Introduction

I remember very clearly the day the Voodoo 3 family was announced, and my reaction to that announcement: a mix of concern and excitement. On the one hand, the clock rates that 3dfx announced could only be considered groundbreaking-who had ever heard of a video card clocked at the astounding rate of 183 megahertz? On the other hand, the product had virtually no new features at all, being an amalgam of what we had already seen from 3dfx: multitexturing taken from Voodoo 2, and single chip design taken from Banshee. There was no question in my mind that 3dfx would be reasonably successful with this strategy, but the big variable was delivering both the memory chips and the video chips at 166mhz and 183mhz. Would 3dfx be able to do it?

A Little History

To properly understand Voodoo 3, we have to frame it in context of all the other cards that 3dfx has released. Bear with me as I take a quick trip down memory lane.