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Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?! (Read 326 times)
ultima
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Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?!
05.04.13 at 14:44:09
 
Hey guys,

would it be possible to build a vodoo2 SLI setup with more then 2 cards??
I know that would mean driver rewriting as they are set to recognize 2 cards max, but that should be able to be changed, right?
And making a cable for 4 cards is not that hard, just need a long enough floppy cable. Smiley

Does anyone know where we can find the voodoo2 driver source code?
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NitroX infinity
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Re: Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?!
Reply #1 - 05.04.13 at 14:53:24
 
I don't think it's possible.

Yes, Quantum3D has the Mercury 'brick' which has 4 cards, each with 2 V2's on it but as far as I know, those extras are only used for anti-aliasing purposes.

It wasn't until the VSA-100 that more than 2 chips could be used for performance and I think even that generation of SLI was limited to 4, again Q3D's AAlchemy 8xxx card using the extra 4 for anti-aliasing.
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ultima
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Re: Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?!
Reply #2 - 05.04.13 at 15:44:10
 
but is this really hard fact or more like the "fact" that the VSA-100 doesn't support more then 32MB/64MB per chip? (forgot which one 3DFX stated as true)

or the "fact" that celerons can't run in dual config, which they could (pre-coppermine)
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« Last Edit: 05.04.13 at 15:44:58 by ultima »  

3DFX Playrig:

Aerocool Strike-X Air
SuperMicro H8DAE
Dual Opteron 280 @ 2.4Ghz (4 cores)
4 x 1GB PC3200
3DFX Voodoo5 5500MAC PCI
WD 160GB ATA100/133
Diamond MonsterSound MX300
Windows2000 SP4
 
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RaverX
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Re: Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?!
Reply #3 - 05.04.13 at 20:41:30
 
ultima wrote on 05.04.13 at 14:44:09:
And making a cable for 4 cards is not that hard, just need a long enough floppy cable. Smiley


And how are you going to connect more than 2 cards with that cable? You could make a single cable with  4 connectors, something like you can see on SCSI cables, but then you'll need the cards installed in a specific order in slots and a driver that knows exactly which card is the "first" card, the second card, etc.

Then wht do you want the cards to no? Normally 2 V2 cards will render a scene "line by line", so I assume you'll want 4 V2 cards to render lines 1,2,3,4, then again 5,6,7,8, etc.

In theory it's not even very hard, but in practice it might be
"a little" harder.
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ultima
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Re: Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?!
Reply #4 - 09.04.13 at 11:54:18
 
yeah, the idea would indeed be 1 floppy cable with 4 connectors, but that raises the question, about flipping the 4 cables in the middle, do I do that after every connector, or just at the start between the 1st and 2nd card?

About the drivers, do we have the source code for voodoo2 drivers?? I can test this when needed, I have 4 CT6670 cards, all 12MB, so ......no missmatch drivers needed, or were those for combining 8 and 12MB cards??
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3DFX Playrig:

Aerocool Strike-X Air
SuperMicro H8DAE
Dual Opteron 280 @ 2.4Ghz (4 cores)
4 x 1GB PC3200
3DFX Voodoo5 5500MAC PCI
WD 160GB ATA100/133
Diamond MonsterSound MX300
Windows2000 SP4
 
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RaverX
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Re: Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?!
Reply #5 - 12.04.13 at 11:57:20
 
http://www.falconfly.de/reference.htm

Here you can find some sourcecode, including some V2 sourcecode for Linux driver.

But I'll ask again: what do you expect from a 4 way SLI setup? Better framerate in games? Better quality? (antialiasing) Higher resolution?

Connecting 4 V2 will not be a problem, don't worry about that FDD cable, instead try to answer yourself the questions from above.

It's cool when you think: hey, I have 4 V2s in SLI. OK, great, but what can you do with them (something that 2 V2 cannot do).
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Loeschzwerg
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Re: Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?!
Reply #6 - 12.04.13 at 12:38:40
 
AA would be great Cheesy
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ultima
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Re: Voodoo2 SLI with more then 2 cards?!
Reply #7 - 12.04.13 at 13:14:16
 
yeah, my 1st reason would also be AA, without framrate drops, bit like the AAlchemy cards, only with 4 voodoo2 cards Smiley
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3DFX Playrig:

Aerocool Strike-X Air
SuperMicro H8DAE
Dual Opteron 280 @ 2.4Ghz (4 cores)
4 x 1GB PC3200
3DFX Voodoo5 5500MAC PCI
WD 160GB ATA100/133
Diamond MonsterSound MX300
Windows2000 SP4
 
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