3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 video card reverse engineered and re-created by enthusiast
Most of you probably have no clue what Voodoo graphics or 3dfx is or meant, but for Guru3D, this was the reason and era this website started before the year 2000. This new thing called 3D graphics accelerators became obtainable and shaped it into what it is today.
For many, 3dfx is a synonym as what Commodore 64 and Amiga is for others, nostalgia. An aficionado operating under the alias Zx-c64 managed to reverse engineer a rather interesting-looking Voodoo graphics card based on commercially available components. The result, a 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 video card. A product that holds four VSA-100 co-processors (you can't call them GPUs, really). zx-c64, aka Anthony, has completely rebuilt an original Voodoo 5 6000, again with four VSA-100 chips, and wait for it .... sixteen 8 MB 166 MHz SDRAM modules. It's all been put together on a self-made PCB. You can see a move from AGP to PCIe Express, the added benefit from using PCI Express is that it can feed 75 Watts, no longer an external power supply was needed. below I added a photo of an original Voodoo 5 6000, that's the one with the brick :)
The card works just like the original Voodoo graphics cards, which includes all issues, including color distortion and artifacts, thus bugs, lol. The product offers the same performance, same BIOS, and works on the old drivers. Perhaps Anthony has made a new trend; I am sure some people would like to purchase such a replica. For those that wonder whatever happened with 3Dfx, they have been acquired by NVIDIA back in the year 2000.
What an amazing job; well done and well-executed, Anthony; we take a deep bow to you.
Senior Member
Posts: 236
Joined: 2003-09-12
nostalgia... I had a Voodoo 2, great experience using the Glide in many games.
NVidia can thanks 3dfx for the SLI.
Senior Member
Posts: 109
Joined: 2004-03-09
You know the GPU shortage is to be taken seriously when a guy become so desperate to build a 3DFX by himself

Senior Member
Posts: 1694
Joined: 2008-07-16
You can see a move from AGP to PCIe Express, the added benefit from using PCI Express is that it can feed 75 Watts, no longer an external power supply was needed.
That is PCI, not PCI express, and you can literally see a big fat MOLEX power connector...
Senior Member
Posts: 8476
Joined: 2010-08-28
I owned a couple of 3dfx cards back in the day.
I know for sure i had a Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo 3 3000 and Voodoo 5 5500 AGP.
Senior Member
Posts: 11808
Joined: 2012-07-20
Now imagine it on 7nm. Everything integrated 2048 times over. That would be 28B transistors. Apparently insane idea and wasteful too.
But if anything, I would love to have real C64c chip and PCB remade into single chip with extra memory integrated (1MB would be enough). Few capacitors, transistors, ... around to deal with sound profile and i/o. Eeprom/tape/disk drive replaced with mere emmc.
That would be fun. 2MHz? Extra turbo settings with 4, 8, ... MHz. Eats nothing. Runs "forever" on battery. Solar would be enough to feed it too.
But it has to be real C64c chip, not emulator running on arm.