" I'm talking about a time that people in their twenties couldn't possibly know...".
3Dfx is a name that's not getting any younger. Founded in 1994, this American brand was a hit with PC gamers in the second half of the 90s, before the competition became too strong for the company, which was never able to expand its activities to reach as many people as possible. In 1996, it revolutionized the PC graphics market with the Voodoo card, the first 3D gas pedal available to gamers. In 1998, it did it again with the Voodoo 2, a powerhouse that could even be paired for delirious performance. In 1999, the Voodoo 3 was already beginning to struggle against the competition, but the swan song came in 1999 with the release of the Voodoo 4 and Voodoo 5 just a few months before a bankruptcy that led to the takeover of the whole of 3Dfx by the new giant... NVIDIA.
Oscar Barea and Ash Evans
Despite its ultimately brief existence, 3Dfx nevertheless left its mark like few other companies. Every PC gamer over the age of 40 has dreamed of - for want of having one in their machine - 3Dfx cards. So much so, that even today - almost a quarter-century after its demise - the brand still spawns crazy projects, such as the one initiated in October 2022 by Oscar Barea and Ash Evans. The pair have decided to design their own 3Dfx, christened VoodooX. Their card is built around the venerable company's latest GPU - the VSA-100 - so there's no question of running Cyberpunk 2077 on this VoodooX: in any case, with its archaic architecture, it's not even DirectX 9 or DirectX 11 compatible, so DirectX 12 be damned! No, the duo's objective is different: to pay tribute to the 3Dfx brand with a "heart project", as they say in these cases.
Oscar Barea and Ash Evans
Their VoodooX seems to have made good progress, and the latest news posted on their X.com (formerly Twitter) feed mentions a new - black - PCB and the aim of opting for 32 or 64 MB of video memory via a switch. Of course, the VSA-100 is still on the menu, and there's no question of putting more than one GPU on the VoodooX, as is the case with some of the latest 3Dfx boards. That said, the most interesting aspect of the project is the display. Oscar Barea and Ash Evans have swapped the old-fashioned DB15 port for a DVI-D and HDMI duo, to achieve a far more beautiful image than on vintage boards. That's all there is to it, except to say that we salute this kind of project, driven by nothing other than passion!
