The Voodoo2

March, 1998: 3dfx releases the Voodoo 2

After the stunning success of the Voodoo 1, anticipation was extremely high for the Voodoo 2. The competition still hadn't quite caught up to the Voodoo 1 by this time, although they were getting very close in the form of the Riva 128 ZX. But 3dfx was about to drop another bomb on the industry: multitexture.

Although the capability for multitexture had existed in the original Voodoo 1 chipset-an indication of how well designed the chipset really was-cost restrictions had prohibited its inclusion in the original product. But the Voodoo 2, in addition to a clock rate almost twice that of the Voodoo 1, included a new, third chip: an additional texturing unit. This was a risky move, since the only multitexture games on the market at the time were Quake and Quake 2. Voodoo 2 also upped the ante with regards to memory, increasing from the basic 4mb Voodoo to 8mb and 12mb models.

The Voodoo 2 was a tremendous success. Thanks to its nearly doubled clock rate, the Voodoo 2 was about twice as fast as the Voodoo 1 in most games. However, in a multitexture aware game, the Voodoo 2 could be up to four times as fast as the original Voodoo 1! I was always amused to read magazine reviews of the Voodoo 2 that didn't understand this; they would quote very high Quake 2 benchmarks and then wonder why singletexture games like Jedi Knight weren't much faster.

Another important but overlooked feature of the Voodoo 2 was the improved output quality. The Voodoo VGA passthrough method of connection ensured almost universal compatibility, but it did cause image quality to suffer at 1024x768 on a quality monitor. Luckily 3dfx was listening, and made adjustments. Resolutions higher than 1024x768 that were painful to see on a Voodoo 1 passthrough were again tolerable. Also, the anemic 90mhz RAMDAC used in the Voodoo 1 was pumped up to 130mhz on the Voodoo 2, again resulting in a slightly better image delivered to the monitor.

3dfx was back in the saddle with Voodoo 2, arguably the best product they ever released. Thanks to its aggressive and industry leading use of multitexture, 3dfx was again innovating, bringing gamers higher framerates and better image quality.