The biggest Voodoo5 6000 test ever is online

[Raff3DC]

It's done. Look at this one:

http://3dcenter.de/artikel/voodoo5-6000/

Only in German so far, but maybe we'll make an english translation. But at least the diagrams are self-explicative.

Hope you enjoy it. We did. =D

Greetings from Germany,
Raff

[ps47]

nicely done

my german is getting rusty,I had a hard time reading it,but it was well worth it..anyway,english translation would be great

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

@ ps47

I agree!

@ Raff3DC
Please an English review of it , it would be more usefull then

But yeah the review might be nice heh, such a shame it's in germanic style, which kinda level downs the idea.

BTW Missing an important card in the table on this page
http://3dcenter.de/artikel/voodoo5-6000/index2.php

the 3dfx Voodoo 5 5000 AGP/PCI 32MB is missing
they run core/mem 166Mhz each core has 16MB 6ns SGRAM for the rest same specs as 5500 AGP

Also when testing the Voodoo 5 6000 why @ 183Mhz?
# Voodoo5 6000 AGP (4x 32 MiB, 183/183 MHz)

while all the other VSA-100 boards are clocked at default spped of 166Mhz, to make it a fair test, it would of been a wiser way to test the V6K @ default speed of 166Mhz as well so I would count this as anot worth test since you OCed the V6K and not test it on default speeds.

[Targaff]

15 December 2000 signaled the end of an era: on that date over six years ago, 3DFx, the pioneers of filtered polygon acceleration on PCs, closed its doors.  nVidia, their main rival, bought them out for 112 million dollars - patents, technologies, the lot.  It was a black day for the community, which up to then had been considerable in size.  But one question remained: could they have signed off with a flourish?

Shall I continue?

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

sure be my guest

[Raff3DC]

Originally posted by Obi-Wan Kenobi

BTW Missing an important card in the table on this page
http://3dcenter.de/artikel/voodoo5-6000/index2.php

the 3dfx Voodoo 5 5000 AGP/PCI 32MB is missing
they run core/mem 166Mhz each core has 16MB 6ns SGRAM for the rest same specs as 5500 AGP

Well, such a card must be owned first.

Originally posted by Obi-Wan Kenobi

Also when testing the Voodoo 5 6000 why @ 183Mhz?
# Voodoo5 6000 AGP (4x 32 MiB, 183/183 MHz)

while all the other VSA-100 boards are clocked at default spped of 166Mhz, to make it a fair test, it would of been a wiser way to test the V6K @ default speed of 166Mhz as well so I would count this as anot worth test since you OCed the V6K and not test it on default speeds.

The Voodoo5 6000 was supposed to ship with 183 MHz, so we decided to "overclock" the beast.

Originally posted by Targaff

Shall I continue?

Your translation sounds very nice! Maybe nicer than anything we could write. Your question gives me an idea: Could you do the translation? Or a part of it. You're from UK, it would be the best understandable version for english-speaking people.

The text is very long, I know. But maybe there are some more people with excellent translation skills.

Greetings from Germany,
Raff

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

true the desired speed was 183 but since all prototypes are clocked default @ 167Mhz I'd say use that default speed so would gdonovan.
every voodoo5 6000 runs 167 Mhz default to be exact, 183 Mhz was the first desired speeds since that made most cards unstable 167Mhz became the new desired speed.

But great to see you made the biggest German V6K review, nice one

[Targaff]

Originally posted by Raff3DCCould you do the translation? Or a part of it. You're from UK, it would be the best understandable version for english-speaking people.

I've cribbed all the text and started working on it, but I am fairly short on free time at the moment, between paid translation (I'm a freelance translator) and other work and looking after a sproglet.  I'm happy to do it - it's always nice to have a translation that I'm actually interested in! - but I can't make any promises on the "when" aspect.

Originally posted by Raff3DCBut maybe there are some more people with excellent translation skills.

That would be useful

[hanksemenec]

The last VSA100 silicon on rev A cards would have run 183 just fine.

Rev 2 silicon was broken and you could see screen corruption at 183, that was caused by the display FIFO. We have included a turbo bit to raise the core voltage to 3.0V, but that was never used. 3.0V would get the corruption fixed, but the life span of the parts would be shorter.

The other error we made is to think that the instability was caused by memory. It was not! The board layout killed the internal PCI bus and a little bit more noise on the planes caused the chip 4 to get wrong data.

With proper fixes the card would have gone out at 183. The currect rev A cards with PCI rework will do 183 even with -6 memory. I have margined some rev As at 191 to 195. If you do overclock, please, keep the bambino cool :-P

Hank

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

to keep 'm cool would be wise yes

[Raff3DC]

Well, my card was "ice cold" ... but the PSU bug was stronger.

Targaff, please let me know how far you have worked on it, so that we can estimate what's done.

Greetings,
Raff

[Targaff]

I'm getting to the end of the first page - only spent about an hour and a half on it so far because of other commitments.  Rough estimate is about 7%.  The article's very top heavy - most of the content is at the start, so that's where most of the work's going to be.

I'll just keep plodding on as and when I can, but if there's a specific section you want me to look at, let me know.

[roflkopp]

This ist great news (i'm Mr. Lolman, coauthor of the article)

[Targaff]

Quick update, I'm working my way through page 3 right now.  I'm trying to devote an hour or so an evening to it, but I don't always have the time spare :/

I'd be grateful if one of you could clarify what Texturruhe is, though, I don't even know what this is referring to?  I've never heard the term before... [Edit: is it texture smoothing?]

[Raff3DC]

"Texturruhe" could be translated with "texture calmness". Another good word maybe is "peace". We describe the effect of supersampling on the textures. They are less shimmering and sharper at the same time.

Greetings,
Raff