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The 3DFX Voodoo Lives Again In An FPGA
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AngelikaMerkel feddit.org AngelikaMerkel@feddit.org
Joined: 2024-07-25
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101   Original
bonenode piefed.social bonenode@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-11-26
#2 · Quote Reply

[deleted]
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HornedMeatBeast lemmy.world HornedMeatBeast@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-30
#3 · Quote Reply

I miss my Voodoo 3 2000 AGP card.

Some games ran worse when I finally replaced it with a GeForce 2 MX400.

I noticed a large FPS drop in Diablo 2.

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AntroTroll livellosegreto.it Antrotroll@livellosegreto.it
Joined: 2023-01-06
#4 · Quote Reply

I miss my Voodoo 3 2000 AGP card. Some games ran worse when I finally replaced it with a GeForce 2 MX400. I noticed a large FPS drop in Diablo 2.

@HornedMeatBeast @AngelikaMerkel Geforce 2 MX?!

None

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HornedMeatBeast lemmy.world HornedMeatBeast@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-30
#5 · Quote Reply

@HornedMeatBeast @AngelikaMerkel Geforce 2 MX?!

The website is a bit busted for me, but I believe it was this one.

https://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/pt_main_back.jsp?pPRODUCT_TYPE=Video+Card&pMODEL_NAME=Siluro+MX400

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AntroTroll livellosegreto.it Antrotroll@livellosegreto.it
Joined: 2023-01-06
#6 · Quote Reply

The website is a bit busted for me, but I believe it was this one. https://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/pt_main_back.jsp?pPRODUCT_TYPE=Video+Card&pMODEL_NAME=Siluro+MX400

@HornedMeatBeast oh yeah, I remember that “Siluro” models…btw a dead horse remains a dead horse even if marketing department beats the shit out of it 🤷‍♂️ and with Geforce 4 MX they went even harder on that. Brrrrr

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Quicky piefed.social Quicky@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-06-04
#7 · Quote Reply

I had a Voodoo 5, which I bought about a month before 3dfx went tits up. Impeccable timing.

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TrickDacy lemmy.world TrickDacy@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-27
#8 · Quote Reply

[deleted]

Probably quake 2. Quake 3 likely wouldn't have run the best on a 3dfx card but I think it would have run.

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leave_it_blank lemmy.world leave_it_blank@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-21
#9 · Quote Reply

My first game I played with the Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo 1 4 MB) was Tomb Raider 1. I could not believe what was happening. It looked soooo much better, and the frame rates were so fucking high! That really was voodoo magic. I can't remember something other that magical in all my gaming history.

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digitalFatteh lemmy.ca digitalFatteh@lemmy.ca
Joined: 2025-03-05
#10 · Quote Reply

Depending on whether you had a 3dfx or GeForce made playing Planetside a bit of a cheat. You could spot the cloaked infiltrators from anywhere as they would shimmer a nice ghostly white. Great times 😏

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Yora mastodon.gamedev.place yora@mastodon.gamedev.place
Joined: 2024-04-14
#11 · Quote Reply

Probably quake 2. Quake 3 likely wouldn't have run the best on a 3dfx card but I think it would have run.

@TrickDacy @bonenode Could Quake 3 even run without a graphics card? It came out in late 1999 and was the best looking game at the time by far.

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TrickDacy lemmy.world TrickDacy@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-27
#12 · Quote Reply

@TrickDacy @bonenode Could Quake 3 even run without a graphics card? It came out in late 1999 and was the best looking game at the time by far.

Without a graphics card? Of course not. Without 3d acceleration? Definitely not. Quake 3 was by far the most taxing game I was aware of when I came out. I barely saw any computers that could run it with maxed out settings until probably a year after it came out.

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Björn swg-empire.de bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de
Joined: 2023-07-08
#13 · Quote Reply

I had a Voodoo 2. I was salty at my parents that they got the 8 MB version instead of 12 MB. But I couldn't formulate my frustration because I didn't quite get the difference between system and graphics memory yet.

Still it was amazing how fast everything was. I spent hours just switching weapons in Jedi Knight. And Unreal was just drop dead gorgeous in Glide. No comparison to Direct3D or OpenGL.

And it included a demo of a rotating donut with bump mapping which would be toutet as this amazing new graphics feature decades later.

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Triumph fedia.io Triumph@fedia.io
Joined: 2025-09-19
#14 · Quote Reply

"They're worth a bit now" partly because they were used in coin-op arcade games, and people who refurb those will buy them as spares.

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dan1101 lemmy.world dan1101@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-06-12
#15 · Quote Reply

My first game I played with the Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo 1 4 MB) was Tomb Raider 1. I could not believe what was happening. It looked soooo much better, and the frame rates were so fucking high! That really was voodoo magic. I can't remember something other that magical in all my gaming history.

Same. Another similar breakthrough memory I had was the Gravis Ultrasound and hearing actual sampled instruments in the Ultima music. Before that game music was much more bleeps and bloops.

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aburrito sh.itjust.works aburrito@sh.itjust.works
Joined: 2023-07-06
#16 · Quote Reply

I had no idea you could emulate old hardware like this on an FPGA, that’s so cool

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keimevo lemmy.world keimevo@lemmy.world
Joined: 2023-07-01
#17 · Quote Reply

My first game I played with the Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo 1 4 MB) was Tomb Raider 1. I could not believe what was happening. It looked soooo much better, and the frame rates were so fucking high! That really was voodoo magic. I can't remember something other that magical in all my gaming history.

I had the same feeling, but with a TNT2 card. I first played Half-Life with software rendering, 320x240 in my fishbowl 14" monitor. Then a few months later I bought the TNT2 (M64, the cheap version), and began my 2nd playthrough at a glorious 640x480 with much better FPS. It was awesome.

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Evil_Shrubbery thelemmy.club Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
Joined: 2025-08-15
#18 · (edited) Quote Reply

I had a Voodoo 5, which I bought about a month before 3dfx went tits up. Impeccable timing.

... today it's worth about 128GB of DDR5 ...

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Evil_Shrubbery thelemmy.club Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
Joined: 2025-08-15
#19 · (edited) Quote Reply

My first game I played with the Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo 1 4 MB) was Tomb Raider 1. I could not believe what was happening. It looked soooo much better, and the frame rates were so fucking high! That really was voodoo magic. I can't remember something other that magical in all my gaming history.

Same.

Next I upgraded to 2×12MB Voodoo 2 (SLI with an IDE cable). I could play at 1024×768!

Best of times.

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Quicky piefed.social Quicky@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-06-04
#20 · Quote Reply

... today it's worth about 128GB of DDR5 ...

Holy shit I thought you were joking.

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Evil_Shrubbery thelemmy.club Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
Joined: 2025-08-15
#21 · Quote Reply

Holy shit I thought you were joking.

Yeah, I wanted to have it my collection since it came out, but it's not happening anytime soon, at least not until us millennials don't have anything better to live for.

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