Seems it has four 3dfx chips and no idea what it is. please help identificating.

http://images.bargainland.net/510/516.jpg

That left cable looks alot like the ribbon cable Quantum3D used for their SLI Voodoo Graphics (2x Obsidian SB50) Perhaps another company tried this too?

I think that it has 6 3dfx chips though. The visible ones are all the same size which means they're texture mapping units. So there have to be two more chips (framebuffer/PFI).

Where did you get this image?
(I'd bet Gary will be mighty interested in this card :P)

http://images.bargainland.net/510/517.jpg
http://images.bargainland.net/510/516.jpg

Two boards from EBay, I just got the one with ribbon cable and do not receive it yet, so not sure how many chips on it.

Just three part numbers on one board listed by seller,
Part # P501-A10-B-64
Part # P503-01
Part # P50QM-02-10

I searched these num on Google, no result display.

That looks rare!

:o

Do you collect graphics cards?

if you find another one, i take it.

please PM me or mail...

I've got a hunch that it MIGHT (stress this - might) be a VREngine Voodoo 2. :o

From the pictures I remember, it looks similar... :P

I'm also going to field a guess and say that the chip with the HSF is part of the TnL engine... :o

This is all conjecture though! ::)

@gdonovan - do you have any info on this unusual behemoth? ???

@roblee - a link to the (ENDED) eBay acution may also help...that is if you don't mind sharing (just to see if there'e any info on the auction) ;)

wrote on 03.02.06 at 23:39:04:

@gdonovan - do you have any info on this unusual behemoth? ???

Yes.

@ Gary :)

Bring it on I'd say as we all would like to know what this "thing"really is :)

Cheers,

Obi-Wan Kenobi :)

Sure looks cool don't it ::)

@robblee is their a part number on the SLI cables?

@LuxKiller65 - yes, I collect 3dfx graphic cards.

@paulpsomiadis - There is no any other info on the auction, just the pic and that three parts num.

@gamma742 - the board on the way, so not sure where the parts num is on. PS, thanks for your advise to the HG system.

Your welcome ;)

As I stated, I don't want to see any of my friends here at "The 3dfx Archive" get burned on a bad deal.

On-topic: The cable looks like the same cable needed for a 100DB 4440 aka SX-100 card set. I can verify the 3dfx part number ;)


Great find BTW on what ever that card is..  Looks like a dual capable Rush card. Donno,  it looks really cool though 8)

wrote on 03.02.06 at 23:39:04:

I've got a hunch that it MIGHT (stress this - might) be a VREngine Voodoo 2. :o From the pictures I remember, it looks similar... :P

Wrong;

VREngine VD2:
http://tweakers.net/ext/f/aebb3a8371cd63bced2b6dbf83da93d5/full.jpg

Ookay, so my darts didn't hit the bullseye... ::)

But you gotta admit they DO look similar...kind of! :P

So @Gary - are you keeping us in the dark and being mysterious... :o

...or will you switch on the light? ???

I do sense some truth in that Paul ;) Gary What will it be my friend ;)

wrote on 05.02.06 at 02:40:50:

So @Gary - are you keeping us in the dark and being mysterious... :o ...or will you switch on the light? ???

Yes! we are all waiting for you to enlighten us :)

@robblee

I sent you a PM...

wrote on 05.02.06 at 02:40:50:

So @Gary - are you keeping us in the dark and being mysterious... :o ...or will you switch on the light? ???

Looking for my notes.

Quote:

Looking for my notes.

I can imagine a desk strewn with many 3dfx documents... ;D

...or a HDD full of PDF files! ::)

Several binders, 1.5 gig of stored files and a few years worth of e-mails.

Quote:

"Since you seem to be interested in everything related to 3Dfx I just wandered if you were aware of Primary Image and their 3Dfx based products. These were by far the most advanced application of 3Dfx technology at the time. The cards were aimed at the visual simulation market and not consumers. I used to work for them and wrote pretty much all the drivers and software for their 3Dfx based products.

