This is my first posting on these boards.  I'd like to thank FalconFly for his work and for keeping the file archive available.  

This is in response to the VSA-101/VSA-200 is really Rampage debate.  
http://www.falconfly-central.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=offtopic;action=display;num=1077301502

I figured I'd start a new thread.

The short version:  anything with a VSA-xxx is a variation of the VSA-100.  The Spectre line of cards would not have used any VSA chips of any type.  

The longer version:

First off, realize that Rampage was the internal code name for the project.  Such as Napalm (VSA-100), Avenger (Banshee II, renamed Voodoo3 for marketing reasons), and Daytona (VSA-101).  To be a little more specific, Rampage is the code name for the rasterizer.  Once NVidia came out with their TnL unit it was understood that 3dfx needed to meet the technology, hence the Sage geometry chip.  Rampage is a little unique, in that the chip name probably would have kept the internal project name.  The reason is that there had been enough hype regarding the Rampage project that the name itself had some recognition ...the side of the boxes on the Spectre series would have proudly proclaimed that the cards were powered by Rampage technology.  


I believe this happened with Banshee as well, that the internal project name was kept, and the chip became known as it (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong on this).  Much as if we never called the Voodoo3 by that name, but as 3dfx Avenger.

Anyone remember the Voodoo3 4000, with AGP 4x, 32bit color, and large texture support?  It was announced not too long after the Avenger chip came out and came under fire for not supporting those features.  The Voodoo3 4000 never materialized, but the Voodoo4 4500 did, which supported all of those, and had the approximately the same performance.  That's because they're basically the same thing—Voodoo3 4000 turned into the VSA project.  They added the T-buffer (a concept borrowed from the Rampage project) and enhanced SLI support (the Avenger chip did support SLI, a few SLI Avenger based boards were made by Quantum3d.  They were the earlier AAlchemy boards.)

In answer to the theory that Rampage supported more than one chip, therefore it went under the VSA name:
Voodoo Scalable Architecture was designed for massive clusters, the design spec was for 1 to 32 chips to be linked together.  Rampage held on the the multi-chip architecture to a more reasonable level; 4 rampages could be SLIed together and two Sages.  Multi-chip architecture was not unique to the VSA series; all 3dfx cards were either of multi-chip design (the early Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo^2, and the unfinished Rampage + Sage combination) or SLI capable (Avenger, VSA-100, Rampage chips.  It was possible to SLI Rampage chips without Sage, although it would have made no sense to do so.)  The only chip that does not, as far as I know, support SLI is Banshee.

There is a post limit.  To continue...


There is a connection between VSA-101, VSA-200 and Rampage, namely that none of them were finished when 3dfx went under.  Or to be more precise, the chips were finished,  but a working bug-free card wasn't.  All three were overdelayed unfinished products.  The VSA series had nothing to do with Rampage.  Both VSA-101 and VSA-200 were variations on the VSA-100 chip.  The VSA-101 was the Daytona project, a low-end card that was to mainly go into OEM systems.  Daytona was to fill the same niche as the Velocity cards during Avenger's lifespan.  The new chips would have supported 200mhz clock speed and DDR memory, but the bus was reduced to 64 bits, and SLI support disabled.  It was not an improvement over the VSA-100, but it would have been cheaper to make the cards.  This is much like the Radeon 9500/9600.    There was another variation with the improvements of Daytona and with SLI enabled and a 128 bit bus, the VSA-200.

Rampage was a completely different design, and although Rampage was in silicon at the very end of 3dfx, its companion chip, Sage, was not.  Because of the way 3dfx designed it's cards, with an emphasis on parallel chips sharing the load, it's unlikely that a single Rampage would have performed much better that a Voodoo5 5500, although it would have been cheaper to produce.

Anyway, the Spectre line of cards would have performed in the GeForce2 – GeForce3 area of performance, although the quality of the picture, both through superior AA and 52bit internal color, would have been much nicer to look at (and much nicer than the VSA series).   Although the Rampage chip was finished, I would be skeptical of the idea that the Spectre line of cards was almost out the door at 3dfx's demise.  

I would also be skeptical about the Spectre series being years ahead of it's time in performance.  3Dfx is on record as exaggerating or flat out lying about the performance of their unreleased cards on a number of occasions.  I've read the released/leaked specs on Rampage, about how the M-buffer could do FSAA with almost no performance hit, and I can also find quotes from 3dfx, before Napalm was complete, saying that FSAA via the T-buffer would cause a basically unnoticeable performance hit.  Or that the Voodoo3 would be capable of 60fps at 1280x1024.  

That said, I'm not trying to bash 3dfx, just be honest about them.  While the performance specs  (FPS with AA enabled, etc) were probably exaggerated about the Spectre line, I think that the quality of the image these cards would have been capable of producing were not.  That's why I still use my Voodoo5—I only play older games, and the image quality of the card, both 2d at high resolution and 3d with FSAA, can't be beat.