulation.
  • Z-buffering (16/32 bpp, integer and floating point).
  • Alpha blending and fogging.
  • Linear frame buffer access.
  • Single-pass tri-linear filtering.
  • Single-pass dual textures per pixel.

Models

Model Launch Code name Fab (nm) Bus interface Memory (MiB) Core clock (MHz) Memory clock (MHz) Core config1 Fillrate Memory Direct3D support
MOperations/s MPixels/s MTexels/s MVertices/s Bandwidth (GB/s) Bus type Bus width (bit)
Voodoo2 March 1, 1998 SST2 350 PCI 8, 12 90 90 2:1 90 90 180 0 2.16 EDO 192 5.0
Voodoo Banshee June 22, 1998 Banshee 350 AGP, PCI 8, 16 100 100 1:1 100 100 100 0 1.6 SDR 128 6.0

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "3Dfx Voodoo2". Next Generation. No. 37. Imagine Media. January 1998. pp. 88–92.
  2. ^ a b c d e Sanchez, Andrew (January 1998). "Previews – 3Dfx Voodoo2". boot. No. 17. pp. 86–87.
  3. ^ Review AGP Graphic Cards, Tom's Hardware, October 27, 1997.
  4. ^ Yong, Li Sheng. Texturing As In Unreal, flipcode.com, July 10, 2000.
  5. ^ a b Pabst, Thomas. New 3D Chips – Banshee, G200, RIVA TNT And Savage3D Archived November 6, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Tom's Hardware, August 18, 1998.
  6. ^ Bennett, Phil. "Magic the Gathering: Armageddon - MAME preliminary driver". MAME GitHub repository. Archived from the original on December 5, 2023. Retrieved August 27, 2024.
  7. ^ Ondrejka, Cory (April 5, 2019). "CoryOndrejka on: The 3dfx Voodoo1". Hacker News. Archived from the original on December 5, 2023. Retrieved August 27, 2024.
  8. ^ "Preview of 3Dfx Voodoo3". 22 February 1999.
  9. ^ 3dfx Specifications: Voodoo Banshee AGP/PCI Archived June 7, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, 3dfxzone, accessed August 16, 2024.
  10. ^ VGA Legacy MKIII - Diamond Monster Fusion (3Dfx Voodoo Banshee)
  11. ^ Lal Shimpi, Anand. Nvidia Riva TNT2, Anandtech, April 27, 1999.
  12. ^ Pabst, Thomas. NVIDIA rocks the Boat with TNT2, Tom's Hardware, March 12, 1999.
  13. ^ Hwang, Kenn. Exclusive Pentium III Review, Firing Squad, January 13, 1999.
  14. ^ Shimpi, Anand Lal. "NVIDIA GeForce 256 Part 1: To buy or not to buy". www.anandtech.com.
  15. ^ Ajami, Amer (1999-12-06). "3dfx Open Sources Glide". GameSpot. Archived from the original on December 5, 2021. Retrieved 2024-08-16.
  16. ^ "Doom3 + Voodoo2_Patch_v1_0 - 3dfxzone.it WorldWide Community". 7 June 2023.
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