They rolled out Piranha (http://www.wave-report.com/1997_Wave_issues/wave723.html#723.12) in October 1997. This was a PCI board that had the following on it:
- an embedded Mips R5000 200MHz processor that ran an embedded version of Glide driven by the client side part of the Tempest scene manager, the srever sid ran on the PC. The client side did all the cull/draw calculations thus relieving the PC's CPU of this burdon and allowing multiple cards to be placed in a single PC (see below)
- a Voodoo 1 FBI with 3 TMU's (to my knowledge thie and the Baracuds are the only 3Dfx implementations by anyone to have 3 TMU's). This allowed for a tri-linear filtered base texture and a dithered trilinear filtered secondary texture, or even three dithered tri-linear textures in a single pass.
- A daughter card with another Voodoo 1 FBI with another 3 TMU's. This was used in SLI mode with the set on the base card.

The cards had a pixel bus connector system that allowed 2, 4 or 8 of them to be joined together and composited into a single channel to generate 2x, 4x or 8x rotated grid anti-aliasing. There were also tiling options so that half the cards could generate the left side of the screen and the other half the right side thus doubling the pixel fill rate and increasing the maximum resolution to 1280x1024. A second connector system was used to daisy chain the Pixel Clock, VSync and HSync signals, thus allowing mutliple channels to be video sychronized. Industrial PC's were used which had up to 20 PCI slots in a 19 inch 6U rack mount chassis. The PC was a single board computer (SBC) that plugged into the end slot. This sytem was developed almost 2 years before Quantum3D debuted their 3Dfx based AA offering.

In November 1998 Barracuda (http://www.wave-report.com/1998_Wave_issues/wave906.html#anchor197511 and  http://www.primary-image.com/training_solutions/barracuda_design.htm) was released. This was similar to Piranha with the following updates - The Mips processor was upgraded to a 300MHz R7000. The Voodoo chips were upgraded to Voodoo 2, still 2 FBI and 6 TMU with the daughter card. An additional bus was added to optionally allow the geometry processing to be performed by a seperate card (called Cruncher) which had two 300MHz MIPS R7000's. The Cruncher would broadcast the polygon data to all the Barracuda's in a single channel by DMAing to a memory window. The local R7000 on each Barracuda would read the polygon data, add it's own local sub-pixel offset for anti-aliasing, then send the draw commands to the Voodoo 2 chips. A Galileo PCI bridge was added so that the 3Dfx graphics chips were visible on the PC's PCI bus (on Piranha the PC could not derectly access the Voodoo chips). Multi-card configuration options were the same as Piranha.

Primary Image had to stop using 3Dfx chips after Voodoo2 because 3Dfx signed there agreement with Quantum3D for them to be the sole source for later generations of 3Dfx based systems in the Visual Simulation field."

<insert smiley with jaw dropping to the ground>

Must be worth a fortune these cards.
I wonder how they perform compared to their Q3D counterparts.

From the first link, regarding Piranha:


Quote:

The 8-card system is the maximum expected for a system. All cards are PCI and there is priority interconnect system between cards. Piranha can scale either in performance as outlined above or scale in the number of channels with multiple cards. An entry card includes 32MB of memory and sells for approximately $6,000. A module is available for the PCI card which will double the rendering performance. The memory is expandable to 64MB. A fully loaded card costs $9,000.

Dear God.

Please excuse the language, but... :P

HOLY F@CKING SH!T :o :o :o

hmm @ least cheaper than an AALchemy 8164  :-* That';s the advantage ladies  ;D But Very nice Find Rob ;)

I sounds like a Voodoo1 based Mercury System, if there was such a thing ???

Obviously quite a collectors item :o

I would love to see it in action. Sounds like that guy might be able to help with drivers but I wonder what programs (sims) it would run.

I doubt we'll ever see it running Quake3 :'(

Very nice none the less ;)

yeah the Pirana may have been the rival for the Quantum3D Obsidian 50-4420 & 50-4440 cards :)

Sounds to me like it was better than the 100-SX aka 100DB 4440. Pretty awesome I'd say 8)

I think it may use the same SLI cable as those cards :o

It's such a shame that 3Dfx were so uptight about licencing their technology... ::)

...just imagine if they had let MORE companies than just Q3D use their chips in simulation hardware. :P

Who knows, there might even have been a 32 way Voodoo 2 server (mind melts thinking about it!) :o

The 8-way Mercury System looks pretty awesome. It's hard for me to amagine 32-way but then, I've never seen a 8164 in action :-/

I wonder how much the auction ended at...

