The Voodoo5 6000

The extreme Voodoo

Now here's the product everyone wants to hear about (and probably only wishes they had the money to buy). The Voodoo5 6000 is the product that will deliver on 3dfx's claim of greater than 1 billion pixels per second of fill rate. At 166MHz, the processor will push out 1.33Gigapixels per second, and at 183MHz, that number jumps to 1.47Gigapixels per second. 3dfx is quick to point out that this is nearly 1 billion pixels per second MORE than Nvidia's current GeForce256 GPU. The Voodoo5 6000 will reach its claim through the use of no less than four VSA-100 processors, each outfitted with 32MB of RAM, making for a grand total of 128MB.

Voodoo5 6000

Powering 128MB of RAM and 4 hot VSA-100 processors, the Voodoo5 6000 AGP is going to have one hell of a power issue to contend with. Of course, this is something we've been predicting for over a year at FiringSquad, and the 6000 will be the first graphics card to require an external power supply. Consisting of an AC power adapter much like the ones included with PC laptops, "Voodoo Volts" will plug into a standard wall socket (better make room on your Surge protector or UPS), and into the back of the Voodoo5 6000 board, to provide the card with 100 watts of clean power.

Voodoo5 6000 with Voodoo Volts

Price versus performance

At $599, the V5 6000 isn't going to be cheap. In fact, for a lot of people, it'll be up to half the cost of their entire computer system! Of course, an extreme product like this caters to two kinds of people. The super-hard-core "elite" or professional players who insist in framerate over everything. These folks play at 512x384 on 21" monitors with P3-650s, adjust their mouse sensitivity in decimal increments, and won't even look at Unreal Tournament until the user base is large enough and good enough to deserve a sound thrashing. Yep, we're talking zealots here, and a good percentage of these folks actually reside at FiringSquad. Well, before you write us off as mentally deranged, remember that early adopters of Voodoo2 SLI paid $300 for each of the two required cards.

For those of you thinking that 24 or 30 or 40 or 60 fps is the limit of human perception, give the old, tired argument a rest. It bears absolutely no truth, and anyone who's seen 120fps versus 60fps side by side can tell the difference. A very valid question of course, is if the added performance is worth the price. After all, if you're such a power-hungry player, won't the next product cycle 6 months from release instantly obsolete your "brand new" product? Quite a quandary, isn't it? Of course, 3dfx is aware of this, and expects the 6000 to appeal only to a targeted minority of gamers. However, it definitely can't hurt to hold the record on a number of specs, can it?