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 becoming a thing of the past.
This is confirmed by their new product - Voodoo3. Some people call this chip Banshee2, but this is incorrect. Voodoo3 is a completely new solution designed for professional use in 2D/3D applications. Voodoo3 is no longer just a gaming chip. Due to the powerful 2D part, Voodoo3 can be targeted at professional 2D work. In addition, video processing and display functions are supported, which was not available in previous 3dfx chips.
Characteristics of 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000
| Type |
2D / 3D |
| Technology | 0.25 Micron |
| Core frequency | 143 |
| Memory frequency | 143 |
| Throughput |
8 mPolys/sec |
| Fill rate | 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 | 1600 x 1200 |
| 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 the operating frequencies of the memory, core and RAMDAC. Voodoo3 2000 runs at 143MHz and has a RAMDAC of 300 MHz. Voodoo3 3000 runs at 166MHz and has a RAMDAC of 350MHz. Voodoo3 3500 is the fastest of the Voodoo3 series. It has a frequency of 183 MHz and a RAMDAC of 350 MHz.
The 2D part of Voodoo3 is much better than Banshee. First of all, it is the RAMDAC, the frequency of which is 300 MHz in Voodoo3 2000 and 350 MHz in Voodoo3 3000 and Voodoo3 3500. This significantly improves the picture and allows working in separate screen resolutions up to 2048x1536. As in the case of Banshee, a 128-bit 2D core with an internal 256-bit bus is used. There is also full support for Windows GUI, DirectDraw, polygon filling by two vertices, 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 with a refresh rate of 75 Hz.
Voodoo3, like all its predecessors, did not support rendering in 32-bit color, large textures, 32-bit textures, or the ability to use AGP texturing (which can be explained by the fact that 16 megabytes of memory on board Voodoo3 video cards was quite enough to store small 16-bit textures). What was new supported 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, but when using multitexturing, the second TMU pipeline is connected and two textures are superimposed on one pixel per clock cycle.
Voodoo3 allowed up to 4 video cards to be installed in parallel in SLI.
With normal cooling, Voodoo3 2000 could be overclocked from 143 to 175 MHz, which is close in speed to Voodoo3 3500.