:o

when you get these card please make some high res-pictures...

Yeah, I'll second that request... ;)

...and (hopefully) some GFX tests and benchmarks when @roblee gets these VERY interesting beasties working! 8)

Without drivers from Primary Image I don't think there will be much benchmarking.

I'm not much into wall hanging card but that would make a  nice one 8)

Quote:

Without drivers from Primary Image I don't think there will be much benchmarking.

Surely someone will have the drivers out there? ???

Or maybe the manufacturers will have some old stock sitting around... :P

...just a thought! ;)

Any news?

???

Sorry for poor picture quality, will take some more clear photo late.

http://img256.photo.163.com/robblee/31560452/835613968.jpg
http://img256.photo.163.com/robblee/31560452/835613988.jpg
http://img256.photo.163.com/robblee/31560452/835614009.jpg
http://img256.photo.163.com/robblee/31560452/835614029.jpg
http://img256.photo.163.com/robblee/31560452/835614056.jpg
http://img256.photo.163.com/robblee/31560452/835614072.jpg

i cant see the pictures  :(

but you can mail it to me, i have web space ;)

nice card...but it looks awful...the design is really awful!

awful? ROFL!

its looking like a Quantum 3d Card...

I can't see any photo's either please use http://www.imageshack.com instead, dunno what could be awful even if it's a 3dfx card :-X

wrote on 14.02.06 at 10:26:52:

awful? ROFL! its looking like a Quantum 3d Card...

it looks similar...but i like the Q3Ds more...subjective discernment...

http://tdfx.de/stuff/pics/z1.jpg
http://tdfx.de/stuff/pics/z2.jpg
http://tdfx.de/stuff/pics/z3.jpg
http://tdfx.de/stuff/pics/z4.jpg
http://tdfx.de/stuff/pics/z5.jpg
http://tdfx.de/stuff/pics/z6.jpg

w00t...

i also wanna own this card ^^ damnit  :-X

Am I mistaken or is it a voodoo2 card ???

well Gamma742 that the Piranha  ;)

it has a Voodoo Graphics chipset aka Voodoo1 on it but with 3 TMU's instead of just one, these cards had a new value of 9K USD.

Gary has written something about these things earlier in this topic, as he writes the following:

"Since you seem to be interested in everything related to 3Dfx I just wandered if you were aware of Primary Image and their 3Dfx based products. These were by far the most advanced application of 3Dfx technology at the time. The cards were aimed at the visual simulation market and not consumers. I used to work for them and wrote pretty much all the drivers and software for their 3Dfx based products.

They rolled out Piranha (http://www.wave-report.com/1997_Wave_issues/wave723.html#723.12) in October 1997. This was a PCI board that had the following on it:
- an embedded Mips R5000 200MHz processor that ran an embedded version of Glide driven by the client side part of the Tempest scene manager, the srever sid ran on the PC. The client side did all the cull/draw calculations thus relieving the PC's CPU of this burdon and allowing multiple cards to be placed in a single PC (see below)
- a Voodoo 1 FBI with 3 TMU's (to my knowledge thie and the Baracuds are the only 3Dfx implementations by anyone to have 3 TMU's). This allowed for a tri-linear filtered base texture and a dithered trilinear filtered secondary texture, or even three dithered tri-linear textures in a single pass.
- A daughter card with another Voodoo 1 FBI with another 3 TMU's. This was used in SLI mode with the set on the base card.

The cards had a pixel bus connector system that allowed 2, 4 or 8 of them to be joined together and composited into a single channel to generate 2x, 4x or 8x rotated grid anti-aliasing. There were also tiling options so that half the cards could generate the left side of the screen and the other half the right side thus doubling the pixel fill rate and increasing the maximum resolution to 1280x1024. A second connector system was used to daisy chain the Pixel Clock, VSync and HSync signals, thus allowing mutliple channels to be video sychronized. Industrial PC's were used which had up to 20 PCI slots in a 19 inch 6U rack mount chassis. The PC was a single board computer (SBC) that plugged into the end slot. This sytem was developed almost 2 years before Quantum3D debuted their 3Dfx based AA offering.  "

it's a long discription butthis is really what it was and yes FSAA x2,x4 and x8 wasn't a problem okay that was thanx to a pixel bus connecter placed in each card so they could be connected to 2, 4 or 8 units thereby the FSAA modes were possible and other strange things.

These Piranha cards could of been great rivals for Quantum3D.

Well That's what I thought but look closely at the pics 500-0010-01

http://tdfx.de/stuff/pics/z3.jpg

yeah you're right! There is 3x Bruce and one Chuck!

hmm then it's a Barracuda since the Voodoo1 chips were replaced by Voodoo2 chips, like Gary wrote over here:

In November 1998 Barracuda (http://www.wave-report.com/1998_Wave_issues/wave906.html#anchor197511 and  http://www.primary-image.com/training_solutions/barracuda_design.htm) was released. This was similar to Piranha with the following updates - The Mips processor was upgraded to a 300MHz R7000. The Voodoo chips were upgraded to Voodoo 2, still 2 FBI and 6 TMU with the daughter card. An additional bus was added to optionally allow the geometry processing to be performed by a seperate card (called Cruncher) which had two 300MHz MIPS R7000's. The Cruncher would broadcast the polygon data to all the Barracuda's in a single channel by DMAing to a memory window. The local R7000 on each Barracuda would read the polygon data, add it's own local sub-pixel offset for anti-aliasing, then send the draw commands to the Voodoo 2 chips. A Galileo PCI bridge was added so that the 3Dfx graphics chips were visible on the PC's PCI bus (on Piranha the PC could not derectly access the Voodoo chips). Multi-card configuration options were the same as Piranha.

Primary Image had to stop using 3Dfx chips after Voodoo2 because 3Dfx signed there agreement with Quantum3D for them to be the sole source for later generations of 3Dfx based systems in the Visual Simulation field."

if iut ain't a Barracuda would it be a prototype of what the Barracuda could of been since that the Barracuda does have 6 TMU and 2FPU's this card has only 3 TMU's and 1 FPU so it might be a test model to see if more TMU's were capable.

WAAAAAAY KEWL! 8)

It's just a cryin' shame that no-one can get hold of the drivers for this beast! :'(

I bet the image quality is dreamy! :o

Yeah sure would be L33Ty to experience that, but drivers should be somewhere, maybe useing 3rd party Voodoo2 drivers might work or some kinda Quantum3D Iron driver, just think'n out loud here lads.

wrote on 16.02.06 at 11:10:41:

hmm then it's a Barracuda since the Voodoo1 chips were replaced by Voodoo2 chips, like Gary wrote over here: if iut ain't a Barracuda would it be a prototype of what the Barracuda could of been since that the Barracuda does have 6 TMU and 2FPU's this card has only 3 TMU's and 1 FPU so it might be a test model to see if more TMU's were capable.

The design looks like the X-24. Maybe the other 1 + 3 chips are underneath the daughter card.

hmm yeah maybe anyways since the TMU's have BE on them which is a naming for Bruce right?  and that single chip has CK aka Chuck so it should be a Barra ;)

A better pic of that card:

http://ingo.phpmail.de/3dfx/barra_small.jpg

Klick to get to a big pic ;)

Really interesting card, it's interesting how these cards could have been "undercover" for such a long time.

hm what kind of RAM is that? it looks like it is 8ns RAM!!! (think i can see a -8 in the second row)

125 mhz

hmm interesting looks loke SDRAM also :) EDO Ram are somewhat higher than SDRAM chips aren't they?

a Voodoo2 with 3 Bruce Chips and 1 Chuck Chip odd stuff.

wrote on 10.03.06 at 01:14:19:

a Voodoo2 with 3 Bruce Chips and 1 Chuck Chip odd stuff.

Single board SLI- 6 and 2.